It’s Festivus!

[cvcalhoun]

You know, that day for airing of the grievances. Well, with Freezing Saddles coming up, it’s the traditional time for everyone to complain about last year, and come up with suggestions for this year. We don’t promise to follow any of the suggestions, but we’ll at least read and think about them. And since I’m trying to have the registration form up by Thanksgiving, any changes that would require getting more information from the form have to be final by then.

One decision that has already been made is that we will not try to assign teams based on mileage this year. With the pandemic, last year’s mileage is unlikely to mean anything about this year’s. (The person who ran up a lot of miles commuting last year may be working from home now, and the person who took public transit to work last year may be biking to maintain social distance this year.) At most, we may try to do something like assign each of the top finishers from last year to a different team.

Anything else? Did the points system (10 points the day if you biked at least a mile plus 10 points for the first mile, 9 points for the second, etc., with no cap on total points) work? Did the team sizes seem about right? Ideas for substitutes for the initial and final happy hours? (I do have a licensed Zoom account that would allow for up to 100 participants, but someone may have a more imaginative idea.) Any other ideas?

Countdown to deadline for registration

Topic

[Alcova cyclist]

@secstate 202689 wrote:

I’ve been back and forth about participating this year. Last year I had a hard time keeping my motivation to ride every day… not in a bad way, just wanted to spend my time another way some days. This year, with no commute, I feel like a total slug, and I have some big ride ambitions for the summer. Can’t promise 10 miles daily but I’ll try to do something every day

I was on the fence too since I am not really riding at all, but hoping the spirit of BAFS will get me back in the saddle — so I registered last night.

I did BAFS for 3-4(?) years before taking last year off in the midst of a job change. During my previous BAFS, I had been a year ’round commuter, so was good for 60-70 miles/week just from that, with mostly short sleazy rides or occasional group outings on weekends. Now my commute is about 100 steps, counting the detour to and from the kitchen for coffee. I need motivation to get out and ride (and be social). If I can get up to 50 or so miles a week, it’ll be a win. If I crack 750 miles in total, I’ll be over the moon.

[JoM]

In for FS21 – looking forward to the virtual fun!

[secstate]

@cvcalhoun 202802 wrote:

Unfortunately, the only way to purge interlopers would be to go one by one and purge people. And then we’d have to guess which ones were really interlopers. For example, someone now in Florida might be someone who was a previous FS participant, and thus eligible to compete. Conversely, someone in the DC area might be someone with no actual interest in FS, who joined just because they saw someone else join.

And it’s just not that critical. Once the competition starts, everyone on a team will join the Strava club for that team, and the leaderboard will begin picking up from the team Strava clubs rather than the main Freezing Saddles one.

Fair enough, though the interlopers aren’t hard to spot. They’re usually 1) overseas and 2) are members of dozens upon dozens of clubs. They really reduce whatever utility there is of open Strava clubs. For example, 7 of this week’s top 15 riders on the BikeArlington group clearly have zero connection to the DC area and are just joining every club available. Wish Strava would cap the number of clubs people could join. In the absence of that, club administrators should do a periodic purge, otherwise what’s the point of the group?

[cvcalhoun]

@secstate 202854 wrote:

Fair enough, though the interlopers aren’t hard to spot. They’re usually 1) overseas and 2) are members of dozens upon dozens of clubs. They really reduce whatever utility there is of open Strava clubs. For example, 7 of this week’s top 15 riders on the BikeArlington group clearly have zero connection to the DC area and are just joining every club available. Wish Strava would cap the number of clubs people could join. In the absence of that, club administrators should do a periodic purge, otherwise what’s the point of the group?

In this case, the point of the group is so the Freezing Saddles website can pull in data for those who are in the group AND have authorized Freezing Saddles to read their Strava miles. Before the competition opens, it is used to verify that registrants have in fact authorized Freezing Saddles to read their Strava miles. Once the competition starts, it populates the Friends of BAFS group. So it’s not really intended to be a “group” in a conventional sense.

And because those are the functions of the group, we’ve never prioritized purging it. It’s more critical to ensure that no one who should be in gets dropped than to get rid of 100 people who shouldn’t be members.

[Author]

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