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

[Sea of vapours]

The spoiler thing is a neat idea, other than it having the word 'Spoiler' on it of course. I'm not entirely convinced it's necessary on this challenge, in particular, though. If people are only listing their thirteen best rides in any posts, as I think we've agreed, then with 'better' formatting that's only thirteen lines. Your example above for 4th December uses no fewer than eleven lines to describe three rides, once you take into account the title, the spoiler tag itself, and the blank lines. Doing what you've suggesting actually ends up using more screen real estate overall *and* makes it harder to see the whole thing since you have to click the spoiler tag. I really can see the point on, say the Metric 50 and 100 lists as some are long, but personally I'd rather see denser formatting than spoiler tags in this one. Apart from anything else, showing all - where 'all' is a maximum of thirteen - is a very quick way to see how someone's doing: the size of the list says it. If you hide that list behind spoilers then we have to expand it to see how someone's doing, which really isn't terribly elegant, imho.

Edit: and @Dogtrousers point is very well made! It'll be a mess when looking at all posts and it'll be hard to see who's done what with all the variation in use / non-use of spoiler tags.

 

[ColinJ]

Oh, you two have only gone and spoiled my spoilers! Never mind ...

I was looking on the Xenforo site and there is an add-on which removes the word 'Spoiler' from custom spoiler titles and replaces it with 'Read more' otherwise but I'm sure that Shaun wouldn't be interested in replacing the current functionality because it would spoil existing spoilers!

I had actually listed 'All qualifying rides' in my examples, but a maximum of 13 in the 'achievement' section. I would have to change that to 'Longest qualifying rides' plus 'Achievement'.

 

[ColinJ]

Well, I suppose it depends on your interpretation of 'qualifying'. Qualifying as >= target distance from the start of the year, or qualifying in the longest 13 list!

 

[Sea of vapours]

I thought we'd agreed on just posting the thirteen longest? [Putative] rule 5 seems to say that:
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.

I'd envisaged adding to the list until reaching thirteen and then, if doing another, longer qualifying ride, removing the shortest one from the posted list. That way the one at the bottom of the list at the end of the year is your 'Lunacy Challenge distance achieved'. It's also pretty easy to do and, as I said above, if people try to stick to one line per ride it's quite dense and easy to read at a glance. My fear is that if the reporting is overly comprehensive it'll quickly look somewhat messy and be hard to read, not to mention engendering endless debate on formatting (It's not a mortal fear as such Ultimately it really doesn't matter / it's just a bit of fun.)

 

[ColinJ]

Yes - I had restricted the sorted achievement summary list, but for some reason I hadn't edited the unsorted detailed qualifiers list!

 

[steverob]

I think this is one of those things where as it's a new challenge, it might take a few months of actual ride logging and a period of discussion between participants before it's decided what the best format is for how you post your ride(s).

However anyone who has seen my posts in other challenges, knows that I tend towards brevity; in the Half Century challenge I hide all previous month's rides behind links, while in the Metric Century challenge, I only post my latest ride and you have to look at my (edited) first page post to see my full ride list for the year.

So given that, you shouldn't be surprised that my aim with this challenge would be to keep my posts to the minimum possible text - say one or two lines for that day's ride, followed by up to 13 lines for the rest of the qualifying rides to date. Maybe something like this:

Target: 60 miles (optional whether I list this each time or not)
Today's ride: 64.79 miles - followed by brief description of ride, probably same one as I've posted on any other challenge threads.

1. 29th July - 104.61 miles
2. 3rd June - 85.04 miles
3. 10th October - 78.71 miles
4. 27th August - 74.13 miles
5. 7th July - 73.88 miles
6. 9th June - 70.10 miles
7. 14th July - 70.04 miles
8. 22nd July - 69.14 miles
9. 23rd June - 68.16 miles
10. 25th March - 65.60 miles
11. 28th October - 64.90 miles
12. 17th November - 64.79 miles
13. 13th January - 64.44 miles

 

[ColinJ]

I like the bolding of the day's ride in @steverob's achievement list.

A couple of years ago I did the opening post for the MCaM thread. This made me feel a bit responsible for policing compliance withe the (very simple) posting giudelines that, of course, nobody reads, and if they do then they ignore them because they have a Much Better Idea. This caused undue stress.

But then I thought, does it matter? As long as people are actually doing the riding required for the challenge. Actually the only thing that's really important to me is whether I'm doing the riding.

So my advice is as long as you communicate the idea for the challenge, don't be too bothered about presentation, because you'll only be disappointed.

I'm not really bothered what other people do either, but people seem to like suggestions even if they end up ignoring them!

We will agree on a set of guidelines but somewhere in there will be a statement that it is up to the individual to come up with their own variation.

 

[ianrauk]

I think this thread and the rules has lost it's way in all the noise.

@Sea of vapours seem's to have nailed it

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.

I'd envisaged adding to the list until reaching thirteen and then, if doing another, longer qualifying ride, removing the shortest one from the posted list. That way the one at the bottom of the list at the end of the year is your 'Lunacy Challenge distance achieved'.

Surely it's as simple as that. No need to bog it all down.

 

[Sea of vapours]

@Dogtrousers I think you do need to include your target in each post; it's a key element of context for the Lunacy Challenge. In fact, it's the only critical piece of context beyond the definition of the challenge itself. i.e. the whole thing comes down to 'Do thirteen, or more, rides of distance X, and record them'.

Personally, I find that the additional information on each ride (distance, ascent, where ridden) adds to the sense of engagement, but actually it's not strictly necessary for the challenge and people could just put a target and a statement of how many they've done to date in each post. (I am most emphatically not suggesting that, however, as it seems largely pointless.) I think what Dogtrousers has above, with the addition of the target, is about right. So @steverob 's post on the previous page, only with some more detail on each ride ideally, is also about right from my perspective.

Edit: Also, I agree with Colin that highlighting / emboldening the 'current' ride is a good idea. That's particularly true if the rides are listed in descending or ascending order of distance (rather than chronologically). And that descending or ascending thing is itself a good plan since it makes maintaining the list easy and makes the first, or last, item in the list the 'actual achievement' once anyone reaches the thirteen.

 

[ColinJ]

Yes, keep the updates simple:

• Target
• Ordered list of riding days, longest day first, with some details of each day's rides.

It won't look as neat with multiple rides on a day but I think that the rule allowing that is an important change compared with the current challenges. Of course, if you choose to stick to one ride a day, that is fine.

If you number the entries then you will have to keep renumbering them through the year as new ones squeeze in above them - that may or may not bother you?

I would prefer to make that day's entry stand out more. I might put my latest entry in italics.

I will also keep a list of ALL my qualifying rides in a regularly updated first post of the year. Quite frankly - if I were to ride an imperial century every week of the year, I would want them recorded together SOMEWHERE in the thread!

 

[ColinJ]

Blimey - a preemptive 'lunatic' !

I keep thinking about trying to do an imperial century in early December as my final ride for this year's metric century challenge, just to prove to myself that I can still do them in the winter. The problem is how slowly I ride these days. I think I would need to ride for 2-3 hours in the dark unless I did the ride somewhere flat. I don't really enjoy riding in cold, dark conditions for more than 30 minutes or so!

 

[Sea of vapours]

I try to get out at 6-7 am ...

Ahhhh..... we return to the horror that makes the Lunacy Challenge such a good idea

 

[Fiona R]

Blimey - a preemptive 'lunatic' !

I keep thinking about trying to do an imperial century in early December as my final ride for this year's metric century challenge, just to prove to myself that I can still do them in the winter. The problem is how slowly I ride these days. I think I would need to ride for 2-3 hours in the dark unless I did the ride somewhere flat. I don't really enjoy riding in cold, dark conditions for more than 30 minutes or so!

After a series of DNS on longer rides this autumn for one reason or another I have this fantasy of doing the 100 mile audax from Bristol George's Delightful Roads on 8th Dec as the route looks so good and I haven't looped up to Gloucester and back through Forest of Dean. I'm slow and do not like night riding but with an early start hopefully would be ok. or i just store up the route for spring, but that's wimpish. but then again my back is terrible, but then again I may come to a grinding halt over winter if I don't target something

 

[ColinJ]

After a series of DNS on longer rides this autumn for one reason or another I have this fantasy of doing the 100 mile audax from Bristol George's Delightful Roads on 8th Dec as the route looks so good and I haven't looped up to Gloucester and back through Forest of Dean. I'm slow and do not like night riding but with an early start hopefully would be ok. or i just store up the route for spring, but that's wimpish. but then again my back is terrible, but then again I may come to a grinding halt over winter if I don't target something

Good luck with that!

I have spoken to @Sea of vapours about the early start issue. The problem that we both have is that we like to have a good breakfast before a long ride, but we don't like to set off and hit the hills with the food just sat there in the early stages of digestion. That would mean us eating it at about 04:00, which is certainly a lot earlier than I like to be eating (or getting out of bed)!

I'm wondering if I could get away with eating a lot the evening before, having a quick, light, energy-dense breakfast, and then just keeping myself topped up during the ride with carbo-drinks. (I'd probably avoid a cafe stop on a 100 mile winter ride because that would use up valuable daylight.) I would get everything ready the night before and then I could be out and riding within 30 minutes of getting up and (hopefully?) not suffering any ill effects. I would probably test that with a few local loops so I could easily abandon my ride if I ended up bonking. If I got away with it then I would be more confident of completing long winter rides in the future.

 

[Sea of vapours]

My method, which probably won't suit you ...

Mmmmm........ if I may summarise that from a purely personal perspective: you're suggesting that I should a) get up in the middle of the night, b) eat warmed sludge, c) then go out in the dark and cold and cycle a pretty long way? Nope - I'm not seeing the attraction there :-) May I just stick pins in my legs as an alternative?

What's odd is that when I used to do a lot of alpine mountaineering and ice climbing, which would typically involve setting off at sometime between midnight and 0400, I was largely perfectly happy with those times and having a very light breakfast; it was so early that it was more or less the day before, with a bit of a late evening snooze to prepare for it. This 0400-0900 stuff that cycling seems to require is, for me, vastly more problematic :-\ I do wholeheartedly concur on the idea of everything being thoroughly ready the night before though - that really helps with feeling relaxed and ready to set off as soon as all the getting up stuff's done.