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

[Bilsko]

@ShawnoftheDread 40798 wrote:

I like the pointless awards ideas, but I don’t think we need a playoff tournament. Our regular season is already almost three full months.

The tough part about a tournament is that if the timing is bad for someone, then it kind of sucks. With the tournament the timing may be too compressed – whereas with the full season, even if you’re away for a week or two, you can make it up at a later time.

Not saying I’m against the tournament…just pointing out one difficulty that we may encounter.

[Amalitza]

@ShawnoftheDread 40798 wrote:

I like the pointless awards ideas, but I don’t think we need a playoff tournament. Our regular season is already almost three full months.

I agree, unless we are talking about regular season ending, say, at the end of February, and playoffs in March.

I would be willing to coordinate pointless awards, unless someone else has a burning desire to do so.

[Mikey]

A tournament could be set up to last say, 3 weeks. We could start at any time just get some level of support. What is nice about a tournament is that by mid February the point spread among the teams may be insurmountable and there may actually be very little movement in the standings. A tourney would help to add back some of the excitement.

[Arlingtonrider]

I’m out after March. Too many other obligations coming up.

[ShawnoftheDread]

@essigmw 40803 wrote:

What is nice about a tournament is that by mid February the point spread among the teams may be insurmountable and there may actually be very little movement in the standings. A tourney would help to add back some of the excitement.

.

I think pointless prices takes care of this aspect. The top few teams will be competing to win near the end, some will be trying to avoid (or ensure) being The Goat, and others of us will be hoping for pointless prices for other feats.

[eminva]

Why not have each team construct a trophy/certificate/prize for one the pointless prizes?

Liz

[KLizotte]

@essigmw 40803 wrote:

A tournament could be set up to last say, 3 weeks. We could start at any time just get some level of support. What is nice about a tournament is that by mid February the point spread among the teams may be insurmountable and there may actually be very little movement in the standings. A tourney would help to add back some of the excitement.

Don’t forget colds and the flu will take out a few competitors along the way as well as vacations and work duties. I think there will be room for movement amongst the teams.

[rcannon100]

Just a reminder – no one is in charge here. So if you are volunteering, you are volunteered. Just try to develop consensus of the group.

So like ACL if you want to coordinate pointless awards, then you have volunteered yourself.

BA has volunteered a bushel of prizes. You might want to contact Tim.

On behalf of Team Mongo, I volunteer for the First Place Team Awards (especially since there is no chance we will win it :p). I hopefully have something special in the works.

[hozn]

I would like to volunteer to help with any scripting/programming efforts on the “pointless awards”. While this is counting chickens a bit before they’ve hatched (I don’t know the full depths & limitations yet of strava api), it looks like it would be relatively easy to pull down rides (including GPX of all the rides) and mash those up with other APIs to answer questions like — most rides in the rain (or on rainy days, not sure if I can actually determine whether the rider happened to be getting wet), most rides in the dark, etc. Anyway, I’m gonna try to spend some time this weekend getting some scaffolding scripts in place to pull down all the rides for teams and store to local database for reporting purposes. I’ll follow Ron’s example and post my code on github (it’ll be python, not haskell, sorry) if anyone wants to contribute or play with their own reporting ideas.

[GuyContinental]

@KLizotte 40812 wrote:

Don’t forget colds and the flu will take out a few competitors along the way as well as vacations and work duties. I think there will be room for movement amongst the teams.

I’m already down… all week…

The plague is awful even WITH a flu shot. Ugh. Sorry ‘Ochos…

[Steve]

@GuyContinental 40872 wrote:

I’m already down… all week…

The plague is awful even WITH a flu shot. Ugh. Sorry ‘Ochos…

Get well soon.

I’m down for today and tomorrow with a punctured tire. I think I picked up a little glass at the foot of the S. Capitol St. Bridge and it eventually made its was to my tube, near the Waterfront. I don’t think I’ll get to a shop before the weekend. Plus after this week, my bike really wants to be cleaned and lubed. On the bright side, this might be my excuse to buy some Armadillos.

[rcannon100]

Hey Steve! I know that profile picture! Copyright violation!! :p

Sweet!

Someone get that man a pair of tire irons and a tube!

[Steve]

@rcannon100 40885 wrote:

Hey Steve! I know that profile picture! Copyright violation!! :p

Sweet!

Someone get that man a pair of tire irons and a tube!

I thought this was like FB or Instagram. You’ve given away for Copyright protections. 😎

Oh the tire levers and tubes I have. Though I must admit my tire/rim combo made for an unbelievably difficult time getting the tire off. My problem is that the glass punctured and stuck pretty well in my tire. I got it all out I think, and managed to ride home, but I don’t like the idea of a punctured tire to ride around on. So…..maybe some new sweet tires! Or make just a patch kit to fix the current ones, not sure. I’d like to get some tires that aren’t so hard to remove though, because it’s cold and wet out, and I probably seemed like a crazy person cursing by the roadside last night. Pretty good amount of broken glass on the ride up S. Cap St., so we’ll see.

[rcannon100]

NWS has canceled the winter weather advisory for today – cancelling all Freezing Saddles points for the day.

[hozn]

@Steve 40882 wrote:

On the bright side, this might be my excuse to buy some Armadillos.

I also recommend (as I’m sure many do) the Panaracer T-Serv tires. I have the reflective sidewall 28s for commuting; the 25s are nice too. I’ve heard good things about the Armadillos too, but the T-Servs are cheaper (online) and lighter.

[Author]

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