Too Many Challenges

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ChrisB

Too Many Challenges

Post by ChrisB »

Just a note to say that I think there are too many challenges on ELM! Not trying to dampen spirits (I did in fact come up with the name I hasten to add... :D ), but if we all added a challenge to our liking then we would have 40+, but when individuals start adding more than one e.g. 6 in a week... I think you guys know where I am coming from and I know that I am not the first to raise... Personally I feel reluctant to add a challenge now, so should we add the new CTC challenge when it eventually comes up or not? The July CTC proved very successful...

Importantly, the challenges should also be popular = participation!

Apologies for dampening anyone, not meant... :D
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Post by Thomas W-P »

I totally agree. I just find it bewlidering.

And we should delete the old ones unless they are needed as a comparison for the new ones.
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Post by johnglynn »

I agree, there was a number of posts on this in

http://www.freespiritsrowing.com/forum/ ... c.php?t=49

I think we should add every CTC distance each month .

People will generally be pushing 90%->100% in CTC, where they will be pushing only 80% for a lot of the ELM challenges (If they aren't close to what they would normally be rowing).

And of course the CTC distances are very popular
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Post by webberg »

I agree that there are too many.

Challenges should also be just that, not impossible. Consequently I woudl ask Mikkel to consider his recent 5k entries please. I havn't looked but I doubt that many of us are capable of breaking the barrier set. Perhaps re-set this to 20 mins for the men :? ?

In theory anybody can set a challenge. In practice it tends to be those of us active on the ELM board.

Could/should those team members who are not yet registered on ELM be invited to set a challenge in preference to those of us who already have :?: :?: :?: :?: :?:

This may encourage more team bonding, more involvement in ELM and more enjoyment in the challenge.
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Challenges...

Post by ChrisB »

I have sent a seperate mail to Mikkel for his consideration regarding the new challenges...
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Post by johnglynn »

Mikkel changed his 5K's and taken out the sub 17 mins, after the email I sent a few days ago . He still has Male and Female ones .

What do the female members think of this, should there be male and female versions of challenges ?

I don't think there should be any time restrictions on any of the challenges.
Having a time restriction has no effect on people a good bit faster then the time .
A possible positive effect on the small number of people around that speed .
And a negative effect on anyone not fast enough .

We all push the bodies we have very hard, someone not reaching a time is usually not because s/he is lazy or s/he is mentally weak (unwilling to push themselves hard), it's because there bodies don't have that speed in them at that particular moment.

I think that maybe before doing a big ELM recruitment drive that we try and clean it up a bit first . But I agree that once it is in better shape that we should promote it as much as possible.

BUT I've got a sneaky feeling that deleting the current old challenges will remove all the points and times people set for them.
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That nice Mr Lemon

Post by webberg »

If the ELM table loses data when the challenge is removed, would it be possible for that nice Mr Lemon to upload data to our website and to display it? :mrgreen:
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Deletion...

Post by ChrisB »

Yes John deleting the older challenges does indeed delete the points / times. My preference is to delete the old challenges once complete, as I have already done so last month deleting two of my old challenges. Only the owner can delete though. I'm not precious about being second and if I were to do the half marathon challenge today I would probably go up to first... but I'm not worried about that, I just like to have a go at the challenges set, those that are not too much off the mark and are clearly described.

By deleting, we will hopefully encourage the new members to participate, not all are as mad as us attempting most challenges...

:D
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Expired Challenges

Post by ChrisB »

Here is a list of the expired challenges... If we could delete these + ask Mikkel to remove some of the newer challenges, we'd be half way there...

250km, ChrisB
Mount Everest, stan63
July (CTC) 30mins, ChrisB
7 Wonders, PSims
Legless 500, PSims
Fast and The Furious, Stephen Scarfe
2 Fast 2 Furious, Stephen Scarfe
Fast and The Furious Tokyo Drift, Stephen Scarfe
Lactic Acid ! Yum Yum, Stephen Scarfe
Le Mans (The Sadistic B*st*rd), PSims
The Omen, Stephen Scarfe
Centipede, PSims
Docs (4 minute row), Stephen Scarfe
Steve's Single Slug, PSims
10k - June, stan63
5k vs PB, PSims
Blue Riband, stan63
1/2 marathon vs PB, PSims
Stan's Challenge, PSims
May '30, Michelle
20000 metres, PSims
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Post by johnglynn »

I think we should probably record ELM entries that are already done , before we delete them . Especially Epic ones like the 250km

I'm not sure how or where though
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Post by Thomas W-P »

I think that deleting old points is fine. Otherwise it is demotivating to see that one is loads of points behind with no hope of catching up.

How about this:

1) Record the things we want somehow in this forum.
2) Delete everything at the start of each one or two months.
3) Set a new set of challenges every one/two months.
4) Pay homage to the champion in this forum, record times and return to 1.
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Post by Mike Channin »

Challenges

I think our team enthusiasm has rather overwhelmed the current ELM system, and it is not really up to the demands of what we're trying to do with it.

I think maybe we need to consider what the point of our challenges are, and why currently the participation level among members is low, particularly for women.

I think there are probably several different classes of challenge that we are using, each of which could be separated into a separate ELM league under the existing system (provided the people hosting ELM don't mind us doing this).

First, I think we need to look at the reason we have challenge, which should be to encourage people to participate and work to improve their performances. The point is NOT to set things to exclude people (although in this respect ELM is clever in that if few people enter a challenge, the points gained are low anyway).

Personally, I created some EXTREME challenges, not to exclude people, but to encourage others to have a go, safe in the knowledge that others have already done this successfully. I also put in the Tour De France distance challenge as I figured there are a number of people who will be around this figure at the end of the season, and this will hopefully provide extra motivation for them. I will probably be one of them too!

The EXTREME challenges are long term, and should probably last all season. They're there more to encourage people to have a go at something extreme than as part of the main challenges system, and should almost certainly be moved into a separate League.

Then there are the 'official' monthly challenges, one set by C2 themselves (1 min for August) and one set in the CTC (500m in August). It seems to be a good idea to have these somewhere in ELM, although it is interesting to note that we had 61 (or 62) members who had CTC scores, but only 25 people entering scores on ELM. Maybe we should have one or two internal 'official' challenges per month, as decided by discussion and voting in a forum.

Then there are the 'official' distances/times used in the world rankings. These are dealt with on the C2 main site, and probably best kept there. Especially if we can persuade jlemon to write one of his wonderful extraction routines to pull the Free Spirits into our own private rankings board, a la the meter board.

Speaking of the meter board, this is the most visible 'challenge' that we have, and one in which all members participate by default. Whilst being great for those who like to purely clock up mega distances, this arguably works against people whose goal is a well structured training programme for competition, by encouraging them to overtrain (as I believe some of our members are doing). It does help those who are rowing mainly for weight loss, so it is useful again there.

Then there are fun challenges. These are bizarre and wacky things which just may get people through an otherwise boring workout. I think we need to be careful to ensure they are fully inclusive (no challenges with minimum standards/limits) and nothing dangerous (low SPM can be dangerous for anyone with poor technique, and that twisting one sounded downright dangerous (sorry Paul) - not something we should be encouraging people to do in case they hurt themselves.) Other than this, there should be no limits, other than maybe clearing it down every so often.

But so far all these challenges are still basically set up to favour the big and the heavy, as most indoor rowing is, and to discriminate against the small and the light, no matter how fit they are. Unfortunately, the 'normal' people are just those who probably need most encouragement to have a go. So I think it would be a great idea to have a 'normalised' challenge system which compensates for weight, age and sex differences and attempts to put everyone on a level playing field. Some will say, isn't that what Nonathlon does, and they would be partially right, but it only compensates for sex and age (in age bands) and weight only by the standard Lightweight/Heavyweight divide. It is better than nothing, as is shown by the popularity it has. A fully weight compensated system would give those chasing weight loss a bit of added incentive too. I have a rough set of guidelines for this, mainly based on the c2 age/weight compensation tables. I think something like this would be a first in the rowing community, and would hopefully encourage EVERYONE to have a go, not just the massive giants amongst us. Anyone else have an opinion on this??

So in summary, I think we need to structure the ELM system into multiple leagues, some of which clear down regularly, and some of which run all year (and don't have challenges which have already finished). And we can list the results of the regularly cleared leagues on this website somewhere for posterity. And then we should go on a participation drive to try to bring in more of the members.

Well, that's the cat firmly amongst the pigeons. What do YOU think??
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Challenges

Post by steve the slug »

Mike

took me a marathon to read it, but agree with everything said

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Post by Mike Channin »

Cheers Steve,

must admit I was apprehensive about posting something that big, but glad that it seems to be in the right direction. Thanks for your support - much appreciated.
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Post by Stan »

Some excellent posts from everyone here. I agree the ELM seems to have lost its way a bit and a good clearup would probably help. Thomas is correct in that we should have some means of recording everyones achievements for posterity, but then lets get ruthless and delete the expired challenges. Mikes idea of setting up several leagues within ELM is excellent - Free Spirits Extreme, Free Spirits Bizarre etc. I think the only problem would be the ELM would only let you be in one league at a time so if you were doing the extreme league, you wouldnt be able to do the monthly league.
Finally I also think everyone should update their pb table at the end of each "cycle". One of ELMs strengths is the improvement points concept which makes it a bit easier for the slower ones among us to compete with the giants. Some of us have made considerable improvements recently (*gazes steadily at Thomas and Gregor* :wink: ) so its a bit unfair racing against out of date pbs.
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Post by webberg »

Mike, well said.

Paul has also had some very interesting thoughts and I would support the idea of leagues.

The issue on challenges is always on how to prevent the talented and super fit from filling those top spots whilst not discouraging them, whilst also giving the more human amongst us a sporting chance.

On this theme (and stealing outrageously from the other ideas), perhaps we should look to set up challenges that operate over than by recording time and distance.

For the traditional time based pieces, a league with promotion etc is good. After a settling in period, the top division for any distance would be those who fall into the talented category. Similarly for ranking distances.

So perhaps a league for 500/1k/2k/5k/10k and HM plus the 30/60min.

For the more average person, the challenge is usually against him/herself. We (because I am in this category) are looking for incremental improvements against previous efforts. It is also a feature of this group that there is not a smooth progression of say split times between the distances. For example our top rowers are able to predict pretty accurately that their 5k split will be 2k + x%. The average group's progression will be more "lumpy".

Consequently a challenge that awards points based on split differentials over a range of distances and rewards improvement is hopefully not biased towards the elite group.

I have also previously floated the idea of a "bleep test" type challenge. Here the requirement is to do each successive 500 split quicker than the last. The challenge is to get as many mtrs as possible. This is all about pace judgement, focus, determination and stamina.

There are others in my imagination but the ones above and the others require certain minimum disclosures if a database is to be compiled. I suggest also that ELM will not cope with these and therefore we would have to rely upon out internal IT resources. I see that Jonathan has indicated that if a database can be built then he can extract what is needed.

I wouls also repeat my suggestion that some of our members who presently don't use ELM be invited to suggest challenges. Those of us who are active here do our best to be a house of many mansions but we will inevitably fail some of our team mates who are too shy to post.

How do we take this on?

Lots of great ideas on this topic already.

Should we

a) clear all the expired challenges - action by those who set them
b) post the new CTC and C2 challenges to expire at month end
c) request our team mates set nothing new during August/Sept
d) Collate the ideas into one place for open discussion
e) Ascertain from our IT experts what is possible
f) Aim to have a fresh start say October 1st

Apologies for another monster post.
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Novel ideas

Post by PSims »

Jonathan says he can pretty much do anything that's database related - as long as he is given a clear set of rules to code to.

I really like CTC - but 1 challenge a month isn't enough for me.
45 ELM challenges however is too many!!!!

Couldn't sleep last night - excitement of returning to work :(

So I dreamed up a new ELM challenge....Lotto - Lucky Dip.

A 10k challenge - with 49 random ways of achieving it.
You select a "lotto ball" number - I look it up on a random spreadsheet and that's the way you have to do it...so it randomises the results (or at least makes it harder/easier for some randomly).

Spreadsheet might be something like:

Ball 1 - 10k straight
Ball 2 - 1k, 1 min rest, 2k, 1 min rest, 4k, 1 min rest, 2k, 1 min, 1k
Ball 3 - 10 x 1k with rests
Ball 4 - 2 x 5k with rests
Ball 5 - 10k low SPM, below 18
Ball 6 - 10k with damper setting 1
Ball 7 - Legless 10k (no that would be too cruel as anyone doing the legless 500 will vouch for!)


etc etc

What do you think?
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Re: Novel ideas

Post by johnglynn »

PSims wrote:So I dreamed up a new ELM challenge....Lotto - Lucky Dip.

A 10k challenge - with 49 random ways of achieving it.
You select a "lotto ball" number - I look it up on a random spreadsheet and that's the way you have to do it...so it randomises the results (or at least makes it harder/easier for some randomly).

Spreadsheet might be something like:

Ball 1 - 10k straight
Ball 2 - 1k, 1 min rest, 2k, 1 min rest, 4k, 1 min rest, 2k, 1 min, 1k
Ball 3 - 10 x 1k with rests
Ball 4 - 2 x 5k with rests
Ball 5 - 10k low SPM, below 18
Ball 6 - 10k with damper setting 1
Ball 7 - Legless 10k (no that would be too cruel as anyone doing the legless 500 will vouch for!)
etc etc

What do you think?
I think that is an interesting idea, it will completly randomize the times . But how would people show which number they completed though ?, or get access to the random spreadsheet ?
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Post by PSims »

Only way I can think of is that I create a list and keep it "secret".
Sort it randomly. You post a message with a ball number on here, I then look up the challenge and give it to you to do. That number is then yours - no-one else can have the same one - so I put your name in the spreadsheet to "reserve" it. You would have to pick a number for me though!

How about a bonus ball - again similar - but it adds a random number of metres to the end of the challenge (e.g. anything from 50m to 1000m) to randomly handicap you - perhaps some of them would be negative metres - to give an advantage?

e.g. You pick ball 13 and bonus ball 7

I look it up as:

13 = 5 x 2,000m with 1 min rests
Bonus 7 = -500m

so your challenge is:

4 x 2000m + 1 x 1,500m with 1 min rests.

Sound like fun?

(If not how about 1/2 marathon legless? :twisted: )
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Post by Thomas W-P »

So, is anyone going to bite the bullet and delete their old challenges? It looks like we are a bit stuck here.

I would like to enter my Bull's Eye challenge, but that would be the 48th challenge!

Maybe we need another league "Free Spirits Fun" - to go with "Free Spirits Extreme" and the current "Free Spirits" which seems to be "Free Spirits racing"
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Post by Stan »

Just deleted 3 expired challenges of mine just to get things started.
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Post by Thomas W-P »

Well done. I think that the whole point is to delete old challenges to keep it fresh (I know some are used as benchmarks for others, but not many) - this way the standings change and it incentivises people to try and score.

I think it will be fun when my HM challenge expires and I can dock johnglyn his hard earned 17 points ;)
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Post by Thomas W-P »

Thomas W-P wrote:Maybe we need another league "Free Spirits Fun"
I set it up. Too impatient.
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Extreme for who(m)

Post by webberg »

Is the Extreme league for the truely monstrouns metres only?

I can see that 3m plus is an awesome achievement. (Congrats to Nigel who has already blown this away).

Should we look as well at say taking your metres on joining (in my case 111k), joining date (mid June) and then set a target based on say 125% of the average weekly from there.

For example, 111k/6 wks = 18500 (ish). 125% = 23125. x (52-6) = 1,003,750. Plus the starting amount = 1,114,750.

Rounded up to say 1.2m. :twisted:

Can ELM cope with this? :?:
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Post by PSims »

If numbers are too big for ELm, we can divide them by 100 or something to make it fit. There's always a way with a bit of maths to make it work.
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