When will planning for Freezing Saddles start?

[lordofthemark]

I have an idea for a prize, that would be ELITE.

[cvcalhoun]

@Steve O 128806 wrote:

I suggest you go back to previous years to get ideas.

Does someone have a copy of or link to previous years’ forms?

[Tania]

I really had been looking forward to this year’s FS. Now…not so much.

[cvcalhoun]

@Amalitza 128799 wrote:

We might need to agree on how to assign teams first. Last year, elwbikes did some kind of fancy team assigning that involved a combination of regional grouping, handicapping, and randomness. The collected information included if people want to be on a VA/MD/DC team (or didn’t care) and zip code. But that’s only necessary if someone is going to do all that work again this year.* If we are going to use handicapping data for something, we need to know what data we want to collect. Last year’s results? People’s summer miles? People’s November miles? People’s self-predictions of what they might do? Probably also a good idea to first confirm we have and can use Strava again.

Anyway, at a minimum…
Forum name
Email address
Strava number
Handicapping info, whatever we are going to use
Anything else we decide we need to make teams like regional info, willingness to be a team captain etc

*My suggestion would be to randomly assign teams, and use handicapping data (whatever it might be– last year’s results probably easiest) to check if teams are too lopsided based on predetermined acceptable limits. If too lopsided, discard results and re-randomize. This would be my suggestion because randomizing is 1) EASY and 2) means people can’t be penalized for over-performing last year or over-estimating their miles (and can’t game the system by under-estimating their miles or being a slacker:) last year), but probably do need a mechanism to discard a random result that puts Rod Smith, Vicegrip, dcv, Subby and KayakCyndi all on the same team. But if people enjoyed being on locally grouped teams and someone wants do the work of figuring out how to make that happen, I won’t argue about it or anything.

I would vote against locally assigned teams. Last year, I did not ask to be on one, but ended up on one anyway because they ran out of people for a team in my area. Having locally assigned teams meant that some were at an immediate disadvantage for things like bridge challenges and Arlington Strava art challenges. And it didn’t really seem to foster more get-togethers, which I assume was the point.

I also think last year’s handicap system worked as well as anything. Returning people got handicapped by the previous year’s miles. New people got asked if they were ringers (i.e., likely to have some very high number of miles per week), and were otherwise assigned randomly.

Anyway, if I can get a link to previous year’s forms, and can get a team assignment person to tell me what information is wanted this year, I can get this show on the road.

[cvcalhoun]

@Tania 128818 wrote:

I really had been looking forward to this year’s FS. Now…not so much.

Why not?

[cvcalhoun]

Some people like being on a slacker team. It enables them to keep track of their points. It enables us to have a record of their points for next year’s handicapping. It keeps the last place regular team motivated. (We can’t fall behind the Slackers!) It keeps them involved socially. Yes, the scores are meaningless. But I see several advantages and no disadvantages to having them around, so long as the “team” is limited to veterans.

[Tania]

@cvcalhoun 128820 wrote:

Why not?

SteveO’s tone in this thread just sucked the life out of it for me. If I’m already annoyed (granted, I admit it’s pretty easy to annoy me and I tend to quickly take my ball and go home…especially where the internet is involved), then I can only imagine how it will be later on.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to find the link to last year’s registration to help you out (rather than just vaguely referencing things that are buried deep in random threads) and I found something that said registration was on the first page of the FS 2015 thread BUT I see that’s a thread you started and there’s no link. But I’m going to keep looking!

[Tania]

@cvcalhoun 128816 wrote:

Does someone have a copy of or link to previous years’ forms?

Is this it? Looks like it was a google doc/form although it’s expired.

http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?7864-Freezing-Saddles-2015-At-Least-Yer-Not-in-Kiev-Comradehttp://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?7864-Freezing-Saddles-2015-At-Least-Yer-Not-in-Kiev-Comrade

[cvcalhoun]

@Tania 128823 wrote:

Is this it? Looks like it was a google doc/form although it’s expired.

http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?7864-Freezing-Saddles-2015-At-Least-Yer-Not-in-Kiev-Comradehttp://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?7864-Freezing-Saddles-2015-At-Least-Yer-Not-in-Kiev-Comrade

Yes, this is why I’d like to find someone who has a copy of a prior year’s form. The original doesn’t show what questions were asked.

[jrenaut]

@Tania 128822 wrote:

SteveO’s tone in this thread just sucked the life out of it for me. If I’m already annoyed (granted, I admit it’s pretty easy to annoy me and I tend to quickly take my ball and go home…especially where the internet is involved), then I can only imagine how it will be later on.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to find the link to last year’s registration to help you out (rather than just vaguely referencing things that are buried deep in random threads) and I found something that said registration was on the first page of the FS 2015 thread BUT I see that’s a thread you started and there’s no link. But I’m going to keep looking!

Bear in mind that, every year, the thread to discuss this year’s Freezing Saddles is terrible. I don’t know how well you know Steve O, but I can assure you he is uncompromising in this thread only because he very much wants Freezing Saddles to succeed, and he has a good track record of backing that up.

I hate the getting started discussion. I close my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears until someone puts out the sign up sheet. It gets much better from there.

If I get a chance, I’ll update the Freezing Saddles site to replace the display name of all Slackers with insults from my five-year-old.

[cvcalhoun]

@jrenaut 128826 wrote:

Bear in mind that, every year, the thread to discuss this year’s Freezing Saddles is terrible. I don’t know how well you know Steve O, but I can assure you he is uncompromising in this thread only because he very much wants Freezing Saddles to succeed, and he has a good track record of backing that up.

I hate the getting started discussion. I close my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears until someone puts out the sign up sheet. It gets much better from there.

If I get a chance, I’ll update the Freezing Saddles site to replace the display name of all Slackers with insults from my five-year-old.

Just don’t do that before we have a chance to use it for handicapping purposes!

[vvill]

Just wait for Bob to appear in this thread, it should clear up most of the reg. questions.

Other things:
– I would check with hozn/jrenaut to see if they could just do a form on the website? Maybe integrate it with the Strava token/login. That way it could easily be reused in future competitions and the data used for team assignments, etc. could be stored in similar fashion. And you can only sign up if you’ve already got your Strava account working.
– Agree about no geographic teams.
– Slacker team 4eva. It’s not that slackers don’t care about the riding in BAFS and the competition, they just don’t necessarily want to be competing in a team. Because it’s a team game, when you join a team you are actually making a commitment of sorts (even if it’s friendly/casual). And anyone who has clicked through some of the stats/categories would see that we have some pretty awesome queries going on that Strava does not easily give you (integrating with weather data, for one).

[rcannon100]

The consensus is that there is a slacker team. There must be a consensus to change that.

I am interested in joining the slacker team.

[cvcalhoun]

@rcannon100 128829 wrote:

The consensus is that there is a slacker team. There must be a consensus to change that.

I am interested in joining the slacker team.

Well, if you give me last year’s registration questions, I can make that happen. How’s that for a bribe?

[Steve O]

@cvcalhoun 128816 wrote:

Does someone have a copy of or link to previous years’ forms?

I don’t have the form, but somewhere in my computer at home I have the output from the form, so I should be able to provide the information that we collected from last year. Hang tight, and I will dig that up tonight.

[Author]

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