Winter Bike Challenge

[Mikey]

I don’t know if any exist, a short google search turned up some year old Endomondo challenges, but is anyone interested in forming up teams and doing a winter bike challenge, during JAN-MAR, with “practice” in December? Anyone else find any links? It could be fun. Does Bike Arlington want to put something together?

Topic

[rcannon100]

@ronwalf 36868 wrote:

If we did data entry on Strava, it’d be easy for me to cobble together scripts to do the scoring (Strava has excellent external APIs).

Ronwall, can a challenge be built in STAVA? Are you volunteering to do it?

[rcannon100]

This is I think a summary of where we are at. Once we gain consensus, we can write up a final description to circulate and recruit. All this is a DRAFT and up to mangling.

Title: Freezing Saddles: Winter Bike Challenge

Time span: January 1 Until Last Day of Winter (~March 21)
maybe March Madness Playoffs (hard to do if too few teams) – have to figure out how to do this
Happy Hour at end with pointless trophies

Participants: Right now only about 7 people have clearly expressed interest in participating. As suggested I posted a query in the General forum to see if we can get a better sense.

Teams of 5 riders or less

Team Composition: Volunteer Captains; assigning riders based on self declared weekly mileage average (ringers must be separated on separate teams)

Points: 10 points for each day ridden and 1 point for each mile
Snow emergency bonus=?
– Any day that school is closed in Arlington (we just have to pick one jurisdiction as the benchmark), then a bonus of 2 points for riding.

Minimum ride is 1 mile.

Backend:
Hopefully STAVA
Google Site as a backup

[Arlingtonrider]

Just curious – does Garmin show recommended bike routes and where the trails are, like Google does? Does it differentiate in any way between high traffic and low traffic roads (or those that are more bike friendly)?

(Feel free to post answer on the equipment thread – I didn’t mean to sidetrack the challenge discussion.)

[DismalScientist]

@rcannon100 36905 wrote:

– Any day that school is closed in Arlington (we just have to pick one jurisdiction as the benchmark), then a bonus of 10 points for riding.

Teacher workdays?

[rcannon100]

@Arlingtonrider 36909 wrote:

Just curious – does Garmin show recommended bike routes and where the trails are, like Google does? Does it differentiate in any way between high traffic and low traffic roads (or those that are more bike friendly)?

(Feel free to post answer on the equipment thread – I didn’t mean to sidetrack the challenge discussion.)

Replied under Equipment

[crysb]

@rcannon100 36905 wrote:

This is I think a summary of where we are at. Once we gain consensus, we can write up a final description to circulate and recruit. All this is a DRAFT and up to mangling.

Title: Freezing Saddles: Winter Bike Challenge

Time span: January 1 Until Last Day of Winter (~March 21)
maybe March Madness Playoffs (hard to do if too few teams) – have to figure out how to do this
Happy Hour at end with pointless trophies

Participants: Right now only about 7 people have clearly expressed interest in participating. As suggested I posted a query in the General forum to see if we can get a better sense.

Teams of 5 riders or less

Team Composition: Volunteer Captains; assigning riders based on self declared weekly mileage average (ringers must be separated on separate teams)

Points: 10 points for each day ridden and 1 point for each mile
Snow emergency bonus=?
– Any day that school is closed in Arlington (we just have to pick one jurisdiction as the benchmark), then a bonus of 10 points for riding.

Minimum ride is 1 mile.

Backend:
Hopefully STAVA
Google Site as a backup

I’m in, and I’d prefer Strava too since it’s what I’m already using. Either that or very manual Excel spreadsheets! Yeah!

[DismalScientist]

If the all-Strava approach fails, you can still go to your Strava training page and my activities tab. Highlight the relevant rides and cut and paste them into an Excel file. Is there an easy way to export the activities summary page?

[ronwalf]

@rcannon100 36900 wrote:

Ronwall, can a challenge be built in STAVA? Are you volunteering to do it?

Yes and yes, though there’s no guarantee of the leader board working before the 1st.

[rcannon100]

You da man!

We are already up to 12 riders who have expressed an interest. I think we have achieved critical minimum mass.

We have greenlights for the IT backend, and for interested cyclists.

Now, lets quibble about the rules a little bit more – and then we have ourselves a challenge.

When we know we are baked, does anyone wanna try to hit up poor innocent LBS’s for prizes??? How about you, goDCgo, WABA, and Bike Arlington – wanna commit some valuable water bottles to the cause?

[Mikey]

I volunteer to be a team captain (as the thread starter)

Team name: Rough Riders

with 12 we could have 4 teams of 3 and add riders to each until we hit 5 riders then start a new team. we could “prorate teams with fewer riders so as to make everything fair, although I leave it to the forum to decide.

[Certifried]

I definitely don’t bike as much during the winter, so if anyone is on the edge about joining this challenge because you don’t want to drag down a team due to your low mileage…. we could always create a slacker team

[Rod Smith]

I hate to Strava all my rides because then anyone can see how late I go to work and how early I knock off. On the other hand, if my comings and goings are a matter of public record, I might try harder to work full time. That’s the point right, to get us to ride more? My job is delivering stuff by bicycle so I get to ride a lot. I’m good for at least 150/week. During this summer I averaged twice that, but I’m not planning to do a lot of recreational riding during the winter months.

[dcv]

@Rod Smith 36961 wrote:

I hate to Strava all my rides because then anyone can see how late I go to work and how early I knock off. On the other hand, if my comings and goings are a matter of public record, I might try harder to work full time. That’s the point right, to get us to ride more? My job is delivering stuff by bicycle so I get to ride a lot. I’m good for at least 150/week. During this summer I averaged twice that, but I’m not planning to do a lot of recreational riding during the winter months.

If it’s your job to ride a bike, does that make you a ringer?
Me: envious

[vvill]

@Rod Smith 36961 wrote:

I hate to Strava all my rides because then anyone can see how late I go to work and how early I knock off. On the other hand, if my comings and goings are a matter of public record, I might try harder to work full time. That’s the point right, to get us to ride more? My job is delivering stuff by bicycle so I get to ride a lot. I’m good for at least 150/week. During this summer I averaged twice that, but I’m not planning to do a lot of recreational riding during the winter months.

You can always just manually add the rides for which you don’t want GPS data/etc. As long as the date and miles are right, it should be fine to count to the challenge (I think – I haven’t used the Strava API before). The duration and start time you specify won’t affect anything (…except your average speed!)

[Rod Smith]

I guess I’m a ringer but I know commuters who put in similar miles just getting to and from their full time desk jobs. I’m envious of that kind of work ethic. I just ride around at my own pace on my own time. Should I volunteer to captain the slacker team?

[Author]

Replies