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

[Dogtrousers]

Hurrah! @Cranky Knee Girl

 

[Aravis]

I've made a heatmap of my 13 rides using this link. It was broken for a couple of weeks but happily is back now.

I tried a number of strategies for making it multicoloured, with varying success.

Another picture I created recently is a graph of my ride-by-ride average moving speed since I began recording with GPS (February 2016). Clearly not every ride is the same, and not all were approached in the same way. There have been equipment changes from time to time which may have had some impact. The lowest point, about two-thirds of the way through, was my three-day tour through France when the wind was particularly unkind. Nevertheless, I think I can discern a trend:

I'll be very pleased if I can complete RRtY in December, not least because I won't have to think about doing it again. A much sounder strategy will be to do the minimum required for ICaM in the cold months, and go all-out lunatic in the spring and autumn. If that leads me towards some of the other Audax achievements which ought to be within my capability, such as Super Randonneur, so well and good. And it will almost certainly have a beneficial effect on my average speed. Surely 13mph isn't asking too much?

 

[bluenotebob]

Today’s ride was a tried and tested 75km loop that I twiddled with to take it over 80km – I guess that’s perfectly reasonable Loony activity.

It was an enjoyable Halloween ride – no tricks but quite a few treats …the fall colours in the Oust Valley, a clean Voie Verte south of Ploërmel – the council had used their hover/blower machine and the surface was just perfect, letting my new bike really rip on the way home from Josselin – she handles so well: a pleasure to ride, and a large collection of things chocolatey to celebrate nudging over 7500km for the year.

 

[ColinJ]

My 2019 cycling mojo is evaporating in step with the diminishing hours of daylight, falling temperatures, increasing amounts of rain and the general feeling that I would like to hibernate! I just want to get the final Lunacy ride under my belt then cut down to a maximum distance of ~100kms for the winter months.

I had intended to do the ride today but realised that I was tired from lack of sleep recently so decided to cut it down to a metric century for the sister challenge. In the end, I was so tired that I slept through my alarm and woke up too late to ride 100 kms in daylight unless I chose a flat, busy, and boring route. I did some bike fettling instead... At least I now have my turbo trainer bike ready for coming indoor winter exercise.

Let's hope that we get a mild, dry, sunny and wind-free day next week so I can complete my Lunacy challenge in comfort!

Aaaargh... I failed to take advantage of several days which would have been ok for a long ride and now I have picked up my 3rd heavy cold of the year! I have been off the bike for over a week and it feels like it will be at least another week before I will be okay to start riding again.

I won't want to rush straight back into riding 161 kms so it looks like my cunning plan to combine my final 2019 'metric imperial century' Lunacy ride with this month's metric century will have to be shelved. I'll do my November metric century as soon as I feel up to it and then probably combine the December metric century with the Lunacy ride ASAP in December.

I'm not quick enough to do anything other than a pretty unchallenging 161 kms in 7.5 hours of daylight so I will either have to trudge up and down the local valleys from sunrise to sunset, or set off on a more interesting ride about an hour before sunrise and do my best to get home around sunset.

I "don't do winter", but may have to dip into it this year!

 

[Sea of vapours]

Uh oh - so, once you've done it, your first year will be a demonstration, or reminder, of how not to do it and why you created the challenge!

 

[ColinJ]

Uh oh - so, once you've done it, your first year will be a demonstration, or reminder, of how not to do it and why you created the challenge!

Exactly! I normally only catch about one minor cold a year. The three this year been unusually severe ones so instead of losing a week or two of long rides it will be closer to two months in total.

But ... I didn't take every opportunity that I had when I felt ok in the summer, so that was my fault...

 

[Bazzer]

And across the line with 6 weeks before the end of the year. 😅
Now to aim for 16 for the year.

 

[ColinJ]

I am definitely NOT going to aim for a longer target distance next year, OR to exceed the 13 qualifying rides target. My target will remain 13 rides of 161 km. I will probably try to make one of them a 200 km ride, perhaps my annual Cheshire forum ride.

I will try to keep more of my 2020 Lunacy challenge rides separate from my MetricCaM ones. Ideally, completely separate, but realistically I would be happy with less sharing than this year which looks like ending up with 4 shared rides.

I would also like to have my target achieved by the end of September.

I'd like to complete some of the less hilly rides in 8 hours or less and the hilly ones in 10 hours or less. Those are not exactly high speeds but they are higher speeds than I have averaged in recent years.

 

[Aravis]

I'm hoping to add a little frisson to my lunacy challenge next year, as I shall describe. The idea comes from a @Dogtrousers post a while back, which was unfortunately placed in the other thread and peremtorily vaporized. But not entirely forgotten...

My qualifying (200+km) rides this year were on these dates (chronological order):

1 06/01/19
2 12/02/19
3 19/03/19
4 08/04/19
5 13/05/19
6 21/06/19
7 02/07/19
8 13/07/19
9 04/08/19
10 03/09/19
11 19/09/19
12 05/10/19
13 15/10/19
14 04/11/19

15 "Early December"

What I'm hoping to do next year is to maintain 13 rides of least 200km in the previous 12 months on every day of the year, along the lines of a tennis or golf ranking. So assuming I'm able to post the 15th ride in December to complete RRtY, the first critical date next year will be March 19th. If I haven't posted a qualifying ride by that date the "rolling lunacy" challenge will have been failed.

So it's not actually that complicated. The dates of qualifying rides in one year set the timetable for the next, and it makes no difference how long the winter close season is.

As I've indicated, this is a personal challenge, but I invite y'all to think about it.

 

[Bazzer]

I'm hoping to add a little frisson to my lunacy challenge next year, as I shall describe. The idea comes from a @Dogtrousers post a while back, which was unfortunately placed in the other thread and peremtorily vaporized. But not entirely forgotten...

My qualifying (200+km) rides this year were on these dates (chronological order):

1 06/01/19
2 12/02/19
3 19/03/19
4 08/04/19
5 13/05/19
6 21/06/19
7 02/07/19
8 13/07/19
9 04/08/19
10 03/09/19
11 19/09/19
12 05/10/19
13 15/10/19
14 04/11/19

15 "Early December"

What I'm hoping to do next year is to maintain 13 rides of least 200km in the previous 12 months on every day of the year, along the lines of a tennis or golf ranking. So assuming I'm able to post the 15th ride in December to complete RRtY, the first critical date next year will be March 19th. If I haven't posted a qualifying ride by that date the "rolling lunacy" challenge will have been failed.

So it's not actually that complicated. The dates of qualifying rides in one year set the timetable for the next, and it makes no difference how long the winter close season is.

As I've indicated, this is a personal challenge, but I invite y'all to think about it.

An interesting idea.
To add some variation to routes next year and perhaps making me look more closely at my surroundings, I had been thinking about "collecting" pubs, but that isn't going to work for everyone for a variety of reasons.

 

[lane]

I'm hoping to add a little frisson to my lunacy challenge next year, as I shall describe. The idea comes from a @Dogtrousers post a while back, which was unfortunately placed in the other thread and peremtorily vaporized. But not entirely forgotten...

My qualifying (200+km) rides this year were on these dates (chronological order):

1 06/01/19
2 12/02/19
3 19/03/19
4 08/04/19
5 13/05/19
6 21/06/19
7 02/07/19
8 13/07/19
9 04/08/19
10 03/09/19
11 19/09/19
12 05/10/19
13 15/10/19
14 04/11/19

15 "Early December"

What I'm hoping to do next year is to maintain 13 rides of least 200km in the previous 12 months on every day of the year, along the lines of a tennis or golf ranking. So assuming I'm able to post the 15th ride in December to complete RRtY, the first critical date next year will be March 19th. If I haven't posted a qualifying ride by that date the "rolling lunacy" challenge will have been failed.

So it's not actually that complicated. The dates of qualifying rides in one year set the timetable for the next, and it makes no difference how long the winter close season is.

As I've indicated, this is a personal challenge, but I invite y'all to think about it.

Sorry I really don't understand it despite reading the post several times.

 

[Aravis]

@lane sorry about that. Let me see if I can explain better.

Assuming I get ride 15 done this December, at the end of this year I'll have 15 200+km rides in the previous 12 months.

On January 6th, unless I've ridden another one, this figure will drop to 14, and on February 12th, to 13. The first critical date is March 19th, at which point I'll only have 12 qualifying rides in the previous 365 days unless I've ridden at least one in the year up to that point. By April 8th I'll need to have ridden two, and so it continues through the year, the dates of my rides in 2019 setting the timetable I need to keep to. If I manage it, then on any given day in 2020 I will have ridden at least 13 qualifying rides in the previous 365 days.

I still get the feeling there may be one or two words which I'm trying to grasp but can't quite do so. But I hope this helps!

 

[Sea of vapours]

That's a rather fine idea @Aravis. I may adopt that, though I can see that doing thirteen of my 2019 rides between March 29th and June 22nd might be, in this context, a sub-optimal strategy.

 

[lane]

@lane sorry about that. Let me see if I can explain better.

Assuming I get ride 15 done this December, at the end of this year I'll have 15 200+km rides in the previous 12 months.

On January 6th, unless I've ridden another one, this figure will drop to 14, and on February 12th, to 13. The first critical date is March 19th, at which point I'll only have 12 qualifying rides in the previous 365 days unless I've ridden at least one in the year up to that point. By April 8th I'll need to have ridden two, and so it continues through the year, the dates of my rides in 2019 setting the timetable I need to keep to. If I manage it, then on any given day in 2020 I will have ridden at least 13 qualifying rides in the previous 365 days.

I still get the feeling there may be one or two words which I'm trying to grasp but can't quite do so. But I hope this helps!

Thanks I understand now. Interesting idea.

 

[bluenotebob]

I'm hoping to add a little frisson to my lunacy challenge next year

What a splendid idea ! A 'rolling' Lunacy challenge .. I wish you well.

I shall settle for a more challenging 'target distance' in 2020 - with every intention of smashing it.