Update 11/20/17: Last year’s info replaced with general game description
****PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS THREAD. **** This is a post to provide a single spot for information regarding Bike Arlington Freezing Saddles (BAFS). I will update this post as needed to keep information current. If you have a question, or think that something needs to be added or changed in this post, PM me please.
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What is Freezing Saddles, (or BAFS âBike Arlington Freezing Saddlesâ)?
Freezing Saddles is a winter riding competition for bike riders in the general DC area, organized by random people who talk to each other on the Washington Area/ Bike Arlington Bike Forum. While we organize ourselves on the BikeArlington forum, and Bike Arlington has generously donated some sort of prizes in the past, we are not run by BikeArlington. As described by a forum member, BAFS organization
How it works, keeping in mind things can and do change year-to-year during the planning stage:
Freezing Saddles runs from January 1 through the last full day of winter. We divided people into teams of 11 people in 2017 (this has varied slightly in different years). Each team is a mix of riders who typically ride enough to qualify as insane, people who ride regularly but like sane people, people who ride occasionally, and people who have never ridden through a winter before. An attempt is made to keep the mix roughly comparable for all the teams so they are approximately evenly matched and everyone has a fair shot at being on a winning team. In order to create teams, we ask that people fill out a registration form in the fall before each yearâs game to create a list of players and your expected or typical mileage. A volunteer for the year then divvies everyone up into teams using combinations of predicted miles, random selection, and sometimes preferences for regional team groupings.
Usually sometime around Halloween, planning threads pop up on the forum (in the Freezing Saddles subforum, here http://bikearlingtonforum.com/forumdisplay.php?41-Freezing-Saddles-Winter-Riding-Competition ), where we argue about things like e-bikes, and whether 10 points per day is the right number and other rules minutia. Past rules are subject to change in the yearly planning process. Sometime around Thanksgiving someone usually puts up the registration information. Registration typically closes on Christmas Eve, and/or when we have reached the participation limit. In 2017, we capped the number of players at 250 to try to keep the game and the data collection manageable.
We use Strava for data collection and team organization, which means that to play, you will need a Strava account and after teams are created, you will need to join your teamâs Strava group. You will also need some sort of GPS device or smartphone to track your rides. We no longer count manually entered rides (not because we donât trust you, they just tended to cause too much data corrective work for the leaderboard techie gurus).
We use a leaderboard application http://freezingsaddles.com/ developed and maintained by awesome forum member hozn to report on team and individual points and all kinds of other cool riding metrics with team/individual standings. Plus pictures. Players need to authorize this app to read your Strava data, or Strava rightly will not give us access to it.
People also offer up âPointless Prizesâ, prizes for whatever kind of random things strikes the fancy of the person offering the prize. These are generally announced on postings in the Freezing Saddles subforum of the BikeArlington Forum.
We generally have a happy hour near the start of the game to formally announce teams and after the end of the game to hand out prizes. These are fun, but attendance is not mandatory.
2018 Rules (again, subject to change in future years!!!):
1) Scoring: You earn 10 points each day that you ride (one mile minimum to count for your daily points– this is per day, not per ride: two half mile rides gets you your 10 points). You earn an additional one point for every mile.
The team with the most points at the end of the game wins.
2) Game runs 00:00:01am January 1 through 23:59:59 pm March 20 (is that the last day of winter?). All rides starting from January 1 on count. If you are planning to get a super-early start and be out riding your bike as the year changes, be aware that rides starting *before* midnight will not be counted by the leaderboard. You need to stop your recording device and restart a new ride after midnight for your miles in 2018 to count.
3) Trainer rides donât count. Mark your rides as such or include #NOBAFS in the title to exclude them. Take your bike outside and ride it some distance across the surface of the earth in order to earn points. Manual entries will also not be accepted. This is a change from previous years.
4) Rides made while travelling out of the area do count. On vacation somewhere warm? Lucky you! Find a bike and ride it for some points. Somewhere extra cold? sososorry. Find a bike and ride it for some points!
5) Rides made on E-assist (but not solely electric/motor powered) bikes do count, except that rides on an Elf do not. See here: Inane E-bike Debate.
6) Anyone can award a Pointless Prize for anything. Go check out the thread for what people are offering, and feel free to join in and award something yourself. (these are typically small fun or cute or symbolic things, not high dollar prizes or anything. But whatever you want! No one will probably argue about you throwing money or new bikes at them if you so desire.)
However, all the weather related stats haven’t updated in over a week. I think the data pull syncing from Weather Underground broke. I did sometime ride to maximize freeze points, but not much incentive to freeze more than I have do if its not updating anymore. Maybe there will be another gov’t snow day in DC and someone can win most miles for the Michigander prize. I’ll be awarding it if Kitty gets her foreign post transfer early. Bob
