The Annual Lunacy (aka "I Don't Do Winter") Challenge Chatzone

[lazybloke]

Seems like my weekend riding halted a couple of months ago. Too much other stuff getting the way. Weekends are already getting busy in the run-up to Christmas, so I'm not sure I'll get any more long rides in this year.

Added an extended commute to the tally today; 61.8km. It was my 17th ride over 50km for the year.
Next year's distance will probably be 60 km. CAn't think of much further than that, not until the children are older.

 

[Fiona R]

Like @Aravis I am still battling away, RRtY has been all consuming and I was so worried about this month as we were on holiday, not cycling, from 1st-17th Leaving one complete weekend and 1 Sat for being a lunatic. A fellow Audax Club Bristol member mentioned he was doing his DIY 200 on Saturday and did anyone want to join him? Weather forecast had deteriorated all week, so one day after getting home from hols I committed, explaining that after a three week break from any riding I would be even slower than normal. the lovely socialble guy said no worries. We live a fair distance apart so I doctored his plan so I could start and finish from home too and planned to rdv in Clevedon after about 40km at 9am for second breakfast.

I made it 10 minutes late after thinking I should be 15 mins early My ride buddy was 1 minute early. Lovely coffee and cherry almond cake set me up for a trundle along the Strawberry Line and up Burrington Combe. It was a drizzly day and dryish for most of the afternoon but a lot of road debris. The Mendips were swathed in clag. My legs just didn't work and I seriously considered packing up then. Burrington was the hardest ever, and I've been up many times, a very benign longish hill. Made it to the top and over Mendips and a sharp drop down Old Bristol Road to Wells when my disc brakes started playing up. Debris mainly, but with fiddling all day it was a bit disconcerting. All the descents today we inched down.

Plodded over to Evercreech at the half way mark, I had to walk a bit on a steep pull I've never walked before. A stand up quick lunch outside the Co op, we wanted to maximise daylight riding time as i was holding us up. I just needed to get food and drink in, but my stomach is still a bit Thai holiday bellyish My disconnected legs peddled around the Somerset Levels a wee bit faster and we made the planned second cafe stop at Wedmore at 140km. That did the trick a little, hot tea and carrot cake washed into the system and sitting on a chair to get carrot cake to the extremities and we left the lovely Deli Cafe at dusk heading for Cheddar. Straight up in the dark, owls twit t-wooing us in the swirly mist. All quite eerie but my second night time ascent. Again, I only just made it up the steep bit, had to stand, normally get up seated. Very dark and very foggy by the time we turned off and crossed over our figure of 8. it was so disorientating, i could not have done it without Chris' rear light to "balance" my sight on. We literally inched down West Harptree and came out of the fog, thank goodness! Some ups and downs through Chew Valley avoiding the steep hills up to Keynsham but still a long old pull up, the final ramp. At least my legs were turning over now. Eventually we turn onto the Bristol to Bath Railway Path (B2B) at Bitton.

A little less pressure as we know we are going to make it, albeit at a very slow average speed, we are still in audax time. After a bit of relaxed chat on this section as the path was so quiet, although rain had set in very solidly from the Mendips on. My ride buddy peeled off towards his house at the spooky Mangotsfield Station and I carried on towards Bristol after phoning home to assure all was well, the path seems to be quite well lit now although the most deserted I have ever seen the B2B, it was 8pm

I'd got Ride with GPS to route a different rideable route from the end of the path south through the city, the roadworks around Bristol Temple Meads station have killed the direct mainly off road cycle route and however I try I end up either walking on pavements or dumped on 3 lane highways. I survived and crawled up through the village home. "What took you so long?" says the husband whilst heating up beef in black pepper curry and green lentil dahl he had cooked me during the day. That was an extremely tough day, but because I could not let RRtY go after all the battles this year I did it because having to set out today or next Saturday would be a more awful thought. My body cannot have a 3 week holiday from cycling!

14 lunatic rides done and up to 203km over 13

 

[lane]

Added three more rides 80km to my Lunacy list but it has not increased my distance at all - still remains at 93km against my original 80km target. I now have 19 rides over 80km or more in the year.

I was intending to increase my target to 100km. However I am now tempted with also trying for the 100km a month challenge. So I am thinking of sticking with 100km for this challenge but having a firm rule I don't double count so I would need to do 25 100km+ rides in the year to achieve both challenges. I would pick the longest 13 for this challenge and see how much over 100km I can get. I think this would be quite a challenge for me but possibly achievable.

Thoughts?

 

[Sea of vapours]

Certainly a good idea for upping your totals, but the issue I have with this 'no double counting' thing, and part of the reason I don't do it, is the following. You pretty much have to choose, in advance, which of the two challenges you are gong to favour. Given the 'one a month' nature of the metric century challenge, and the 'thirteen in a year' of the lunacy challenge, you have to favour the metric century on a monthly basis (since in theory you can do thirteen lunacy rides in December). Personally, I don't like that potential skewing effect so I choose to double count, though as it turns out I've done enough for it to be unnecessary this year. I also do audax AAARTY (at least one audax AAA ride each month), so the avoiding double-counting anything would get a bit tiresome and tiring. I'd view not double counting as a nice to have rather than a requirement :-)

Very far from a show-stopper; just worth thinking through before the year starts.

 

[lane]

Not against double counting as such. Just trying to think how this would best fit in with the 100km month challenge for me. Other option would be to have a higher figure for this challenge and not worry about double counting. Then I have to decide what number to go for? I could possibly up it to 120km but don't think I would want to go higher. Also not sure which option would work out to be more difficult.

Thanks for the reply that is certainly food for thought.

 

[steverob]

One of the reasons I originally set 65 miles as my Lunacy target for this year, was because after two years of trying the Metric Century Challenge (one successful, the other managed 10 out 12 months due to injury), I found I had a huge amount of rides that were just barely over 62.2 miles, which was going to make it quite difficult to move my Eddington number up in the very near future.

So by giving myself a target just past 100km, I was encouraging myself not to just do the bare minimum to finish the monthly challenge. Yes, it didn't quite pan out for me this year, but I'm fully intending to do both challenges next year (and will happily double count) and my Lunacy will essentially be used for the overspill (e.g. where I do multiple 100km+ rides in the warmer months) and any and all extended rides that I do.

 

[Fiona R]

Hey - it's nearly December. Shouldn't you "don't do winter" people be hibernating in a cardboard box full of straw or something.
Why is this thread so active?

They're the type 1 fun lunatic types that "don't do winter", then there are the type 2s who never said they didn't do winter.

Anyhow, there's quite a lot of philosophising going on referencing the nuances of lunacy, which is a nice warm indoor type of fun.

 

[Bazzer]

Added three more rides 80km to my Lunacy list but it has not increased my distance at all - still remains at 93km against my original 80km target. I now have 19 rides over 80km or more in the year.

I was intending to increase my target to 100km. However I am now tempted with also trying for the 100km a month challenge. So I am thinking of sticking with 100km for this challenge but having a firm rule I don't double count so I would need to do 25 100km+ rides in the year to achieve both challenges. I would pick the longest 13 for this challenge and see how much over 100km I can get. I think this would be quite a challenge for me but possibly achievable.

Thoughts?

As @Sea of vapours says, if you are in more than one challenge you have to prioritise the longest ride, otherwise it gets more squeeky bum as the month progresses, because you are at the whim of so many factors which could cause a fail.
I am in the 100k and 50k challenges and used the lunacy challenge to up my 50k rides to 50 miles. But there is always a sense of relief getting the 100k ride done. That needs to be planned when I am doing it. The others I can accomodate, even if it is going out for three hours in an evening after tea, to get a 50k.

 

[lane]

I think the thing is I am struggling a bit to see how this challenge fits with the 100km a month.

 

[Sea of vapours]

I think the thing is I am struggling a bit to see how this challenge fits with the 100km a month.

I see them as fundamentally different.
- The point of the Metric Century Challenge (and the other monthly ones) is to do something consistently throughout the year, so which challenge you choose to do depends on what you think you can manage every month. Personally, whilst I can do an imperial century when it's warm and dry and there are eighteen hours of daylight, I'm not going to even try to do that in winter with short days, ice, snow and general road condition cruddiness.
- The point of the Lunacy Challenge is largely to see what is the longest distance you can do thirteen times within a calendar year. It has nothing to do with being monthly. You could do all of it in thirteen days in July, for example. In that case you'd only be able to double-count one ride into the Metric Century.

So I see the Lunacy Challenge as more about managing your time and providing a big challenge without the need to have to do a ride in difficult / dangerous winter conditions. So they aren't incompatible and they only look rather similar if you choose a Lunacy target which is the same as the monthly target.

So, in summary, go for a 120km Lunacy ....

 

[Aravis]

Well done @Cranky Knee Girl, that sounds epic as usual. You are surely unchallenged as lunatic of the year, in the nicest possible way .
If I'd been in the same position I really don't think I'd've ridden up and over the Mendips twice .

If you ever want to join me on one of my hardly breaking sweat ambles through Worcestershire and Warwickshire you'd be most welcome.

By the way, all my attempts to copy the moon graphic into my signature have so far failed.

 

[Sea of vapours]

SNIP ...
By the way, all my attempts to copy the moon graphic into my signature have so far failed.

You need - well, I say 'need'; more correctly, this way works; there may be others - to go into the signature editing page under 'Your account' in the top menu, which is presumably what you're doing. Once there, click the far right icon in the icon bar; the gear-like thing:

That switches to editing the actual BB code. Once there, you need code that looks like this:

Change the last bit as you wish of course, but the red, crescent moon is the bit between the image tags. So you need to type out all of that, including the start and end image tags, in your signature (I can't here as it'll just appear as the moon, hence the graphic).

 

[Fiona R]

Well done @Cranky Knee Girl, that sounds epic as usual. You are surely unchallenged as lunatic of the year, in the nicest possible way .
If I'd been in the same position I really don't think I'd've ridden up and over the Mendips twice .

If you ever want to join me on one of my hardly breaking sweat ambles through Worcestershire and Warwickshire you'd be most welcome.

By the way, all my attempts to copy the moon graphic into my signature have so far failed.

I have been round your way on some of them this year... A very kind offer, thanks!

I've also been defeated trying to get a chilli in my signature, thought I'd copied and pasted the code but didn't work.

 

[Fiona R]

You need - well, I say 'need'; more correctly, this way works; there may be others - to go into the signature editing page under 'Your account' in the top menu, which is presumably what you're doing. Once there, click the far right icon in the icon bar; the gear-like thing:
View attachment 494343

That switches to editing the actual BB code. Once there, you need code that looks like this:
View attachment 494344
Change the last bit as you wish of course, but the red, crescent moon is the bit between the image tags. So you need to type out all of that, including the image tags, in your signature (I can't here as it'll just appear as the moon, hence the graphic).

Woah look at us all chilli-ed up @Aravis

thanks @Sea of vapours

 

[Aravis]

Woah look at us all chilli-ed up @Aravis

thanks @Sea of vapours

So if your "actual" lunacy number for the year is 203km, you still want to put your target figure of 200km in your signature? There was some discussion about this in the early stages of lunacy's development; I've had a look through most of the thread and I'm not sure if there was a firm conclusion. All being well my last ride (with RRtY on the line the excitement is becoming unbearable) should nudge me up to 201, and I'm thinking I might display both actual and target.

I was a bit concerned that in many of my posts I sound drunk, so I decided to wait until morning before posting this.