Freezing Saddles: Winter Bike Challenge (sign up open)

[rcannon100]

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

Official Frozen Scoreboard

NOTE: Excluded activities: If you post an activity to Strava during the competition period which is not an outdoor bike ride, then it should have the string “#NoBAFS” in the activity name.

Freezing Saddles! The Epic Adventure of a band of ELITE Cyclists, facing the challenges of the wild wild wild 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 20. It will conclude with a March Madness Playoff that someone will probably design. There will be a Happy Hour at the end with many pointless trophies.

Tribes (teams):

• Composed of ~5 riders or less
• For riders from the #bikedc, Washington DC Bike Forum general community (Washington DC greater metropolitan area)
• 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.
• Interested cyclists must sign up by December 25 Midnight – Tribes will be announced within a couple days.

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).

Backend: STRAVA (please sign up for an account, and join the “Bike Arlington” club on STRAVA – you should be able to enter data manually or automatically. Additional information will be posted here on the forum.)

This is a self organized group activity based on consensus. No one is in charge or running this thing. Participation is voluntary and entirely at your own risk.

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.

Here are the teams with the new subs

Team one
http://app.strava.com/athletes/126281
Matthew Whatley
Shawn Dread
443749
John Fisher – 608636

Team Two
Pete DeNitto – 768183
Steve Appel
James Hoofnagle
Jason Kyzer
Mega Beth – http://app.strava.com/athletes/136523
Joe Birkenstock – 1154396

Team Three
Trish Newberg
randy napiza 313677
Mark Blacknell
essigmw
obenlandk@gmail.com – http://www.strava.com/athletes/1564295

Team Four
EKR
Kel Moore
Chris Shue
Crystal Bae
Elizabeth MacGregor

Team Five
http://app.strava.com/athletes/benbhsu
307483 (Mark Williams)
Christopher Niebylski
vvill
Kevin Ulrich – http://www.strava.com/athletes/kevin_ulrich

Team Six
Arlingtonrider
sjclaeys
ejwillis@yahoo.com
http://app.strava.com/athletes/302448
feomike@gmail.com – http://www.strava.com/athletes/feomike

Team Seven
Henning Schulzrinne
klizotte
Brad Hancock
Ron Alford
Chris Randall

Team Eight
Ken Buja (1224809)
Kevin Williams, Strava # 580756, BA “GuyContinental”
Lena Varuolo
Hans Lellelid

Team Nine
Steve O
jopamora
Justin Antos (Strava 1473093)
http://app.strava.com/athletes/488016

Team Ten
certifried
strava name Karen Smith (forum poster acl)
Cyndi Janetzko
Rod Smith

Team Eleven (Freezing Saddles Team Mongo (11) on Strava)
Greg Ba
cptjohnc
rcannon100
mdevoll
Sarah Dots
Sean Chisham

Team Twelve
Calpike
BonzaiBuckaroo
Daniel Alexander
ochsendorf@gmail.com

Topic

[rcannon100]

Greg is on team 11 now. Team 11 is almost full with people who are active forum users or on STRAVA. Tell Greg not to be confused by the fact that at this minute only two of us have shown up. CptJohn is active on the forum; Sarah Dots is on board; mdevoll just signed up and is on STRAVA. That’s pretty much a full boat so get him on board!

[rcannon100]

@ShawnoftheDread 39774 wrote:

No, but the kids are welcomed to join Team 11.

Does that mean that when I trailer my dog, I can set up a STRAVA account for her and have her join Team 11??

[Steve]

The last day of the first week on the Freezing Saddles competition, and some nice temps to welcome us! I have to say, the challenge so far has been great in terms of motivating me to get out on the bike more, and increase my commutes per week. Thanks again for all the work in setting this up, and congrats to everyone for logging a lot of rides and a lot of miles over this first week (I know today isn’t done yet).

I can’t wait for the mid-June thru mid-September “Blazing Saddles” challenge. 20+ points for riding a horse. 50+ for pulling one in a trailer.

[Mikey]

@rcannon100 39781 wrote:

Does that mean that when I trailer my dog, I can set up a STRAVA account for her and have her join Team 11??

Only if your dog is pedaling.

[consularrider]

@rcannon100 39781 wrote:

Does that mean that when I trailer my dog, I can set up a STRAVA account for her and have her join Team 11??

Maybe team 12 for the non-human team? I see a couple of riders on the W&OD in the area around the Custis Trail intersection who are exercising their dogs with a short leash attachment on the rear of the bike. They go fairly slow. I’m kinda torn about whether or not this a bad thing. I can think of so many things that could go wrong, but then I also am glad to see anyone out on a bike and see the dogs get exercise.

[Certifried]

@Greenbelt 39704 wrote:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2219[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]2220[/ATTACH]
Team Critty Pants is relentless. Note Rod “broken rib” Smith back on the road, the Mark “totally needs a pro-fit” Certifried knocking out the miles today…

You have NO idea how hard 17 miles was on that thing. I should get 10x points!

[vtben]

Apparently no one told mother nature that we were having this contest. 50’s this week and 60’s this weekend?

[ronwalf]

@KelOnWheels 39753 wrote:

Do we need to #NoBAFS runs? I’m guessing not but just wanted to make sure

This just in: No, you don’t need to mark runs! People still need to mark indoor trainer rides as “#NoBAFS”, but running, snowshoeing and the likes don’t need it.

I sent a feature request to Strava, and they responded today:

Product Team, Jan 07 02:27 pm (PST):
Ron,

I love the dialog about the challenge on the bike arlington board! What you guys are doing is fantastic.

The current API is pretty limited. We are getting ready to release an updated API within the next two months that supports all the activity types. I think you can be confident that using the /api/v2/rides end-point that you will ONLY get rides and not any other activity type. For example http://app.strava.com/activities/35240379 is a showshoe outing, but http://app.strava.com/api/v2/rides/35240379 returns an error.

You can sign up for notification about the forthcoming API at http://app.strava.com/developers

[rcannon100]

@benbhsu 39847 wrote:

Apparently no one told mother nature that we were having this contest. 50’s this week and 60’s this weekend?

Yes…. all rides above 45 degrees dont count (kidding – kidding … altho I think we have consensus that any rides in the southern hemisphere where it is summer time are really cheezy…. we’re glaring at YOU vvill!)

[ejwillis62]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2227[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]2228[/ATTACH]

[vvill]

@ronwalf 39851 wrote:

This just in: No, you don’t need to mark runs! People still need to mark indoor trainer rides as “#NoBAFS”, but running, snowshoeing and the likes don’t need it.

I sent a feature request to Strava, and they responded today:

Man, I was totally going to cheat with some snowshoeing trips!

But seriously, that’s excellent. Huge kudos to you for doing all this! Also good news about the Strava API. I keep telling myself one day I’ll look at it – having an updated API might finally motivate me. (Or not.) I last used Haskell in first-year computer science where my program we had to write for our major project was defeated by that of an ex-Israeli army programmer who won the whole contest, shouldn’t have been in an undergraduate class, and happened to be in my lab class (so I was knocked out in the first round). But I digress.

[ShawnoftheDread]

@ejwillis62 39853 wrote:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2227[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]2228[/ATTACH]

Bike commuting explained in two beautiful shots.

[Steve O]

How come we only get four team members?

[jopamora]

@Steve O 39865 wrote:

How come we only get four team members?

Jeff and Justin are in the Top 5. Being on Team 9 with them has helped my motivation.

[rcannon100]

@Steve O 39865 wrote:

How come we only get four team members?

The teams were created based on handicap scores (think money ball for cycling). This was the Nov/Dec miles ridden and days ridden averages that were asked. Based on the averages of the group as a whole, this created an individual team handicap of 570 points. Well, Jeff’s handicap is 260 (200 miles per week, 6 days a week). That’s one person with almost half the team handicap.

There werent enough players at the beginning of the game to put five players on every team. Three teams had only four players and one of those players probably had a really high handicap.

In the end, those three teams, I believe – came charging out of the gate! Team 10, starting with 4, suspiciously has charged to first place and is doing wagon circles around us. I think someone needs to call the sheriff…. or Mongo!

Anyway, with the second round of substitutions things have gotten a little wobbly. Some teams have 6 players. But all teams’ handicap score are now very close to 570. All teams should theoretically be of equal strength.

[Author]

Replies