[bob_dc]

Oh .. by-the-way. I see someone else is leading it now. They got 7000 ft climbing on a 8 mile bike ride. Wow!! Data error?!

Bob

[bob_dc]

@merlin 216670 wrote:

Billygoat does encourage a particularly idiosyncratic riding style. To reduce the degree to which it discourages distance you could change from ascent/distance to ascent/distance^q for some q less than one. For example, at q = .5, 100 feet in one mile would be equivalent to 316 feet in 10 miles. At about .6, Nigel Brockton jumps to #1 and stays there all the way down to about .1 when Chris Watson goes to #1. It would be hard to defend any particular choice of q, unless you just chose that value that pushed you out of first place..

I’m sure to be out of 1st soon enough. I’m cool with that!

I don’t know if J.C. or Brad (from a few freezing saddles ago, I think my mind has purposely forgotten when) are doing BAFS this year, I think not as I follow them on Strava. We had a stupid run and it went down to the last hour back in the first year of that pointless prize. Something like 114 Ft/Mile. I’m NOT doing that again.

I’m not sure what an appropriate “quotient” is. I’m sure there is a fair formula, but then it becomes a different animal than purely a feet-per-mile competition.

Thinking about it more, I think it would be better if there was a minimum mile bar. Maybe 1000 miles? It is so very easy to raise the ft/mile ratio if you don’t have many miles. There should be more motivation not just to put up elevation but also distance.

At a 1000 mile minimum we would NOW have a very interesting competition between three or four riders. And I’d like to be motivated to ride another 400 miles also before BAFS ends!

Bob

[bob_dc]

Well done on the well rounded beer selection QuikAF77!

They are in the fridge now being chilled. Also thanks to Toubob Warrior for holding them for me.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]17833[/ATTACH]

[bob_dc]

@run/bike 176616 wrote:

.. and ignored my wife’s 10pm text of “U R being dumb. Come Home”, had I known how close we were!

That is funny because my mega climb hill, being right behind my house, meant I would ride about 10 – 15 hills and come back in the house. My wife joked “I bet he has a significant other telling him he’s crazy”. Please pass my appreciation on to your wife for me!

No, I learned last year, ride up to midnight! Team 4 last year got sandbagged by the team that passed us doing just that! I think we were in 3rd all season until that last hour.

So…that means Brad and I get beer too right?

So, you guys deserve the beer absolutely! I’d been giving you guys your share if I had a chance. I unfortunately can’t make April 9th, I’ll be in San Diego for a conference. I’m mainly bummed about that because I would have liked to have met everyone in person, including many teammates I haven’t met yet.

Either way, hope to meet everyone in the future, perhaps on a group ride sometime.

Bob

[bob_dc]

Can’t make the 9th, rats!

Bob

[bob_dc]

I’m good for tomorrow night but will be checking for cancellations.

Bob

[bob_dc]

@run/bike 176525 wrote:

Congrats Bob on the victory! I tried to close the gap in this final week (and let’s be honest, final hours…), but you were not to be outdone with your 15+ mile hill repeat rides. You’ve more than earned that craft beer prize (think of it as calorie replacement after 114K feet of climbing )!

Thank you sir J.C.! I was hesitant to claim victory as I saw you mention a possible strava/bafs connection failure. Hope (or maybe don’t hope!) that got sorted out. Hey regardless of the outcome that was a heck of a comeback. I actually thought you’d win .. but I think you must have seen my comment on my hill repeats, they were a desperate attempt to stay on top. And far more frantic than usual there the last couple days. Also, I got sick and was out for about 6 days prior to that weekend, that helped open the window.

My saving grace was the hill behind where I live. I never thought I’d use that sucker. It’s 22% at the top, maybe much like the hill from Chain Bridge, but lots shorter, like each trip to the bottom and back up was ~.1 miles. Slow going. I rode 18 miles of that sucker. Jeesh I rode that hill about 180 times. The dog with alzheimers kept forgetting who I was and couldn’t stop barking (finally just fell asleep)! The worst part was I’d have to stop at the bottom and ride back up, not a “roller” type hill (not that there’s anything wrong with rollers, I used another hill repeat for the same reason). Anyway, that hill was well over 300+ feet per mile.

I did see the wisdom of your riding, I’m glad you didn’t start the hill repeats until the last week or two (whew), maybe thanks to our mutual friend Brad G.’s advice (right Mr. G?)? Well done sir. I would like to check out that hill you used over there, Quebec? Just not anytime soon though.

And I have to thank Brad because really he was one of the few persons that tried to compete, honorable mention to Alan A. Alan, you just had way too many miles in the tank but seem to be one of the strongest climbers around. Anyway, if it weren’t for Brad I’d have slagged off. i think you were always poised to take the lead but I was intent on the hill repeats, I think I used hill repeats rather often. Which makes for another point – this pointless prize is hindered by riding miles (which IS the freeking point of FS, right??!). As pointed out in an earlier part of this thread, you were the dark horse to win this thing.

All you guys that competed are way faster climbers than I (hey, I saw all the KOMs) but I guess I like to climb, especially in winter months. If you aren’t climbing you aren’t working that hard.

I am planning on making the HH. Beer is incentive. But riding a “normal” bike ride will be sweet also.

Bob

[bob_dc]

@QuikAF77 174941 wrote:

Thanks for doing this hozn! I didn’t mean to make extra work for ya!

Agreed. Thanks for doing that.

And Brad G. I’d like to officially curse you .. er.. I mean thank you for keeping the pressure on. You are obviously a natural climber, I am more of a natural descender!

[bob_dc]

@bikedavid 173403 wrote:

Hi team, there’s a little groundhog day festival in Dupont Circle next Fri:

FRIDAY, FEB 2, 2018 at 8:30AM sharp – GROUNDHOG DAY: Potomac Phil, the National Groundhog, will make an appearance and offer weather and political predictions. Phil will let us know whether to expect six more weeks of winter or an early spring. Live accordion music, polka dancers, puppet show, VIP celebrities and more. Dupont Circle, at the fountain. Potomac Phil will emerge at approximately 8:30AM or whenever he damn well pleases

If anyone works downtown and would like to meet up, I’m thinking around 8:30. They will have free coffee and other goodies there but we can also go somewhere else after like Krispy Kreme to pick up some donut and coffee points. I’ll post to the calendar in case other teams would like to join us.

If you have any rides that you lead or would like to do, keep them coming. One of these days I would like to check out the Bikenetic rides.

If I *ever* take a Friday off would love to join in on Dirt’s ride, looks challenging! If you can suggest a weekend ride it might be more feasible to meet. Or maybe, I’m not as up on these things, David, can you suggest raiding another teams ride? Maybe try to get at least a few riders from 18 in on that.

[bob_dc]

J.C. W could easily, and rather stealthily, run away with this thing. By the time he hits 30K feet he’ll probably have it if he keeps at his current pace.

In the spirit of the competition, I’m always looking for rollers. What goes down must go back up type routes!

[bob_dc]

@bmillah 172776 wrote:

Better watch your back. It looks like Laura M. of the Titanium Geraniums, has everyone beat. She’s clocking in at an astounding 110 ft/ mile. If she can maintain while meeting the threshold of 29,029 she’ll beat us all!

I think there must be others because it’s hard to fish out all those stacked up circles of riders below 15K feet. Seems Dane is also doing well in this category as well as some others where I can’t pick out their name. There are sleeper candidates and riders with less mileage quota have a distinct advantage. It is basically easier to ride 50 miles with 100+ft/mile vs 150 miles with that same requirement.

Brad G is also doing well (team Tardigrades).

[bob_dc]

@AlanA 172917 wrote:

Ok. Since this in an internationally sanctioned bicycling event, I think that we need to have a “sampling” after the competition to prevent “doping”.

The top three finishers will need to provide the prize awarder with their Garmin’s (or whatever it is they use). The awarder will than go on a randomly chosen 40 mile ride with each of the units attached to his bike to determine the “doping” effect. The results will then be adjusted accordingly well in time before the year end happy hour. I will even be happy to help with this, and help defray the costs of beer needed to present at the final happy hour.

This is a valid point, I must admit. Given the history I’ve had with my Garmin 500 (and 510) freezing up or losing a ride, I usually ride with a second device. I find the 500 *usually* pads the elevation by about 5 to 10 %, but not always. In fact, it has fallen short by the same amount compared to other devices. I am not sure if this is true of all Garmin 500’s or if it depends on which vendor Garmin used for the barometer during installation. The other thing that can dope a ride’s climbing is if you stop mid-ride and bring it inside (I haven’t done this during FS18 BTW!). Eat lunch, then go back outside. The temp difference from it warming up can suddenly pad your elevation maybe a couple hundred feet!

[bob_dc]

It’s nice to have extra incentive to not head to Hains Point.

[bob_dc]

@AlanA 172570 wrote:

Ugh! Bob C (who I think happens to be one of those randonuttes) looks like a formidable opponent. If I had my old Garmin, I’d have a much better chance at beating him. But my stupid new Garmin cheats me out of about 10% per ride according to Ride with GPS. However, I will give it my best shot.

Any chance of getting a few bonus points for finishing in the top 3 of miles while doing this? It’s one thing to do a lot of climbing per mile, but it’s another to do it all the time. Haha, I figure it can’t hurt asking. Either way, I’m up to the challenge.

Oh wow, I lead something? That’s unexpected! I live in a hilly area and lets face it, climbing is a good way to stay warm. I also am a member of DC Randonneurs that can help sometimes, for instance there is a DCR ride on Saturday, which should add some climbing, all are welcome to join. 67 miles and starts in Glen Echo.

[bob_dc]

@bikedavid 171882 wrote:

I emailed a couple of folks that may not have seen the team assignments on the forum. It looks like they’ve joined our Strava group so we are now up to 11.

So, I’m okay with any name and see the value of L’chaim associated with 18 (and being alive also is good). It would be nice to associate it with something wintery or icy. L’chaim on the rocks? The L’chaimcicles? The Frozen L’chaim Weelies?

Other thoughts: Ice Road Bikers (18 wheeler association). Then, there’s the 18th Amendment (prohibition) – the Freezeasies?

Bob

[Author]

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