Registration for Freezing Saddles 2016 is now open!

[cvcalhoun]

Go to this link to register for Freezing Saddles 2016.

Registering is only the first step in entering. Please read this post for further steps, rules, etc.

If you have trouble with the form, please read the remainder of this post. If that doesn’t work, you can send me a private message.

Executive decisions have been made, after as much input as I could get given the short time involved:

• Slackers will not be able to sign up using the registration form. If you really want to be a slacker, you’ll have to wait until January, and then check the forum for how to sign up for the slackers’ Strava club. (There was no consensus on this one, but it seemed to be the best compromise among three positions that got pretty much equal numbers of votes.)
• People who have participated in past years, but have moved out of the area, will be permitted to participate.
• People will be permitted to request that they be put on a team with people in their geographic area.

Some things you might do will cause the form not to submit:

• If you fail to answer any of the questions marked with an *.
• If the Zip Code you enter is not in Maryland, Virginia, or DC.
• If you don’t check the box for “Are you really gonna play?”, the one for “Legal stuff,” or the one for “I’m not a robot.”
• If you select “I’m not really intending to participate in anything, so I’m not registering for Freezing Saddles” under “Will you participate in the reindeer games?”
• If you try to submit the form after the deadline (which is clearly stated on the page, along with a countdown timer). After the deadline, the form will change to one that indicates that you can still register, but may or may not be assigned to a team.

Some things you might do will not interfere with the form submission, but will get you laughed at by the people who have access to view the submissions:

• If you inaccurately state your FS2015 miles.
• If you submit more than once. If you need to make a change, just send me a private message, and I can fix it. We really don’t need two or three of you signed up.

If you need access to the form results, please send me a private message with your e-mail address and why you need access. I already sent a private message to Sunyata. However, Sunyata, if you’re out there and haven’t yet seen your private messages, please come to the white courtesy phone!

Topic

[cvcalhoun]

Yes, we do need the miles from last year. How much you personally are going to ride this year is not critical. The miles from last year are used only to set up teams with approximately equal abilities. (We don’t want to accidentally put all the people who typically ride over 150 miles a week onto the same team.) We can expect that some on the team will ride far less than last year, and some will ride far more. But we can also expect that with teams of about 10 people, the ones who ride less and the ones who ride more will balance out. The only exception would be if someone was in the top 25 riders last year, and anticipated not riding much at all this year, in which case that can be noted in the answer to the “ringer” question.

No one should hesitate to sign up just because he or she anticipates riding fewer miles this year than last. Seriously, we will work this out.

@jopamora 129475 wrote:

Are the miles from last year that important for team assignments? I am not going to ride nearly as much.

[jopamora]

Thanks! I was concerned since I was in the top 25 and didn’t want to mess things up for the new team. I’ll put a note down in the ringer question then.

[Kitty]

Well you guys did it. You not only got me to sign up for BAFS, but now I’m on Strava.

Time to figure out what I signed up for… and get warm gloves.

[cvcalhoun]

@Kitty 129492 wrote:

Well you guys did it. You not only got me to sign up for BAFS, but now I’m on Strava.

Time to figure out what I signed up for… and get warm gloves.

Come to the Dark Side — we have Pointless Prizes!

[accordioneur]

Kitty,

Like you, I have just stumbled into this madness. Last year my only connections to BAFS were (a) watching from my warm, cozy kitchen as a neighbor foolishly headed out on his bike on freezing mornings, and (b) bitching about how clearing the snow from the W&OD ruined it for skiers. And now I is a BAFSer.

[americancyclo]

I was checking out the Strava leaderboard for BAFS2016 and noticed that the leader for average speed has been logging some intense sufferfest videos. Trainer rides don’t count once the new year rolls around.

Is it still up to the participants to indicate #NOBAFS in their ride title? Is that clearly stated for the new folks?

[consularrider]

@americancyclo 129536 wrote:

I was checking out the Strava leaderboard for BAFS2016 and noticed that the leader for average speed has been logging some intense sufferfest videos. Trainer rides don’t count once the new year rolls around.

Is it still up to the participants to indicate #NOBAFS in their ride title? Is that clearly stated for the new folks?

Strava does have a box that can be checked to show the ride is on a stationary trainer and I believe those rides are excluded from the BAFS stats.

[consularrider]

@americancyclo 129536 wrote:

I was checking out the Strava leaderboard for BAFS2016 and noticed that the leader for average speed has been logging some intense sufferfest videos. Trainer rides don’t count once the new year rolls around.

Is it still up to the participants to indicate #NOBAFS in their ride title? Is that clearly stated for the new folks?

Strava does have a box that can be checked to show the ride is on a stationary trainer and I believe those rides are excluded from the BAFS stats.

[cvcalhoun]

@americancyclo 129536 wrote:

I was checking out the Strava leaderboard for BAFS2016 and noticed that the leader for average speed has been logging some intense sufferfest videos. Trainer rides don’t count once the new year rolls around.

Is it still up to the participants to indicate #NOBAFS in their ride title? Is that clearly stated for the new folks?

Yes, it will be up to contestants to indicate trainer miles. But rules will be dealt with in another thread, which will be linked from the sticky at the top of this topic. This thread deals only with registration issues. (I’m in charge of registration, not rules.)

[Anonymous]

@americancyclo 129536 wrote:

Is that clearly stated for the new folks?

No. We do not have anything that clearly states rules/scoring for the new folks.

I didn’t get much response to this except for some discussion about “ebikes: yes or no” so maybe lack of dissension = concurrence? (and I still don’t know that there’s an agreed-to answer to the ebike question?) Clearly I forgot to include trainer ride inadmissibility though. Anything else?

@Amalitza 128963 wrote:

At the risk (ok, near certainty) of turning this 11 page thread into a 22 pager, can we confirm a few details that haven’t been explicitly argued over yet, so that when the registration form is ready, there is good info to provide to people who haven’t participated in the past and may not be entirely sure how this thing works?

Registration info:

1) Leaderboard authorization same link as last year?
2) Are we using BikeArlington Strava Club again to pull people in to the leaderboard? I vaguely remember hozn suggesting he might prefer doing a strictly Freezing Saddles strava club instead?

General game info:

3) Team size: teams of 9-10 people again?
4) Scoring: same as previous years? 10 points per day, one point per mile, one mile minimum for your daily 10?
5) Game runs 00:00:01am January 1 through 23:59:59 pm March 19. In order to for your ride be counted by the leaderboard app, be sure it doesn’t start before midnight on December 31/January 1 or extend past midnight on March 19/20. Stop your GPS (or crop your ride?) if necessary if you happen to be riding through the cutoff time.
6) A Strava account is required and is used to pull rides and miles into the leaderboard. Manual entry is acceptable; GPS or smart phone devices not required.
7) Anything else anyone can think of that might need clarification?

I’m not going to update the sticky post with registration info at least until I have the answer to the first two. I think it’s more, rather than less, confusing if I put only some of things people need to do and then later go change it to add more. I’m not so particular about the other stuff, and am fine with adding it later or having it in another post but it’s probably a good idea to explicitly explain how the game works somewhere…

[cvcalhoun]

@Amalitza 129553 wrote:

No. We do not have anything that clearly states rules/scoring for the new folks.

I didn’t get much response to this except for some discussion about “ebikes: yes or no” so maybe lack of dissension = concurrence? (and I still don’t know that there’s an agreed-to answer to the ebike question?) Clearly I forgot to include trainer ride inadmissibility though. Anything else?

I’d say lack of dissension equals concurrence. Given that this is a leaderless competition, that is pretty much the only way to get rules at all.

I managed registration that way. I started with what we did last year, asked for comments and gave a deadline for providing them. I then assumed anything not objected to before the deadline was final, and went forward with that. It’s not as though there is anyone empowered to give formal approval.

[vvill]

I guess on the topic of hashtags, those that are interested in certain pointless prizes may need to know which ones to use in their ride titles. I know there’s #kidical – are there any others?

[Anonymous]

ok, I updated with gameplay/rules and a disclaimer that (at the risk of sounding like rcannon) I am not in charge of this and they are subject to change. http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?9384-Freezing-Saddles-2016-Important-Information&p=125526#post125526
Let me know what I forgot/got wrong/we want to change.

[S. Arlington Observer]

@Amalitza 129652 wrote:

ok, I updated with gameplay/rules and a disclaimer that (at the risk of sounding like rcannon) I am not in charge of this and they are subject to change. http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?9384-Freezing-Saddles-2016-Important-Information&p=125526#post125526
Let me know what I forgot/got wrong/we want to change.

I signed up without knowing what is involved. I am SO happy to actually understand it better. Even more happy that I won’t drag my team down by being in Florida for about 20 days during the season. (Away rides count… I had no idea.) I always ride the bike there and happy to see that it will count. But I’ll also be on the trail here. Nothing but ice or rain keeps me off it on a workday. Looking forward to challenging the Polar Vortex for the cause.

[TwoWheelsDC]

@S. Arlington Observer 129664 wrote:

Even more happy that I won’t drag my team down by being in Florida for about 20 days during the season. (Away rides count… I had no idea.)

They count, but you have to wear the same clothes riding down there that a typical rider would be wearing up here. So if it’s 25 here and 75 there, you gotta wear thermal bibs, a wool base layer, heavy jacket, balaclava, winter boots, etc…*

*I just made this up, but I think it’s a pretty awesome rule.

[Author]

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