Free Spirits Rowing

Plummy, I think our benchmark position is the average of the last three attempts at the piece. That should avoid putting in a deliberately low value.

You also have a rolling average perhaps so that once you've done the piece three times, a new average is established?

the idea came from my days cycling when we had a "reliability trial". Basically it ran once a month. Set distance and route (25 miles around Poole harbour - flatish but windy). at the start of the season you have to put in a time and you get points for how close to that time you go.

If you went under the time, you had double points BUT your benchmark was reset. If you went over, you had single points but no reset until you had 3 times over your benchmark. Sounds complicated but in the last two rides you pretty much know what you had to do to get a good place in the table. (That table was also in divisions which kept the fast guys together).

I think it works for us. For example, my standard piece at the moment is 10k or an hour. In doing that I go across most of the benchmarks we use except for HM and FM. I can use those as benchmarks.

The issue is in setting up the table, collating data and keeping it all up to date. That is beyond me and my working pattern means that come Q1 every year I have no time.

Just an idea.

Interesting idea, Graham.

I'd like to explore this further and contribute to the idea when I have some time. Maybe it's worthwhile to propose this in a new thread where members who don't visit this one can contribute too.

One early question though: would the challenge be chosen/voted on or would everyone choose his own distance/piece?

Rodger, I thought we would have a number of benchmarks to go for.

My initial thought is 1k, 2k, 5k, 30 minutes, 10k and 60 minutes,

I suspect that most people don't stick to just one distance or train for just one distance but rather vary their training?

The list is updated:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... _web#gid=3

It's now just one sheet again, the one with the 100-200 scoring system: a minimum of 100 points for all participants and a maximum of 200 (191 this month) for rowers in FS boat 1.

This month 44 members have done the CTC. Thanks to a precisely timed entry by Cathrine, we have 8 boats floating. There are three new names in the 2013-list this month: Julie Steventon, Cerys Thomas and Teddy Oliva.

The final CTC of 2013 is finished. Quite a nice surprise to see a last minute entry by Michelle, which got a fifth FS boat floating (with me in it ).

Two new names appeared on this month’s challenge: welcome to Will Smith and Phil Nolan!
This brings the total number of Free Spirits that participated in at least one CTC in 2013 to 122 which is about 30% of the number of our members on the metre board.

Only seven Free Spirits participated every month: Erik, Alan, Stan, Bill, Sander, David and Philip. =D> =D> =D>
The first four mentioned also rowed the Carole Mac Memorial on Feb 14th.

Four 'medals' have been won by the first FS boat this year: three bronze and one silver, all in the first half of the year.
Using the ‘min. 100 - max. 200’ scoring system (see posts above), this is the definitive top 10 Free Spirit participants for 2013:
See the full list here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... _web#gid=3

For anyone who is interested in the more competitive side of things (so just ignore this if you are not), I added a new column at the end: the average number of points scored for every CTC a member participated in. This number of participations can vary from 1 to 13. What you get is a score that is an indicator of the (relative) quality of the entries made. This is the top 3:
To be continued in 2014

Many thanks to Rodger for compiling this list.

Looks great Rodger - thank you for putting the beast together =D> .

Could you squish the columns up a fraction so you can see the whole width without having to pan left and right. I know you've put a vertical split in but narrowing the column widths a fraction would remove any need for it and make a tad easier on the eye [-o<

plummy wrote:Could you squish the columns up a fraction so you can see the whole width without having to pan left and right. I know you've put a vertical split in but narrowing the column widths a fraction would remove any need for it and make a tad easier on the eye [-o<

I suppose this depends on the device or screen you are using, but I saw what you meant on my nexus 7.
Is it better now?

Yep - looks better - thank you Rodger.
I've had another thought - could you add the CTC challenge description in a comment box at the top of each column (e.g. the monthly title cell) - that way it doesn't take up any more space but if you hover your mouse over the comment triangle you can see what each monthly challenge was (unless its already there and I just missed it)

Until now I didn't know this list existed, and to my surprise I see I am ranked third. Very nice!

What do the color codings of the cells mean?

I intend to do all CTC in 2014. My first attempt at the January one will be coming Sunday, 15h00 GMT on RowPro. Please join me if you are on RowPro and have time.

sander wrote:Until now I didn't know this list existed, and to my surprise I see I am ranked third. Very nice!

Great CTC-ing, Sander! Nice to see the list getting picked up by more members.

sander wrote:What do the color codings of the cells mean?

Those are the 'medals': cells turn into 'bronze', 'silver' or 'gold' (or the closest to it I could find without messing things up) when the boat was in the top 3 on the CTC website, getting a score of 198, 199 or 200.

plummy wrote:I've had another thought - could you add the CTC challenge description in a comment box at the top of each column (e.g. the monthly title cell) - that way it doesn't take up any more space but if you hover your mouse over the comment triangle you can see what each monthly challenge was (unless its already there and I just missed it)

Good idea, I've added them along with the name of the team that chose the challenge and the score system. Can you report back if it looks okay?

Some considerations when going forward into the new year:
On the CTC website there is a team ranking which uses the rowing calendar (May-April). The main reason I opted for calendar years is that I wanted to start a new season sooner than May. As pointed out earlier on this thread by Stan and Erik, the boat composition changes afterwards when people change their weight class or team but still use the same name. Because I update the list soon after the challenge is finished, that is not an issue for the scores from August 2013 onwards.

Also, I'm hoping we can get some friendly competition going, vamping up both participation and scores on the CTC. I think there is a better chance to do that if we can start fresh (everything is possible again).

Comments look fine -

Is there any chance that we can have a link to the table in either the Links menu or Utilities to save hunting for it in old threads please?

Bill

Great piece of work Rodger. I was surprised to see that I actually took part in 10 CTCs during 2013. My intention is to do all 13 this year and my ambition is to get into a floating boat in each challenge.

Paul V

Great stuff Rodger very impressed even though I am near the bottom with a mere 100 points!

It is my intention to participate in all of the CTCs this year, so shhould end up with 12 x 100 points!

The '2014' sheet is up:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... MTWc#gid=4

Hi Rodger

Thanks for updating this. I managed to make a floating boat this month, so only another 12 to go (including Valentine's Day).

Paul V

Paul, if you manage to stay injury free (and keep your rowjo), it shouldn't be a problem for you to get in a floating boat each month. You will easily end up in the top 10, probably top 5 of this list.

For the Carole Mac Memorial CTC on Friday next week, I'm thinking of using half points, because there is only one day to participate. Or should that be the full 100 points for participation but only a maximum of 50 for the boat position, maybe?

The updated list:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... MTWc#gid=4

- 40 participants in February, which is about average;
- 58 individual Free Spirits have taken part in the first three challenges of 2014;
- 14 have done all three;
- the first three are on equal points (three times in FS#1): Erik, Mat, Andy. I suspect sooner or later one other (or a new) hard-hitting Hwt will come along and and stir that balance up a bit.

In case you're wondering: for some reason the comments disappeared from the spreadsheet a couple of weeks ago. This seems to be a reoccuring problem with with google docs (they can inexplicably return one day, too). I replaced them with notes, hopefully that does the job.

Edit: I changed the thread's title (courtesy of Andy)

I have updated the table:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... MTWc#gid=4

Some highlights of the month:
- 41 participants (1 more than last month). =D>
- 5 first time entries for 2014 (Margit, Damon, Jonathan, Lori and Joanna).
- Liefcat and thornmaster opened up a small gap at the top of the leaderboard.
- Michelle and Paul are in the same boat, always.
- And John kicked me out of the top 10.

Thanks Roger

Having the overall table appeals to my competitive instinct and it's great to see new faces appearing each month.

Paul V

I cant get to the web page/doc.
No real error message, just unreachable.
Any ideas?

Wolfmiester wrote:I cant get to the web page/doc.
No real error message, just unreachable.
Any ideas?

Er, no.
Are there others with the same problem?

I can view it from either a phone or PC. Maybe make sure the entire address is being picked up? Or try viewing it from a different device?

The table has been updated with April's results:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... MTWc#gid=4

We had 40 participants in April, all floated. That's (about) the same as in March (41) and February (40). This is actually better than it looks, because the total participation among all teams was much lower in April (252) than in the two previous months (resp. 315 and 359). So, well done to us!