Freezing Saddles 2018
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@Bob James 168989 wrote:
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.
au contraire…retirees should get 1/3 points because they have all day to ride unlike us working stiffs.
Economist’s perspective.
Does it really matter which measure (Traditional FS points, MASS points, FS with social points) is designated as “the real competition” and which is a “pointless prize”? People will follow and talk about whatever is interesting to them, I think, as long as leaderboards and figures are available on the website for any particular measure (its not that hard to have multiple such figures and leaderboards, is it?) Last year we had MASS points, but only a few people talked about them, IIRC. Whats wrong with just putting it all out there and “letting the market decide” so to speak?
Also, if this is mostly just about fun riding around (and mostly it is) isn’t it against the spirit to be SO concerned with the exact measure? OTOH taunting about who is in the lead is also part of the spirit. At least as long as I have been involved (2015) its had a dual nature – an athletic competition (as I pointed out in an ELF discussion) and also community outreach. In some ways it seems to be, dare I say it, making light hearted (and social) fun of competitions and leaderboards – but to do so, it has to BE a competition. So we need to worry about scoring, how we do each day, etc, but NOT TOO MUCH. Nuance. Hmmm.
You dont get extra points for playing basketball with a team. you dont get extra points for playing disc golf with friends. You play. And then you go drink beer because you like the people you are with. you dont need a toy surprise award to give you an incentive to be social.
Yeah, but. Basketball (and disc golf? ) are team sports. Riding a bike (for most people, not road racers) is not one. And people who play basketball, in most of the US (and in this region I think) mostly drive to it, so gathering for it is no big deal. For someone who lives in Springfield, say, to ride into DC for coffee, is itself an athletic thing they might not have done otherwise.
I live near Shirlington, and I am not an introvert (or rather my introversion takes the form of enjoying social interaction where we talk biking stuff, and I don’t have to make dreaded small talk) so social points would “help” me. But I am fine if they are not tracked – as it happens when I look back on past FS, I don’t even look at total points so much as miles (which are on my collection of paper plates – yeah, I know – and better track my improvement in winter riding, I think).
And yeah, I am continuing to work on my “selfie” taking skills.
@rcannon100 169011 wrote:
It was never meant as a true competition. In terms of design, it really could not be. [COLOR=rgb(51, 51, 51)]Freezing Saddles was a game played amongst a community as we cycled through the winter. It was a farce, a giggle. It was pointless (ergo the games title, taken yes, from Whose Line is it Anways).[/COLOR]
I know that’s true, but it’s obviously taken on a different life than originally intended. A life that takes itself perhaps a little more seriously than it should about community building, but nonetheless, that seems to be the thing people want to get out of it. If building community is indeed a core reason for the game, it does seem consistent to have the scoreboard be one that includes that concept. However that manifests itself.
Social points will bias FS towards an inner social clique. Anyone on the outside of that clique will be pretty much out of the game. Live in Frederick Md and able to ride with only a few FS members – yer at a huge disadvantage. you are an introvert or aspergers and you love to ride but you dont like lots of social interaction – you are hosed. You are part of S Arlington HDCC and like riding for donuts – you win. The rules bias the game and determine who wins. For a whole bucket of people FS becomes uninviting and a peripheral experience
That’s a fair observation. People who live or commute in areas with denser FS participation would have an easier time riding with others.
While this undermines the community building a bit, I wonder if it would be worth saying that riding with *anyone* earns you some [small amount] of extra credit. That would lessen the benefit to being in a FS-participation-rich area (e.g. Arlington) while still encouraging people to ride with others in the winter. It makes the competition a little less inwardly focused, which may or may not be desired.
I think also with the proposed ideas of caps — total point caps, per ride caps — we’re not talking about a huge advantage here either way. But, sure, if you rode a lot and consistently *and* happened to live in Arlington and work in DC, you’d definitely have an advantage in the points game.
But we all agree the points game is really pointless, so I’m not sure we need to worry that much about it? Will fewer people really play if they think that to win they’d have to be more social? The fact that to win with miles-based rules, you’d need to ride at least 300 miles a week didn’t seem to scare away participants.
All recreational activity is social. That is a big reason we play. You dont get extra points for playing basketball with a team. you dont get extra points for playing disc golf with friends. You play. And then you go drink beer because you like the people you are with. you dont need a toy surprise award to give you an incentive to be social.
I think the difference here is that without some encouragement (especially in winter) to make cycling a team sport, it is most naturally going to be a solitary activity. In the cold and in the dark. So perhaps this idea is really to encourage teams to ride together. (And maybe it should be structured so that you get higher point bonuses for riding with your teammates?)
FS is a giggle. It’s design was to build community.
I think we definitely agree on both those points, which is why we’d even consider changing up the rules. I might sign up this year — if it’s not already full
@Subby 169018 wrote:
Get rid of the individual leaderboard and just track teams. That seems to be most in the spirit of what FS has become (for the better, fwiw).
Yeah, I agree with that too. The individual leaderboard was never supposed to be an official leaderboard, I don’t think. But obviously that became a crazy competition. Congrats on winning that, BTW; that is insanity.
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