JumboRider
06-14-07, 11:05 AM
Many of you know about the Fat Cyclist and his website, www.fatcyclist.com. He has an ongoing contest challenge called B7 that started January of this year. I love the concept of the challenge very much and am sorry that I did not get into biking early enough to officially join. I know the Historian has been doing the B7 challenge for fun on the side.
What I would like to do is offer the challenge to my Clyde and Athena friends here. Those that enter the Jumbo Rider version of the B7 challenge by June 31st 2007 will be eligible to win a Fat Cyclist jersey. The rules follow below and the end date for the challenge is January 1, 2008. I am also in the running for the jersey.
Rules
The principle behind the B7 Challenge is pretty simple. You need to do a comparatively better job of losing weight than the other B7 competitors. You don't have to lose the most - just lose the highest percentage of a reasonable weight loss goal.
You must first be a bicyclist, either experienced, returning or new, and ready to make a serious effort to lose some weight.
But you have to do it without hurting your performance. Ya see, it’s nice to lose weight, but everybody can starve themselves. That isn't good enough. No, we want you to be a better biker. So you can’t just lose weight, you need to do it in a healthy enough manner that your time trial performance improves or at least doesn’t get worse. Here’s how to play.
1) Go weigh yourself by June 30.
2) By June 30 select a 3 mile course you will be able to ride flat out, without stopping. You will need to be able to ride this course again on a monthly basis. Time yourself on it.
3) Set a weight loss goal you intend to meet by January 1st expressing it in terms of how many pounds you intend to lose (i.e. “I will lose 25 pounds by January 1) and then post your information in a PM to jumborider – starting weight, goal weight, 3 mile TT time. It wouldn’t hurt if you posted a start photo, and any useful personal details (e.g. "won TdF seven times, still get no respect" and the like). Make it a good goal – 10% of your bodyweight, for instance, assuming you’re carrying enough fat to make that reasonable. The jumborider reserves the right to tell you that your goal isn't high enough... there's no sandbagging for prizes here.
4) No later than the 15th of each month, you need to post your new weight, Time Trial time, and score by pm to jumborider. Fatty will create an online tool that makes it easy for you to do this. The tool is located HERE. (http://www.fatcyclist.com/b7) Tool usage information can be found HERE (http://www.fatcyclist.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=457).
5) This is an honor system, folks. Don't cheat. The only person you are screwing if you cheat is yourself, and the other competitors. So don't do it.
6) Your score – both at the intermediate weight postings and for a final grade will be the (percentage of your weight loss goal achieved) + (percentage of time trial improvement).
For example, if your goal was to lose 20 pounds, and you lost 10, you’d score “50″, as in 50%. If you rode a 10 minute three mile initially, and dropped a minute from the score (9:00) then you would score “10″ for a 10% improvement. Your total score would be 50+10, or 60 total. The winner will be the person with the highest aggregate score of weight loss goal, plus TT improvement.
7. Now here’s the thing. We aren’t going to have sandbaggers here. I'm not kidding. If you weight 250 and your goal is to lose 10 pounds, we don’t want you. That’s too easy. You could do that by eating some bran flakes for breakfast, and trimming your toenails then holding your breath next time you get on the scale. But if you are 250 and want to lose 25, that’s a reasonable goal. Likewise, if you weigh 165, and want to lose 15 to improve your climbing, and you’re a 5′11″ stickboy already, we’ll consider it. Since Fatty's got about $70 worth of skin in the game for each and every contestant, his decision's final.
Likewise, we don’t want to see any sand bagging 14 minute TT’s, unless you weigh 325 pounds and haven’t ridden in years, have one leg, or are blind and rode the TT with a white cane because your guide dog was laid up with gout. We want you to stretch, folks. You don't ride a bike because it's the easy way out, you ride because it's a challenge. And you'll note the title to this little hogfarm hootenanny is the B7 Challenge. If it was easy, it wouldn't be worth doing.
Actually, scratch that one legged time trial thing. Andy May, Brett Wolfe and a few other guys do just fine on one leg. Matter of fact, Andy May is downright amazing. And come to think of it, Katie Compton piloted a paralympics tandem for a blind stoker. Okay, so enough of the exceptions. There are no exceptions. Do your best on the TT, use your judgment and don't stroke out or anything, but if you aren't close to puking at the end of it you didn't try hard enough.
Okay, belay that fellowship comment. By fellowship, I mean sheer bike-borne trash talking interspersed with an occasional supportive comment.
Naturally, we take no responsibility for you riding or dieting yourself into the ground in this contest. It's not a for-profit venture, it's a bunch of friends sync-ing up their training and having an informal support group. Get checked out by a doc if you have any doubts about your ability to do this, or if you haven't been checked out in a few years. Ride safe. Eat healthy. And like all other things you do when you ride, understand you assume all the risk. That is you personally are responsible for not hurting yourself here, you personally are responsible for trying hard, getting your information in on time every month, sticking to your diet as well as you can, and riding / cross training lots between now and next spring. The beauty of riding is that you can't really blame anybody else for your performance - it is all on you. Do well in a race or in your diet, it's your own fault. Stink the joint up, that's your fault too. The bike doesn't permit lies, it finds us all out in the end, measures all that we are capable of giving at all times. And that's the beauty of it, because it is true, it shows us how high we can reach. Or in the case of dieting off some weight to pursue better performance, it shows us how low we're willing to sink in order to ride better. In that way, we're all prisoners of the road. If we can get thin enough though, we can drop last year's legirons and shackles, at least for a few months.
Good luck.
(Rules, Idea, etc. ripped off of the Fat Cyclist with his permission)
Addendums:
I Foul Weather Rules
1. The monthly weigh-ins remain mandatory. There's no reason you can't do your weigh-ins every single month. If you skip a month, you've lost our bet and owe me whatever you've bet me.
2. The monthly TT becomes mandatory when weather permits.
A word of advice to those who haven't done their first TT yet: do it as soon as you can. I assume you're training already, and so the later you do your TT, the less likely you're going to see a big improvement on your final score.
II Max Weight Loss Score of 110
B7 Calculator -- the maximum score you can get in the B7 challenge is 110.
In practical terms, this means -- to me -- that if I get to 145lbs, I get a weightloss score of 110. If I get to 144, I still get a 110. If I get to 89lbs, I still get a 110.
By putting an upper limit on the score you can get by simply losing weight, it becomes very important to be fit -- not just skinny.
What I would like to do is offer the challenge to my Clyde and Athena friends here. Those that enter the Jumbo Rider version of the B7 challenge by June 31st 2007 will be eligible to win a Fat Cyclist jersey. The rules follow below and the end date for the challenge is January 1, 2008. I am also in the running for the jersey.
Rules
The principle behind the B7 Challenge is pretty simple. You need to do a comparatively better job of losing weight than the other B7 competitors. You don't have to lose the most - just lose the highest percentage of a reasonable weight loss goal.
You must first be a bicyclist, either experienced, returning or new, and ready to make a serious effort to lose some weight.
But you have to do it without hurting your performance. Ya see, it’s nice to lose weight, but everybody can starve themselves. That isn't good enough. No, we want you to be a better biker. So you can’t just lose weight, you need to do it in a healthy enough manner that your time trial performance improves or at least doesn’t get worse. Here’s how to play.
1) Go weigh yourself by June 30.
2) By June 30 select a 3 mile course you will be able to ride flat out, without stopping. You will need to be able to ride this course again on a monthly basis. Time yourself on it.
3) Set a weight loss goal you intend to meet by January 1st expressing it in terms of how many pounds you intend to lose (i.e. “I will lose 25 pounds by January 1) and then post your information in a PM to jumborider – starting weight, goal weight, 3 mile TT time. It wouldn’t hurt if you posted a start photo, and any useful personal details (e.g. "won TdF seven times, still get no respect" and the like). Make it a good goal – 10% of your bodyweight, for instance, assuming you’re carrying enough fat to make that reasonable. The jumborider reserves the right to tell you that your goal isn't high enough... there's no sandbagging for prizes here.
4) No later than the 15th of each month, you need to post your new weight, Time Trial time, and score by pm to jumborider. Fatty will create an online tool that makes it easy for you to do this. The tool is located HERE. (http://www.fatcyclist.com/b7) Tool usage information can be found HERE (http://www.fatcyclist.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=457).
5) This is an honor system, folks. Don't cheat. The only person you are screwing if you cheat is yourself, and the other competitors. So don't do it.
6) Your score – both at the intermediate weight postings and for a final grade will be the (percentage of your weight loss goal achieved) + (percentage of time trial improvement).
For example, if your goal was to lose 20 pounds, and you lost 10, you’d score “50″, as in 50%. If you rode a 10 minute three mile initially, and dropped a minute from the score (9:00) then you would score “10″ for a 10% improvement. Your total score would be 50+10, or 60 total. The winner will be the person with the highest aggregate score of weight loss goal, plus TT improvement.
7. Now here’s the thing. We aren’t going to have sandbaggers here. I'm not kidding. If you weight 250 and your goal is to lose 10 pounds, we don’t want you. That’s too easy. You could do that by eating some bran flakes for breakfast, and trimming your toenails then holding your breath next time you get on the scale. But if you are 250 and want to lose 25, that’s a reasonable goal. Likewise, if you weigh 165, and want to lose 15 to improve your climbing, and you’re a 5′11″ stickboy already, we’ll consider it. Since Fatty's got about $70 worth of skin in the game for each and every contestant, his decision's final.
Likewise, we don’t want to see any sand bagging 14 minute TT’s, unless you weigh 325 pounds and haven’t ridden in years, have one leg, or are blind and rode the TT with a white cane because your guide dog was laid up with gout. We want you to stretch, folks. You don't ride a bike because it's the easy way out, you ride because it's a challenge. And you'll note the title to this little hogfarm hootenanny is the B7 Challenge. If it was easy, it wouldn't be worth doing.
Actually, scratch that one legged time trial thing. Andy May, Brett Wolfe and a few other guys do just fine on one leg. Matter of fact, Andy May is downright amazing. And come to think of it, Katie Compton piloted a paralympics tandem for a blind stoker. Okay, so enough of the exceptions. There are no exceptions. Do your best on the TT, use your judgment and don't stroke out or anything, but if you aren't close to puking at the end of it you didn't try hard enough.
Okay, belay that fellowship comment. By fellowship, I mean sheer bike-borne trash talking interspersed with an occasional supportive comment.
Naturally, we take no responsibility for you riding or dieting yourself into the ground in this contest. It's not a for-profit venture, it's a bunch of friends sync-ing up their training and having an informal support group. Get checked out by a doc if you have any doubts about your ability to do this, or if you haven't been checked out in a few years. Ride safe. Eat healthy. And like all other things you do when you ride, understand you assume all the risk. That is you personally are responsible for not hurting yourself here, you personally are responsible for trying hard, getting your information in on time every month, sticking to your diet as well as you can, and riding / cross training lots between now and next spring. The beauty of riding is that you can't really blame anybody else for your performance - it is all on you. Do well in a race or in your diet, it's your own fault. Stink the joint up, that's your fault too. The bike doesn't permit lies, it finds us all out in the end, measures all that we are capable of giving at all times. And that's the beauty of it, because it is true, it shows us how high we can reach. Or in the case of dieting off some weight to pursue better performance, it shows us how low we're willing to sink in order to ride better. In that way, we're all prisoners of the road. If we can get thin enough though, we can drop last year's legirons and shackles, at least for a few months.
Good luck.
(Rules, Idea, etc. ripped off of the Fat Cyclist with his permission)
Addendums:
I Foul Weather Rules
1. The monthly weigh-ins remain mandatory. There's no reason you can't do your weigh-ins every single month. If you skip a month, you've lost our bet and owe me whatever you've bet me.
2. The monthly TT becomes mandatory when weather permits.
A word of advice to those who haven't done their first TT yet: do it as soon as you can. I assume you're training already, and so the later you do your TT, the less likely you're going to see a big improvement on your final score.
II Max Weight Loss Score of 110
B7 Calculator -- the maximum score you can get in the B7 challenge is 110.
In practical terms, this means -- to me -- that if I get to 145lbs, I get a weightloss score of 110. If I get to 144, I still get a 110. If I get to 89lbs, I still get a 110.
By putting an upper limit on the score you can get by simply losing weight, it becomes very important to be fit -- not just skinny.