# The 2023 Annual Lunacy Challenge



## ColinJ (3 Jan 2023)

Welcome to the 5th '_Annual Lunacy Challenge_'. This challenge is not intended to replace any of the 3 current monthly challenges. They are fine tests of cycling consistency throughout the whole year and I encourage you to attempt any (or all!) of them if you feel able to. This is something different, which you might find interesting. Notably, as the title suggests, it's not monthly, it's annual. Please read on...

*This thread is only for the logging of your qualifying rides.*

*PLEASE DO NOT POST ANYTHING ELSE BUT QUALIFYING RIDES IN THIS THREAD *

1. *Choose a target distance*, for example 100 miles, but it can be *any imperial or metric distance which will be challenging for you to complete thirteen times in a calendar year*.

2. The distance is a *daily* distance, not a '_ride_' distance, where a day is defined as _'from getting up to going to bed' _(which covers night rides which go beyond midnight)_._ This means that you can add up two or more rides in one day to count towards your target distance and therefore allows, for example, two commuting rides to be added to reach a target. The idea of this is to make achieving longer distances a more realistic proposition for many people who struggle to find enough spare time for individual long rides.

3. *Each time you complete a day's riding which meets or exceeds your target distance, post in the challenge thread*, stating your target and how many times you've met it at the top and then listing each ride which meets your target below. The post should ideally include details of the rides completed including how far, a list of points on each route, perhaps the elevation gain, and a link to the route(s) if you recorded it/them. The idea of these details is to maintain everyone's interest in where people are riding, as well as their progress towards their goal.

4. *Chat about rides, etc. goes in the associated chatzone thread, located **HERE*. Please don't post anything other than lists of your rides in the challenge thread.

5. Even once you have completed thirteen qualifying rides, you can keep posting new ones where your 'top 13' has changed. *Just post your thirteen longest.* At the end of the year, *your thirteenth longest ride is your actual achievement for the year. *NB If you keep cranking out rides exactly hitting your target, you would struggle to exceed it later in the year. For example if your first 10 rides were exactly 100 miles, you would have to do another 13 rides of 101 miles to increase your lunacy challenge achievement to 101 miles! If you like the idea of trying to beat your target, it is always worth adding at least a few miles/kms to as many of your long rides as possible throughout the year. In that respect, every duplicated ride distance is 'wasted', although each will qualify for the basic challenge that you set yourself.

6. Since the only rules are to state a target distance and complete it thirteen times, *anyone can join at any point during the year* where there are sufficient days left to complete. It also means that an unavoidable break for illness, injury, childbirth, pressure of work, mojo-loss, freak weather conditions, [insert applicable excuse/reason here] would not bring your challenge to an abrupt finish, unless that happened to be so late in the year that you would not have time to complete the challenge once you started riding again.

7. The following year, everyone who met their stated target can display the crescent moon '_Lunacy Challenge_' icon in their signature. Something like the example in my signature below.

8. There are many ways of ‘gaming’ this challenge if all you want is a shiny, crescent moon in your signature. (Picking an easy target is the most obvious of those. Seeing how you’ve done in October and entering the challenge then by posting all your best rides is another.) *The spirit of the Lunacy Challenge, however, is to stretch yourself beyond whichever every-month-of-the-year challenge you can manage*, so your target should really be a distance which you are genuinely unlikely to complete in some or all of the winter months. This should be treated as an opportunity to choose a genuinely challenging target, avoid the hazards of winter, and enjoy a bit of support with it along the way.

Those are the guidelines. Please do tick as closely as you can to them, but this is supposed to be fun so tweak them to suit yourself. For example - If you only want to count single rides at the qualifying distance rather than daily totals, that is fine.

Comments and questions in the Chatzone!


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## bluenotebob (5 Jan 2023)

Target distance – 70km (stretch distance 75km)

Rides done so far – 1


*1. 5th January 2023 – 85.44km* Mauron – Ploërmel – Malestroit – la Tayée – Malestroit – Ploërmel – Mauron


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