fredcube: You're Crazy

So the big challenge on Strava this month is the “Train like Tyler” challenge. For 16 days, you have to put in a certain number of hours on the bike. These have to be outdoors. No trainer rides. No manual entries. Three days before the end of the challenge (3/17/2013) you have to fail a drug test and then you have the remaining time to convince Strava that the test is flawed. The crazier the reason, the better chance you will have of winning. You are not allowed to use any of Tyler Hamilton’s excuses (i.e.: I absorbed a twin in the womb who is with me to this day).

So pretty simple really. Get out and ride. Dope. Get caught. Deny. Hang on a minute, someone is yelling at me. What!?! It’s What? Who? Oh – you mean Phinney? Oh alright.

Sorry about that. It’s actually called the “Train Like Tayler” Challenge. It’s something about how some famous pioneering American cyclists had a baby and now he “rides bikes”. He’s on Strava, sharing all of his training with the world. The contest goes like this:

Hey Everybody! Do you have what it takes to train like a pro! Put in 2 hours a day for a couple of weeks and we’ll call it square. How about them apples, you lucky sonofagun! And to sweeten the pot, the company Taylor Phinney works for will throw in 5 pair o’ shoes. That’s right! Ride for 2 hours a day, for 16 days and you could get some shoes.

This will be the second “challenge” from Strava that I’ve participated in. So far it’s going pretty well. All the people who finish 31 hours and 51 minutes between Mar 2 and Mar 17 2013 will be eligible for the drawing to win a pair of some ugly-ass black and orange GIRO cycling shoes. There will be 5 winners. I really would like to win, but with the whole Sears Bike fiasco from 41 years ago still fresh in my memory, I’m not getting my hopes up.

I didn’t even think I’d try to do this challenge at all since I’ve been getting about 9 hours in a week, including roller rides. No way I can ramp to 14 a week. Then I figured if I do my long commute thing (34 miles or so round trip), I could get just under 2 and a half hours a day in. With the long Saturday rides, this could even leave me a day off. I likes me a day off each week. Yes I do.

As of this writing, I have 12 hours and 12 minutes (6 days into it), so I’m currently slightly ahead of schedule (even after taking Sunday off). There was a ride Sunday. I saw it on Strava. But Hey, Shim and Rafal gotta get them some alone time once in a while. I’d like to get a little bit more ahead of schedule if I could. This way if something comes up, I have a little buffer and remain eligible for the ugly-ass shoes. If there ends up being a Saturday ride this week, I should get even more hours than usual because I plan a good 2+ hour ride tomorrow and my legs are very tired this week. I’ll be so rapidly spit out the back of Saturday’s ride that I might get an extra hour in! Sweet! Thanks Tyler or Taylor or whatever your name is.

Now I’m just rambling. What was I talking about? Oh yeah. Strava Challenges.

The thing about the Strava challenges is they seem to have a point. I think that if they don’t really go against whatever you’re doing for training, they are great motivators. In January, the challenge was what they called a “Base Mile” challenge. See how many miles you can get in the calendar month. This was the first time they decided to allow manual input and trainer rides. I spent a lot of time on the rollers in January. After getting the manflu in the middle of it and missing a few days, I decided I couldn’t reasonably get to 1000 miles. I set a new goal of 800 miles. They were awarding “badges” for each 200 completed up to 1000.

Having never done one of these, I didn’t know that the real competition is to see who can get the most miles. Some of these people put in ridiculous amounts. The winner was just over 4000 miles for the month of January. That can’t be a part of any training, can it?

The funny thing is all the complainers and whingers. One guy said as much and a bunch of others, seeing the “typo” jumped in his shit saying something like, “What’s a whinger, dude? I think you mean whiner or you’re just stupid.”

So I did what that guy should have done. I googled “Whinger.”

There are dozens of cries of foul throughout the whole competition. There are people saying trainer rides shouldn’t count. People saying they’d put in 100 miles a day if they lived in Australia. And on and on.

But it is understandable that people get so worked up over what is and isn’t fair in this competition. The grand prize is something worth fighting for.

Prize Information

For successfully making it through this Challenge, each participant will receive the gift of fitness.

Please note...

The Challenge starts and ends based on each riders local time zone.

Manual entries or trainer rides will count towards your Challenge effort.

All activities logged during the Challenge period must be uploaded to Strava no later than 2/3/2013.

There was also a link to the “Official rules” that opened a window that said:

“Ride hard and be safe.”

So the new challenge isn’t about miles. It’s about hours. There’s still all kinds of bitching (whinging) about this and that. But still, I’m amazed by the amount of time some people put in on a bike. The current leader has 58 hours. 6 days. 58 hours. Uhh.

Now everyone who gets 31 H 51 M, is entered for the drawing for the black and orange shoes. But these people are in it to be the person in the world on his bike for the longest amount of time. So effing what? I’ve done that in just about every race I’ve been in.

One more thing about Strava. Lance is gone. So sad. Someone found out he was on Strava and then it was in the newspaper and then there were a bunch of articles about whether he should be allowed on Strava. Personally, I have no idea why he shouldn’t be allowed to be on Strava. He was a premium member too.

One day I logged into Strava and wondered how many times I’d typed the non-word “Strava” lately and noticed that the number of people I was following was not 23, but 22. That’s weird I thought. Who is missing? I haven’t stopped following anyone on purpose (this was before last Saturday’s group ride).

Then I tried to go to Lance Armstrong’s page and saw this:

So yeah, I was kind of bummed out about it. That was some fine entertainment. I don't expect Lance to ever return to Strava, so I found myself wishing there could be some sort of runner up on Strava. Well, I didn't have to wait long, because sure enough, Yesterday, Der Kaiser Signed up!

I'm not really surprised that I saw Lance on there first and Jan on there second. Something just seemed right about it. Well, I might as well do a little GPS snooping on him now.