Freezing Saddles: Winter Bike Challenge (sign up open)

[rcannon100]

I caved. I took WMATA. Oh what an unpleasant experience. Other than I could pound away at email the entire trip, I just dont get it. Ballston stunk like an electrical fire. The train was over crowded. The train kept stopping because “there is a train in front of us.” It is faster by bike (and then there is the exercise thing)

Well… it should be 10 degrees warmer tomorrow.

[ShawnoftheDread]

@rcannon100 41378 wrote:

Well… it should be 10 degrees warmer tomorrow.

Balmy!

[Mark Blacknell]

@rcannon100 41378 wrote:

I caved. I took WMATA. Oh what an unpleasant experience. Other than I could pound away at email the entire trip, I just dont get it. Ballston stunk like an electrical fire. The train was over crowded. The train kept stopping because “there is a train in front of us.” It is faster by bike (and then there is the exercise thing)

Well… it should be 10 degrees warmer tomorrow.

Dock that rider a day’s miles for slacking on the job. The way he’s bellyachin’ around here, you’d think it was a 110 degrees below zero. Hell, it can’t be less than 14!

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[consularrider]

@Mark Blacknell 41381 wrote:

Dock that rider a day’s miles for slacking on the job. The way he’s bellyachin’ around here, you’d think it was a 110 degrees below zero. Hell, it can’t be less than 14!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2314[/ATTACH]

13 in my backyard at 7 am as I mounted up.

[Dirt]

@consularrider 41384 wrote:

13 in my backyard at 7 am as I mounted up.

It was cold this morning. My Garmin showed -14c (8F) for the first part of my ride in. It warmed up to -11c.

[KayakCyndi]

@consularrider 41384 wrote:

13 in my backyard at 7 am as I mounted up.

Me too and by the the time I hit the Custis Trail I was trying to figure out to how unzip my various layers with my fingers ensconced in huge ski gloves and my teeth, which yes I admit to using for this purpose, hidden somewhere under my wool buff!

[Arlingtonrider]

Cold, but it was nice not to have yesterday’s winds. I was surprised by how many people were out riding. Fewer than usual, but still a pretty good number considering the temps.

Reason for edit: Calling this morning “chilly” was an understatement. It was cold! My legs and toes were chilly.

[consularrider]

@Arlingtonrider 41390 wrote:

Chilly, but it was nice not to have yesterday’s winds. I was surprised by how many people were out riding. Fewer than usual, but still a pretty good number considering the temps.

I counted the riders I saw, 14 this morning and 24 yesterday morning during the same one hour period (7:15 – 8:15 am). I only saw about 10 riders on my way home yesterday evening.

[Arlingtonrider]

I didn’t leave until around around 8 a.m., when it was a little warmer, and while I didn’t keep count, am sure I saw at least 20 over the course of my ride (counting people going both ways and perpendicular to my commute).

It’s surprising that you saw so many more out early yesterday morning. That was brutal weather! Maybe yesterday was enough for some of them.

[jopamora]

Geez, this guy would be in 9th on the leader board. Gonna save this article for when my kids are old enough to drive.

[Sarah Dots]

Please do add your dog to team 11. We’ll take all the miles we can get.

Also, does anyone have advice for keeping their phone from freezing? I’m not used to having my phone on in freezing temps (new to this game). My phone is about to bite the dust, I think, even though I’m putting it on an inside pocket of my jacket. Do I just need to switch to manual input of my rides and lose all my data? I hope not!

[Mikey]

Confession:

I noticed my BAFS milage was a couple miles below my actual milage (recorded in my geeky no-GPS owning) spreadsheet, so I went into STRAVA to investigate. I found 2 days where I shorted my milage, I did some editing, deleting the original entry and updating with a new entries. By doing this though my BAFS points are all screwed up now. It has given me 690 pts ( I should only have 576), and it says in the frozen scoreboard that I have 24 days of riding, when I actually only have 22. Strava itself shows the correct data (22 days 356.1 miles) so I may have uncovered a glich in the software.

[ronwalf]

@essigmw 41584 wrote:

Confession:

I noticed my BAFS milage was a couple miles below my actual milage (recorded in my geeky no-GPS owning) spreadsheet, so I went into STRAVA to investigate. I found 2 days where I shorted my milage, I did some editing, deleting the original entry and updating with a new entries. By doing this though my BAFS points are all screwed up now. It has given me 690 pts ( I should only have 576), and it says in the frozen scoreboard that I have 24 days of riding, when I actually only have 22. Strava itself shows the correct data (22 days 356.1 miles) so I may have uncovered a glich in the software.

It’ll fix itself in the morning. The software caches the ride data it downloads to speed things up. Since that can cause inaccurate results, once a night it clears the cache and starts over.

[DismalScientist]

@Sarah Dots 41580 wrote:

Please do add your dog to team 11. We’ll take all the miles we can get.

Also, does anyone have advice for keeping their phone from freezing? I’m not used to having my phone on in freezing temps (new to this game). My phone is about to bite the dust, I think, even though I’m putting it on an inside pocket of my jacket. Do I just need to switch to manual input of my rides and lose all my data? I hope not!

I put my phone in my pants pocket and I don’t think it will freeze. To save battery, if that is an issue, turn off the wireless connections (put in airplane mode). I make sure to turn off the display when riding…I don’t want to butt dial anyone.
Once the phone syncs with Strava.com, all your data is replicated on Strava.com so you shouldn’t worry about losing that. If the phone dies or has strange data, you can always delete whatever ride on the phone and upload the correct mileage to Strava.com.

[KelOnWheels]

Could you put a chemical warmer in your pocket with the phone I wonder?

At the 2008 inauguration when I worked at NPR we sent the reporters out on the Mall with those heated pizza bags for their laptops so the batteries wouldn’t freeze.

[Author]

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