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

[ColinJ]

Maybe I will complete the challenge this year after all...?

I got exactly my target distance in yesterday, after riding round the block to make up a 0.75 km shortfall. I treated myself to another easy(ish) ride to the Ribble Valley and back.

It had been raining out there - all the roads were very damp - but I didn't encounter rain at all. After 3 hours of chilly, overcast conditions, the sun finally came out. The second half of the ride was very pleasant.

5 more to go.

 

[ColinJ]

This is not a brilliant photo from yesterday's ride, but it shows how nice the weather became later on. Still pretty cool, but good conditions for riding.

(That sky was actually blue, but my crappy phone camera couldn't cope with a light sky and a shadowy hedge at the same time! )

 

[Rickshaw Phil]

Tenth ride done yesterday. Three to go feels like a nice milestone to reach, especially when as recently as August I was wondering if I'd manage to complete the challenge.

 

[ColinJ]

I'll do my best to get this challenge done this year, but I may resort to doing very flat singlespeed rides if it gets too late in the year. I am fairly sure that I am NOT going to complete the sister climbing challenge, but that won't stop me failing that one in style!

So... I have plotted a local metric century route with well over 2,000 metres of ascent, but about half of that will be crammed into a 32 km loop to qualify for the climbing challenge.

This is the profile...

The 32 km loop is from 60 km to 92 km on that profile. If I have miscalculated my 1,000 m, I have a little up-and-down climb I can add on at the end of the loop to give me another 60 metres.

I'm not really fit enough to tackle that, but "what DOES kill me stops me worrying about getting stronger"!

I'll try to get it done in the next week or so...

 

[steverob]

As I'm sure everyone will have already seen, I completed my Lunacy challenge earlier this month and with yesterday's ride I have now started on attaining my stretch goal of 65 miles, which has the added benefit of finally getting my imperial Eddington number up to 63.

Despite the whole point of this challenge being to cram as many rides into the summer months as possible, I'm aiming to do one of my two remaining rides in November and the other in December, as this way it'll be good preparation for trying the Monthly Metric Century challenge next year - each year I say I'm going to enter it and then fail to do January's ride for various reasons, so it's over before it's started! This year, I did my first metric ton on Feb 5th and have done at least one every month since then, so I know it's certainly do-able - I just need a bit more get up and go on weekend mornings (no lie-ins!) and possibly the weather to do me some favours.

Indeed with yesterday's ride, having slept in on the Saturday, I made a concious effort to make sure I got out early on the Sunday by changing into my cycling kit as soon as I got up - no having breakfast in normal comfortable clothes and then having to get changed again, as that just gives me more chances to procrastinate and delay and before you know it, it's now too late to do a long ride if you want to get home before the sun sets (which is an excuse I must have used at least 5 times this year already). Even then I still didn't get out until 9:30 - having to get the bedding in the washing machine after the cat threw up on it accounted for some of that delay admittedly - but at least I was home just after 3pm, which I was quite comfortable with.

 

[Rickshaw Phil]

My eleventh one ticked off on Thursday. When I did the tenth I thought I might be able to get the rest of the rides done in October..... then things got in the way. Hopefully better this month.

 

[ColinJ]

When I did the tenth I thought I might be able to get the rest of the rides done in October..... then things got in the way.

Tell me about it!

Hopefully better this month.

Indeed...

I am being reminded why this challenge was created! I want to do my lumpy metric century ride, but I would prefer the weather to be good for it, and I would prefer it to be on a Saturday. My route starts off on main roads and I will need to start early to get round in daylight, but I don't want to be riding on the A646/A671/A681/A6033/A58 in heavy commuter traffic. I didn't fancy the chilly damp conditions today.

There is a possibility that I will be heading out to the Vale of York for a flat singlespeed metric century next Saturday. If I do that then the next available Saturday for Lumpiness Maximus would be November 20th, which is getting towards when I would have liked to have finished the challenge. With no mid-week outings, that would only be 10 qualifying rides though...

 

[bluenotebob]

that would only be 10 qualifying rides though..

Fine by me - if you want to change the rules and reduce the number of required rides to 10, I'd be very happy !

I'm hoping to do my 12th qualifying ride on Tuesday - but saying it, or even thinking it, seems to put the mockers on it.... much better when I don't plan - just go out and do it on the spur of the moment...

 

[Rickshaw Phil]

Fine by me - if you want to change the rules and reduce the number of required rides to 10, I'd be very happy !

I'm hoping to do my 12th qualifying ride on Tuesday - but saying it, or even thinking it, seems to put the mockers on it.... much better when I don't plan - just go out and do it on the spur of the moment...

I've enjoyed that about this challenge too. If I'm free and it's a nice day it's good to just be able to go and do my thing, I enjoy the monthly challenges and aim to go back to them next year, but somehow it feels like more pressure.

 

[Rickshaw Phil]

Success! Ride number 13 done yesterday. My longest ride of the year so far. Pleased with that.

 

[bluenotebob]

Could I propose a modification to the guidelines/rules for this Challenge in 2022?

I would like to see it explicitly stated that any qualifying rides posted in this Challenge should not also be counted as a qualifying ride in any other Challenge, eg a Monthly Challenge.

I recall there was some discussion about avoiding double-counting back in early 2019 but I’m not sure if there was a definitive outcome.

It seems inequitable to me that a single ride should qualify for more than one Challenge… but what does anyone else think?

My suggestion is that, from January 2022, a qualifying ride should be posted to either this Challenge – or a Monthly Challenge – but not to both.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Could I propose a modification to the guidelines/rules for this Challenge in 2022?

I would like to see it explicitly stated that any qualifying rides posted in this Challenge should not also be counted as a qualifying ride in any other Challenge, eg a Monthly Challenge.

I recall there was some discussion about avoiding double-counting back in early 2019 but I’m not sure if there was a definitive outcome.

It seems inequitable to me that a single ride should qualify for more than one Challenge… but what does anyone else think?

My suggestion is that, from January 2022, a qualifying ride should be posted to either this Challenge – or a Monthly Challenge – but not to both.

Back in the day, when I was doing both the metric and imperial monthly challenges I avoided double counting - but that was just my own personal rule.

I think things get too fiddly when you have too many rules. And what do you do when someone (inadvertently or deliberately) breaks one?

If someone wants to do, say, the metric century challenge and also pops in an extra one to make it the lunacy challenge too - where's the harm? I can't really see the point but I don't see it affecting anyone other than the individual concerned. It just means they are joining in two threads.

Or am I being too wishy-washy?

(Not that it's really any of my business because I'm not doing the Lunacy challenge this year.)

 

[steverob]

If I enter the Monthly Metric Century Challenge next year (which every year I intend to do, but usually never get a January ride done), then I would probably not join this challenge, as my target distances for this would be so similar that the two threads would essentially be saying the same thing.

However I do double post between here and the Half Century Challenge, because I only count a month there as being "done" once I've completed a ride of between 50 and 100km (e.g. less than my Lunacy target), while at the same time I still post my 100km+ rides there as well in order to claim the three bonus points in my total on that thread. Not denying myself those precious, precious points!

Also as Dogtrousers says, you don't want to set TOO many rules - after all, we haven't exactly got tons of people entering this challenge as is. Make it too difficult to enter and the thread may die completely.

 

[Sea of vapours]

My immediate reaction is to be against the extra rule. If we did that, there would be, at the very least, a confusion, around people switching from a monthly challenge to this one, having failed the monthly challenge. That was one of the objectives of this challenge, albeit a secondary one (to allow a backup challenge, should a month be missed). OK, so the answer to the confusion would, I think, be: now that you've dropped out of the monthly you can bring all those across to the Lunacy, but it's getting a bit fiddly and overly complex, as has been said.

As someone who does count rides twice, invariably, I'm not especially defending doing so for the sake of completing a challenge. In fact, looking at my records, there isn't a month when I've only done one Metric Century and where it's also been a counting Lunacy ride, so it would never have made a difference to my completion of either. I do, however, like to record all rides of over 100km in the Metric Century Challenge thread simply since multiple centuries is a thing I like to count. Artificially not counting my (much longer) Lunacy rides in that would mess up the Metric Century for me, to no obvious advantage.

Please can you, @bluenotebob explain why you see it as inequitable? What is the inequity you're trying to avoid with the proposed rule change?

 

[bluenotebob]

Thanks for the comments.

I take the point that too many rules might put off prospective new entrants to this Challenge – but there are so few rules/guidelines anyway that I’m not persuaded it’d make much difference.

If I understood @Dogtrousers correctly, then he’s fine about someone doing just 13 qualifying rides in a calendar year and then claiming two Challenges. I’m really not comfortable with that – but fine, if that’s what everyone else thinks.

I don’t think it’s overly complicated to switch from a Monthly Challenge to this Challenge (if you missed a month) – for me, it’s a few seconds of clip-boarding from a Word document into the Lunacy Challenge thread – but maybe it’s not the same for everyone.

I take @steverob 's point about the accumulated points – don’t lose them ! I’ve separated out the points in the two Challenges that I’ve entered this year and I reconcile my ‘Total Points’ every time that I post a new qualifying ride to either thread. Maybe it’s easier for me because I’m retired so (at least theoretically) I’ve plenty of time to update everything.

I guess the ‘inequitability’ that I referred to is subjective @Sea of vapours … it just seems wrong to me to use one qualifying ride across two Challenges. It doesn’t seem to fit with the ‘spirit’ of the Challenge… but, of course, that’s hard to nail down. I’m not sure I can articulate it any better.