Freezing Saddles 2018

[hozn]

@Steve O 168951 wrote:

There’s a weird sport called the biathlon. The objectives are to cross-country ski and shoot a rifle at targets. There are two objectives to the sport, and both are scored.

How odd it would be if at the end of the race the only thing that was scored was how fast you skied?

There is a pretty strong consensus that the two main objectives to Freezing Saddles are:

• to encourage riding in winter conditions
• to encourage growth, activities, friendships, connections and enjoyment in our biking community

How odd it would be if at the end of the game the only thing that was scored was how many days and miles you rode?

I think that is a nice way of summarizing this argument. If Freezing Saddles is about more than just riding a lot, then maybe the official leaderboard should reflect that.

(And, again, if someone wants to make a pointless prize for “just riding a lot”, please do!)

[bentbike33]

@hozn 168971 wrote:

And, again, if someone wants to make a pointless prize for “just riding a lot”, please do!

So someone should just give Bob James a sixer of Mountain Dew and a box of Moon Pies, or whatever it is he likes to eat on his daily century.

[lordofthemark]

@LhasaCM 168967 wrote:

It’s a different way of enforcing “no cars in the bike lane” laws, maybe even more effective than the “almost nothing” that’s done now. Easier to do for you Virginians, though – so clearly not fair.

Next group ride

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_infantry#/media/File:Bicycle1L.jpg

[LhasaCM]

@Steve O 168951 wrote:

There’s a weird sport called the biathlon. The objectives are to cross-country ski and shoot a rifle at targets. There are two objectives to the sport, and both are scored.

How odd it would be if at the end of the race the only thing that was scored was how fast you skied?

There is a pretty strong consensus that the two main objectives to Freezing Saddles are:

• to encourage riding in winter conditions
• to encourage growth, activities, friendships, connections and enjoyment in our biking community

How odd it would be if at the end of the game the only thing that was scored was how many days and miles you rode?

Stretching this analogy a bit further – biathlon has a set number of targets, not “hit as many as you can.” Would it make more sense/be less objectionable to folks if a social component had a maximum score contribution – something a bit lofty but attainable and not too much that it would drive the uber-competitive folks away? In other words, you get points up to maybe 20 FS people you rode with but nothing beyond that on the official leaderboard, so there’s no extra pressure to go beyond a number just for the sake of winning that it makes people miserable?

[Bob James]

I went to many FS events and rides last year. much more than the year before. Living out in Manassas, if I rode 40 miles to the event in the cold, wet and darkness, I would get rewarded with mileage points more than the person riding 5 miles. So if any new proposal includes a combination of mileage and participation I don’t see much of a problem. If still base 10 + 1 point per mile and 10 points for participation, I would still get 60 points, whereas the 5 mile rider would get 25 points. If I just rode 40 miles around Manassas, I would still get 50 points to recognize riding in the winter months.

If you make miles into a pointless only prize, you turn FS into a social club, and not a cycling in winter competition/event. I could ride to the dentist in the snow or freezing rain (instead of drive) and get no points, whereas someone else sits in a warm cozy coffee shop with a FS friend or two and gets points.

If that’s the direction the event leaders want to take FS, than others who don’t live in the immediate DC area, and/or have more work/family/life responsibilities and cannot attend daily social events (but ride to and from places instead of drive) would be liabilities to their teams and maybe should not join FS.

Upon discussing this topic with my wife, she reminded me she was a Freezing Saddles widow last year and doesn’t want it repeated this year. So I can work in miles and work in some events (probably more than some of the 250 FS participants), but probably not more events than 2017. To go to a coffee club, I have to leave my house before 5am and I don’t get back home till noonish. To go to an evening event, I would have to leave around 3pm and not get home until after 11pm. Probably the morning time has less impact on family responsibilities than evening. But I could not do a lot of these events. I imagine others may be in similar situation.

So if Freezing Saddles becomes so much more scoring focused on butts sitting in warm chairs for social events, instead of on freezing bicycle saddles than I probably won’t be much help to a team anymore. Team rides being more favorable than just meeting to drink beer. Which is fine if that’s the direction the event leaders want to go. But I know I can’t increase attending events more (which was more than many in 2017) to help my team get points (which I assume it would still be a competition, but for who is the most social, versus who rides the most while sometimes or often attending social events).

[hozn]

@Bob James 168977 wrote:

If you make miles into a pointless only prize, you turn FS into a social club, and not a cycling in winter competition/event.

Freezing Saddles didn’t start with a strong agenda. But I think it’s safe to say it’s evolved into a “competition” with a strong agenda. And it sounds like you’re missing the point — or at least half the point.

I could ride to the dentist in the snow or freezing rain (instead of drive) and get no points, whereas someone else sits in a warm cozy coffee shop with a FS friend or two and gets points.

Um. I guess you didn’t actually read Steve’s proposal. It’s ok, I didn’t read it the first time around either.

If that’s the direction the event leaders want to take FS, than others who don’t live in the immediate DC area, and/or have more work/family/life responsibilities and cannot attend daily social events (but ride to and from places instead of drive) would be liabilities to their teams and maybe should not join FS.

Again, there is no advantage to attending social events. Unless doing so means you are riding with someone to get there. But you could ride with someone on your commute too.

Upon discussing this topic with my wife, she reminded me she was a Freezing Saddles widow last year and doesn’t want it repeated this year.

Sounds like a scoring system that provided bonus points for things other than just riding your bike for hours will be great for your marriage.

Also, I’ve proposed (as I believe have others have in the past) logarithmic formula for mileage, so that’ll work in your favor here too if we implement that.

So if Freezing Saddles becomes so much more scoring focused on butts sitting in warm chairs for social events, instead of on freezing bicycle saddles than I probably won’t be much help to a team anymore. Team rides being more favorable than just meeting to drink beer.

Again, you didn’t read the posts, but just to be clear: there is nothing in this proposal that would provide advantage to stopping for coffee or drinking beer, regardless of how many people are there drinking with you. Unless you’re proposing we start tracking beer consumption in Strava too?

[hozn]

@LhasaCM 168976 wrote:

Stretching this analogy a bit further – biathlon has a set number of targets, not “hit as many as you can.” Would it make more sense/be less objectionable to folks if a social component had a maximum score contribution – something a bit lofty but attainable and not too much that it would drive the uber-competitive folks away? In other words, you get points up to maybe 20 FS people you rode with but nothing beyond that on the official leaderboard, so there’s no extra pressure to go beyond a number just for the sake of winning that it makes people miserable?

This sounds like a good idea.

Other ideas to think about:
– Lowering the bonus per additional rider (50 points is a lot)
– Probably maximum bonus “credits” per ride. E.g. you can get credit for riding with 1 other person per ride — so riding with 50 people to the FS convoy isn’t going to give you a huge points bump.

Steve, thoughts?

Codifying MASS needs some clarification too, I think. Is there any renewed interest in incorporating freeze points or is the thought that MASS makes that redundant?

Maybe rule details need a new thread.

[Subby]

Did i read somewhere that retirees only get .5 points for each mile and there was a 100 point bonus for every 1k of climbing?

Maybe it was just a fever dream.

[dcv]

@Subby 168985 wrote:

Did i read somewhere that retirees only get .5 points for each mile and there was a 100 point bonus for every 1k of climbing?

Maybe it was just a fever dream.

or 500 bonus points if your commute is 19 miles

[ShawnoftheDread]

Y’all might be overthinking this. But that’s none of my business.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Bob James]

@Subby 168985 wrote:

Did i read somewhere that retirees only get .5 points for each mile and there was a 100 point bonus for every 1k of climbing?
Maybe it was just a fever dream.

Retirees should get double points for making the effort to get out of their PJ’s and comfy recliner to go out and bike when they don’t really need to go anywhere.

[LhasaCM]

@ShawnoftheDread 168987 wrote:

Y’all might be overthinking this. But that’s none of my business.

I thought that was the point?

[LhasaCM]

@hozn 168983 wrote:

Codifying MASS needs some clarification too, I think. Is there any renewed interest in incorporating freeze points or is the thought that MASS makes that redundant?

I think MASS was meant to replace freeze points – the same general sense of “you get more points the worse it was outside” – but using our behavior as a proxy for weather conditions rather than temperature (or trying to make something up that would factor in precipitation/wind/etc.). It doesn’t include any sort of diminishing returns (which I think was raised elsewhere as another idea for consideration).

For the social riding aspect – for all of the discussion of if it’s a good idea or not, I think there’s also the open question of how easy/feasible it is to capture that with the Strava data (ignoring the quality of the algorithm’s results, as well). Does the Strava API expose the names/IDs of the “rode with…” in an easy enough to use way? (Poking around the documentation a little bit, it looks like it’s relatively easy to get the athlete_count for an activity, but you may have to query each activity with a count > 1 to then get the array of related activities in order to then determine who the user is?)

[Bob James]

@hozn 168982 wrote:

Freezing Saddles didn’t start with a strong agenda. But I think it’s safe to say it’s evolved into a “competition” with a strong agenda. And it sounds like you’re missing the point — or at least half the point.
Um. I guess you didn’t actually read Steve’s proposal. It’s ok, I didn’t read it the first time around either.
Again, there is no advantage to attending social events. Unless doing so means you are riding with someone to get there. But you could ride with someone on your commute too.
Sounds like a scoring system that provided bonus points for things other than just riding your bike for hours will be great for your marriage.
Also, I’ve proposed (as I believe have others have in the past) logarithmic formula for mileage, so that’ll work in your favor here too if we implement that.
Again, you didn’t read the posts, but just to be clear: there is nothing in this proposal that would provide advantage to stopping for coffee or drinking beer, regardless of how many people are there drinking with you. Unless you’re proposing we start tracking beer consumption in Strava too?

I read Steve’s original proposal, but I wasn’t commenting directly on MASS and Riding with other FS riders, but on other later comments that took (IMO) the original proposal much further in an attempt to devalue mileage points in favor of social participation (not just riding together).

@hozn 168982 wrote:

(And, again, if someone wants to make a pointless prize for “just riding a lot”, please do!} and… However, at the end of the day, I feel that the scoring system would be improved if it were to incorporate some of the things that the contest leaders want to encourage.

@Steve O 168982 wrote:

I would be strongly in favor of including more of the community type activities in the scoring. The proposal I made is one that can be accomplished with Strava, which is why I suggested it. I have a hundred ideas for other ways to improve the scoring, but I don’t know how they could be implemented technically (e.g., bonus points for winning a pointless prize, for offering a pointless prize, for organizing a donut/brewery ride, for beerneuring, for posting photos on instagram, etc.) I have heard support from many corners to augment the scoring with a social component. Although this suggestion is not perfect, we can’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

It seemed to me the original proposal was being evolved from bonus participatory points for riding together, to also include attending social events and possibly not even including mileage in the scoring. If I’m mistaken and were only talking about Steve’s original proposal of adding bonus points for riding together… now 10 points per FS person, than that seems a reasonable way to incorporate both mileage and participation (though Komorebi brought up the issue of Strava’s grouping problems and inconsistencies. And I imagine would be more complicated for immediate scoring updates that would recognize FS grouped riders, while not duplicating points for riding with same FS person more than once.

[jrenaut]

Let’s compromise. You get 10 bonus points every time you ride with Steve O. Steve O gets no points.

[Author]

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