Freezing Saddles 2015

[dasgeh]

Re: randomizing and handicaps.

I think handicaps are tough. I imagine someone with skillz and a few extra minutes could take last year’s numbers, assign random teams, and let us know whether this is a horrible idea. (You’d have to run the simulation a few times). Basically if the difference in point totals between teams is similar in most simulations to what it was with the handicapping, I definitely say go with random.

[rcannon100]

Last Years Game:

Note: It does not say it here but I did knock off a few registrations that were not local and could not establish that they had anything to do with us.

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Freezing Saddles: Winter Bike Challenge
Never Give an ELITE Cyclist an Even Break

Freezing Saddles! The Epic Adventure of a band of ELITE Cyclists, facing the challenges of the wild wild winter bike paths. Confronting the darkest of evenings, the coldest of mornings, and the stupidest of Ninjas – these brave cyclists challenge each other because, if they didnt, they might have to actually do some work during the day.

The saga runs January 1 until the last day of Winter, March 19. There will be a Happy Hour at the end with many pointless trophies.

* Tribes (teams):
** Composed of ~10 riders
** For riders from the WABA / Bike Arlington forum
** Volunteer Captains (captains will address any data problems, negotiate or cause confusion, and provide motivational seminars);
* This is a ten-gallon hat tournament. Riders will be randomly assigned to tribes based on self declared average weekly mileage and days cycled. Tribes will be created so that each tribes’s average weekly point score is roughly equal to everyone else’s. To achieve this, tribes may be composed of differing numbers of riders.
* No late sign ups (this year absolute – I have other things that I will have to be attending to).
* Interested cyclists must sign up by December 24 Midnight – Tribes will be announced within a couple days.
* All rides must be logged by DATE in order to be included
* No sandbagging.
* Communications will be through the forum.

Scoring: Riders will receive 10 points for each day and 1 point for each mile ridden. Minimum ride is 1 mile. The tribe’s score will be the sum of the tribe members (indoor trainers do not count- you must be freezing in the saddle outside).

La Strava
* We will honor the “trainer” checkbox in Strava; those rides will be ignored. As will rides with #NoBAFS (case-insensitive) in the ride name.
* Any rides with kiddos on your bike can be tagged in the ride name with #Kidical for a kidically pointless prize.
* In order for rides to be counted, the athletes will need to authorize the Freezing Saddles application to read their Strava data. (Details coming very soon on how to do that.)
* Also, riders will need to be a member of their “tribe” Strava club in order for their rides to count (we’ll only be showing riders that are on one of the competition teams) — and I will need the list of those team IDs for configuring the scoreboard. Of course any recorded rides will be counted retroactively if any of the team captains are late in getting the clubs formed (or late in getting me the ID of the clubs … or I’m late in updating the app configuration).

Freezing Saddles is a self organized effort of the participants. Freezing Saddles is not sponsored by anyone (it is not sponsored by Bike Arlington or by WABA). There is no organization. It is just a bunch of people coming together to be silly and ride bikes when it is really really cold. Your participation in Freezing Saddles is voluntary and at your own risk and you have not paid anyone anything to participate. Please volunteer to help make this self organized effort succeed.

Be Brave. Be Bold. Be…. questful! In the words of Hedley Lamarr:

Men, you are about to embark on a great crusade to stamp out runaway decency on the bike paths. Now you men will only be risking your lives, whilst I will be risking an almost certain Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor

.

[Arlingtonrider]

December ride averages can’t be determined in time to get the teams together, but October or November might work. Not advocating one way or another on the handicap issue, but just wanted to point out that technical problem with using December. @Greenbelt 100016 wrote:

My two cents is that the team size of 5-10 is good, allows team-level social events and rides pretty well. Smaller teams have more volatile results, which keeps it interesting to follow the leaderboard.

Maybe ask people to give their December ride averages as a handicap, rather than (mis) estimating?

Since winning didn’t matter though, maybe that would be overkill.

I enjoy stuff like this, helps get through the winter, which is not my favorite season…

[DismalScientist]

I think there is a distinction between sandbagging and going above and beyond in one’s effort. I’ve always calculated my handicap assuming five normal round trip commutes per week. If I exceed that, it doesn’t mean I sandbagged the estimate. What is considered an “accurate” handicap?

[rcannon100]

One that is consistent with what you were reporting on STRAVA for the same period. 1/3 of people, for whom I could confirm the data, self reported a handicap that was not in agreement with what they were recording on Strava. Or, in otherwords, handicap self reporting was pointless.

[DismalScientist]

My self-reported handicap should have been higher than what Strava said in October and November, but it was likely more “accurate” since in reflects my base riding level. Using previous January through March numbers would reflect previous craziness associated with FS. My Strava profile is quite even throughout the year, but has a January thru March peak.

[lfreuclid]

Hi there,
I spent all of last year commuting to work by bike. Everyone thought I was crazy but then I heard that you were all out there doing it too. How do I get involved this time around? I don’t track my rides on Strava, but I can learn!

~Feeling Freezing

[vern]

If this is Strava dependent than I’m out as I don’t have any of those new-fangled electronic gizmos.

[cyclingfool]

I like the idea of randomized teams, as long as my team from last year stays intact. LOL

Seriously, though, if handicapping didn’t work as intended, why bother? I think if the teams are big enough, say 10-12 as seems to be the consensus thus far, then a randomization should produce relatively equal teams as long as we don’t end up with two big hitters like Rod on one single team, in which case re-randomize?

[rcannon100]

You dont need a gizmo. You can manually enter your miles in Strava.

[Ben]

I’m new to bike commuting this year, so I’m not sure what my handicap should be. I’m excited to be part of this this year though!
Also, would it be too complicated to give a five point or double mile bonus for rides on days where the recorded high at DCA (usually the warmest point in the region) is below freezing? I volunteer to compile this data (note which days would qualify and send it to whoever is collecting the mileage from strava) if people think it would be a good idea.

Sounds like a lot of fun! And also crazy – but mostly fun!

[vvill]

Overall I feel the competition worked pretty well, although I’m not sure how exactly the substitute/late sign ups worked. For signing up I think we could open sign up earlier, and unofficially begin a trial run sometime in December. Those who’ve signed up but don’t end up logging miles (or just log one or two rides and then disappear) can then be filtered out for the proper team assignments for the competition that begins in January. I support the idea of team captains too. Most of the mileage monsters (Rod, Jeff, etc.) who are signed up could then be on different teams. The team size seemed about right to me.

I think the mileage estimates and therefore handicaps are based on what you think you will ride during FS, not what you ride during the rest of the year. Now that we’re in our third year it’s easier to go back and look at returning participants’ numbers, but obviously it’s still going to be a rough estimate. Maybe we can do pools – one for captains, one for those interested in riding lots of miles, one for medium mileage riders, one for occasional riders, etc. And then pick the same number of people from each pool to make each team so each would have say, 1 captain, 2 high mileage riders, 5 medium, 3 occasional, or whatever. You self-nominate which pool you want to be in. (If we have a slacker team, then that’s separate.) This way there’s a random element, but there’s still some seeding to keep big mileage riders apart. And sandbaggers will still be obvious. :rolleyes:

I’ll do some side award or two for something yet to be determined (won’t be the GPS art ride thing though). Maybe photo based/biweekly challenges if I’m feeling energetic. I would be happy to attend a kid-friendly happy hour too, but not sure it’s easy to set up.

I do like the idea of the geographical thing but don’t think teams should be based on it. Maybe do a side award based on geographic divisions; an alternative leaderboard like in the NBC.

Of course, all this is nought until hozn chimes in!

[rcannon100]

@vvill 100033 wrote:

Of course, all this is nought until hozn chimes in!

Grand Master Hozn is on board.

[rcannon100]

@vvill 100033 wrote:

I think the mileage estimates and therefore handicaps are based on what you think you will ride during FS, not what you ride during the rest of the year. Now that we’re in our third year it’s easier to go back and look at returning participants’ numbers, but obviously it’s still going to be a rough estimate. Maybe we can do pools – one for captains, one for those interested in riding lots of miles, one for medium mileage riders, one for occasional riders, etc. And then pick the same number of people from each pool to make each team so each would have say, 1 captain, 2 high mileage riders, 5 medium, 3 occasional, or whatever. You self-nominate which pool you want to be in. (If we have a slacker team, then that’s separate.) This way there’s a random element, but there’s still some seeding to keep big mileage riders apart. And sandbaggers will still be obvious. :rolleyes:

Beginning to think that this is a most excellent idea.

[dkel]

I wonder if there’s an algorithm that could be applied to last year’s accumulated data, to determine a handicap for people who participated last year. It could be presented as a guideline if people are still declaring their own handicaps, or it could be used to assign people to mileage categories (as in vvill’s idea), or create mileage categories.

[Author]

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