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

[ShawnoftheDread]

@americancyclo 43811 wrote:

My week in training that prevents lunch rides and next weeks trip to Austin aren’t going to help us out any I’m afraid. The first three weeks in march will be better, but I have a feeling everyone is going to be pulling in the extra miles as we near the end.

If I were a dad, I’d be giving the “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed” spiel. Oh wait…

[rcannon100]

@americancyclo 43811 wrote:

My week in training that prevents lunch rides and next weeks trip to Austin aren’t going to help us out any I’m afraid. The first three weeks in march will be better, but I have a feeling everyone is going to be pulling in the extra miles as we near the end.

I hear Austin is pretty fun. I have a buddy down in Bastrop. You can go down there and say…. weeks…. at least until it warms up around here. Too muddy to bike down there tho. Nope. Just gotta ride around in trucks w gun racks. No bikes.

[ejwillis62]

It is official I HATE WINTER, I HATE WINTER, I HATE WINTER. I HATE COLD. I cannot wait for summer. Rode from work here to bikram yoga. I am so glad I will shortly be in that 105 degree room. Someone please tell me summer is coming. In the 40’s is just to cold. I hate winter.

[americancyclo]

@ShawnoftheDread 43818 wrote:

If I were a dad, I’d be giving the “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed” spiel. Oh wait…

YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!!!

For real. I wish I had a friend down there that bikes and has a kiddie seat. As it stands now, just a lot of kid friendly bars on the agenda.

[PeteD]

@rcannon100 43819 wrote:

I hear Austin is pretty fun. I have a buddy down in Bastrop. You can go down there and say…. weeks…. at least until it warms up around here. Too muddy to bike down there tho. Nope. Just gotta ride around in trucks w gun racks. No bikes.

Bah. Roads are nice and wide, it’s only muddy at the low creek crossings, though you do have to be vigilant incase you come around a cattle grade. I can’t wait to go back and ride RR620 from Cedar Park to 71, then to 12 down to Wimberly. Then do Loop360, and then 2222 from 360 down to Mopac.

[jopamora]

@americancyclo 43811 wrote:

My week in training that prevents lunch rides and next weeks trip to Austin aren’t going to help us out any I’m afraid. The first three weeks in march will be better, but I have a feeling everyone is going to be pulling in the extra miles as we near the end.

If you need to train, I’ll go to Austin for you.

[consularrider]

@ejwillis62 43906 wrote:

It is official I HATE WINTER, I HATE WINTER, I HATE WINTER. I HATE COLD. I cannot wait for summer. Rode from work here to bikram yoga. I am so glad I will shortly be in that 105 degree room. Someone please tell me summer is coming. In the 40’s is just to cold. I hate winter.

Sunday, mid-30s, 15-25 mph winds, maybe snow on the ground? Sounds like a great day to get out and ride some Arlington hills! My cubicle neighbor was commiserating from his last posting in Oslo, “there is no bad weather, only poor clothing choices.”

[Bilsko]

@americancyclo 43811 wrote:

My week in training that prevents lunch rides and next weeks trip to Austin aren’t going to help us out any I’m afraid. The first three weeks in march will be better, but I have a feeling everyone is going to be pulling in the extra miles as we near the end.

Next week’s trip to Austin you say?

Let me show you how its done.

1) Re-Book tickets for Austin March 1-4
2) Go here: http://bicyclesportshop.com/
3) Rent one of these: http://bicyclesportshop.com/about/road-bike-rentals-pg1451.htm (Sorry, second item on list is already taken)
4) Ride with MEEE!!!!!!!!

Seriously though, if you wouldn’t mind scouting out some good routes/Strava segments for me, I’m only going to have an hour or two on Sat. and the same again on Sunday morning, so I could certainly use some help. KTHXBAI

[rcannon100]

@ejwillis62 43906 wrote:

It is official I HATE WINTER, I HATE WINTER, I HATE WINTER. I HATE COLD. I cannot wait for summer. Rode from work here to bikram yoga. I am so glad I will shortly be in that 105 degree room. Someone please tell me summer is coming. In the 40’s is just to cold. I hate winter.

I would like to politely register my concurrence with this sentiment.

FU Winter! (see picture)

[hozn]

I’m cross-posting from the pointless prizes thread, in case anyone doesn’t care about prizes but might want to participate in data mining (or view what [little] I’ve done thus far).

Here is the freezing saddles data mining application running. This shouldn’t be viewed as official results, but does sync every 15 minutes and rebuilds daily (designed to mirror official leaderboard schedule). I can’t promise there aren’t bugs; if there is a discrepancy between data here and the official leaderboard, assume it is a bug in my app — and please let me know.

http://freezing.hozn.net/

Here is the code in case you’d like to play with / enhance this yourself:

https://github.com/hozn/bafs.git

The codebase is a little messy for the sake of putting something up there sooner than later, but would love to have help adding additional queries, visualizations etc. I plan to integrate wunderground API for things like sunrise/sunset/temperature (diurnal temperature model!), etc.

Also, if someone just wants to connect to the database and run queries, I can set you up with a read-only user. Let me know.

[KLizotte]

Well if it all makes you feel any better I’m on vacation in Tucson, AZ and it snowed today! Big ploppy stuff for most of the day with rain thrown in for good measure. Yuck. I have also never seen so many strip malls in my life. This place has gotta be miserable when it hits 100+ degrees in the summer.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2446[/ATTACH]

[TwoWheelsDC]

Rough #BAFS day for me…

[DaveK]

^^^

History’s greatest monster.

[consularrider]

And it looks like I’m not going to get my tropical rides in during the competition period.

[americancyclo]

@Bilsko 43982 wrote:

2) Go here: http://bicyclesportshop.com/

Oh man, they rent trailers! I thought about this but didn’t really do any research. I had the kiddo for most of the time and didn’t get ANY riding in. totally would have been worth the money to rent a bike to go see Zilker Park. It was a hassle getting out there w/o a car. on the plus side, I’ve done all my walking for a year.

I checked the strava segments from my phone a few times while I was there and there seem to be plenty out there. It’s a relatively flat town, but the cars move fast and there wasn’t too much bike infrastructure from what I saw. A few sharrows here and there, but mostly people just riding with traffic. We were mostly downtown between the river and 15th, so I didn’t see any really great areas to ride, but it looks like there are some hills just west of town that might be fun. I’m sure there are some good rides posted online and the folks at the shop can set you up with some good routes too!

Enjoy!

[Author]

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