I love "The Game", never knew it was documented though. My FCN varies between 3 and 4, this morning it was 4 since I was wearing my backpack.

SCR this morning of 1. At the beginning of my commute I tracked down and dropped a younger guy that looked to be a similar FCN, +1. A few miles down a dude pulls into my route, full on shaved legs, team kit, no baggage couldn't have been more than a FCN of 1. I stayed on his wheel for about 3 miles until our routes diverged, including a decent 3/4 mile 250' climb, i'll take that as a +1. During the last 1.5 mile stretch some older guy on a touring bike with loaded rack and panniers came out of nowhere and caught me. While he didn't drop me he pulled me along at a respectable 18/19 mph clip. I probably could have overtaken him if I had encountered him earlier but we were rapidly approaching the sketchy section of my commute, passing through a major freeway on/off ramp area with heavy traffic, oh well, -1 for me, i'm sure he was playing and thinking to himself thats 1 point for me, thank you very much :lol:.

All and all a good ride, riding along with RacerX helped me come in below the 43 minute mark, lately i've been around 45 minutes.

I don't know all about these numbers and stuff. But while I don't intentionally try to pass people, I do generally ride as hard as possible - cause its a work out for me. As a result people get passed.
But anyone with a geared bike that knows how to ride can pass me on my single speed.

You learned the same lesson I did on the way home yesterday: race smarter, not (necessarily) harder.

I ride a fixie and score a 7...3 is just the starting point before modifiers.

How much growth is considered a beard?

Yup, that's about right. :D

FCN 8 here. Touring bike with fenders and bags, and SPD pedals. I wear a rodie riding suit in the winter, and baggies in the summer. Not sure if that changes anything.

D

Sooo...I need to actually install the fenders I bought for my touring bike w/panniers and wear my skirt over my lyra shorts & I'll move from a 3 to a 9. I refuse to stop shaving.

Sadly, I have no one to pass.

I did race an 18-wheeler across an intersection once though. He was waiting at the light when I pulled up in the next lane. We both looked at the same time & he gunned his engine & looked at the light. I gave him a nod. When the light turned we both took off. When he caught up to me (2 blocks later) he honked & waved. I laughed the rest of the way to work.

My FCN is a 4. I've been playing this game everyday I commute. Its fun. There's always this one guy that I play with, road bike, panniers, shorts and platform pedals. We've never spoken to each other but we know whats up. Sometimes I let him ahead of me so I can draft. But now that we are keeping score mercy will have to be thrown out the window. ;)

If hair on the legs makes a difference, I think anything beyond a couple day's stubble would count. I have a full beard, so I have no qualms giving myself that point! ;)

I'm either a 13 or a 14 on the FCN: somewhere between a fast hybrid and a MTB w/ skinnies, non-cycling clothing (I assume cargo shorts and a tee-shirt count as non-cycling and not baggies), with panniers, a beard and platform pedals. I aspire to be a 10 (toruing bike w/ mud flaps, baggies, panniers, beard and clipless pedals). Still leaves me pretty low on the food chain.

Like others, I hate to admit that I played the game even before I knew about it... at least a little. I'd feel like I'd had a victory when I passed someone who seemed (in this thread's parlance) to have a lower FCN. Having commuted through the winter, I felt I had some cheap victories for a while as the fair weather cyclists had yet to regain their form. I think the playing field is leveling out now, though, after a month or so of warmer temps.

Can't remember any particularly great "commuter game" moments in the last year or so of commuting, but as time's gone on, I've tended to pass more and more filks up the food chain from me.

I know I am stating the obvious but FCN is more correlated to stereotypes of rider/bike type than degree of difficulty of speed for ride configuration.

Sounds like the way my world goes. I am so happy to see another cyclist I don't care if they are passing me or vice versa. The last time I saw another cyclist, she was headed the other way, was in November, but, then again, I ride year round.
My FCN came out to be 17. At least, that is my best guess. Where does a Xtracycle w/e-assist come in at?

Me too.

Ahh, I remember those days.

Nothing better than hitching 40 or 50 pounds of trailer and kid to a twenty-year-old squeaky Peugeot, wearing clothing too crappy for high-school gym class, then dropping someone in full kit on a carbon fiber bike with disk wheels, going by too fast to even read the brand name of his bike.

Although dropping someone trying to play The Game with you is good, too, when you've developed a slow leak and you're rolling on a flat rear tire. I did that earlier this week. I was on my road bike, not the commuter, but still, it was The Game.

I was rolling along and passed a guy who really didn't like it, so he started hammering and tried to drop me back. After riding about 50 miles with about 7 more to go, I didn't really care, so I just kept spinning away. About this time I noted my rear tire getting mushy. But lo and behold, I started gaining as he ran out of gas and I passed him again, and he redid the hammer-and-pass. Third time I passed him we were going up a slight climb, my tire was almost completely flat (had barely enough air to keep the rim off the pavement) and I dropped him for good. At the top of the climb he was a good 1/4 mile back. With just a couple of miles left in my ride, I figured that was a good time to do a two mile high-tempo interval. Hey, I had to get home before my tire went totally flat. Right? :D

Funny, I had almost the same thing happen to me on the way home tonight. Except that it was the kid's trailer that was losing air. I wish it had been my rear tire since it had been rubbing against the chain stay starting at about mile 30. That's when I noticed it anyway. I'd been passing and getting passed by this same guy through two counties. Finally the tire on trailer just tore completely off and thank god it did. The noise scared the crap out of that Lance wannabe. I took advantage of his momentary confusion and dropped him for good. Junior was crying but heck he'll be proud of Dad once the social services people let him come back home.

haahahahaha

Totally. My girlfriend also thinks it's sexist because it grants FCN points for having a beard, which she can't grow; and for having unshaven legs, which make a very different statement on a woman than on a man, bike or no.

And what's with the beard derision? I'm not sure that facial hair should count until it becomes so large and magnificent that it actually starts to slow you down. BikesnobNYC mocks beards frequently, and I can't for the life of me figure out why.

Ditto, almost. I rarely ride as hard as possible, but I certainly ride hard enough to sweat and breath heavily. And it turns out that this is faster than most people ride, in the city at least. Sometimes I'll come up behind someone who's riding barely slower than me, and as often as not I'll just slow down and hang behind them until our paths diverge rather than hammer down so that I can pass within a reasonable passing distance.

It's a hipster affectation. ;) And since I see you're in Alaska, 'hipsters' are faddish and pretentious kids in NYC who ride tarck fixies.

They probably cant grow one,all they got is fuzz.

im a 5 on my 1x7 and a 4 on my fixed. i have no beard.

I think a lot of the discrepancy in fixie FCN is in how they word their scoring (I find quite a few holes in their scoring). I think they mean real track bikes score ahead of hairy legged roadies, and 75% of our fixies, no matter how fashionable do not. Though I may have white V's and other steezy gear, I give myself the benefit of a higher FCN due to treating my bike like a beater. This may be the most ridiculous four sentences I've ever written, but just sayin...

Waiting at the stop light of a major intersection. Fellow on a shiny new specialized city bike/hybrid blows the light. Immediate primal attack instinct kicks in as I wait for the light to turn. Green light, uphill sprint, locked onto target ~90m away. I overtake and continue on my way. Victory #1.

Me: FCN 13 (MTB skinny slicks, street clothes, beard, platforms, backpack)

Well, well, on my Dahon commuter with helmet, beard, briefcase on a rear rack I counted as a pannier, and ordinary nerd clothes I have an FCN of 14. It would be 15 if I flip the pedals and go without the PowerGrips which I counted as toe clips. Most of you better hope I never pass you 'cause you will not only lose The Game, the Earth will open up and swallow you! Virtually everyone out there is tasty prey. Alas, no one rides my route at the same time I do so no Game for me.

Recreational riding doesn't count but my favorite passing story was on a ride from my home to our Saturday lunch restaurant on a local bike trail. I did not know about the Game at the time and technically I was the one that got passed, but you be the judge. I was riding along and noticed someone who would have been a 5 or less ahead of me. The odd thing was that I seemed to be gaining on him and without making any effort to do so. Due to some turns and an underpass I lost sight of him and then suddenly there he is and I am shooting right past him. Ok, he had pulled off at a rest stop and was sitting as I passed, no glory for me! I continue on my way negotiating a few busy road crossings at lights and then open up my pace a bit on a long road free section of the trail. As I am well into that I hear "On your left" and my roadie friend slides past at a pace I would expect from the species. But he gets about 10 meters in front of me and stalls and I am still not changing my personal effort to affect the outcome of this encounter. And he is really stuck there, we go this way for a few miles without any change in relative position. At one point I deduct style points from him because he hits a dead squirrel, with both wheels, that I easily dodge even though my view of it was blocked until the last moment by his wheezing carcass while he should have been able to see it a long way off. Just before I reach the point where I need to turn off towards the restaurant he does manage to open the gap to about 50 meter, but by cheating. We overtake a rolling roadblock of a dad, a couple of moms, and a cloud of orbiting offspring. He bullies through while I announce my presence, slow to allow them to reign in the young-'uns, and then pass only when the way is cleared. It is less than a mile before my turnoff now and he undoubtedly scores this as a victory but I note that now that I am not only 10 meters behind him to remind him of how frail his grasp on victory is his pace has dropped off again and that 50 meters is steadily shrinking....

Ken

the beard: it's wind resistance. you're un-aero. shaaaaaave it SHAAAAAAAAAVE FOR THE WIND RESISTY

yes, i said resisty.

those of you who think the game takes the enjoyment out of the ride: don't take it too seriously :) imagine you're a giddy shark (a cannibalistic breed, they are) and you see other giddy sharks. You're riding along teehee la lala CHOMP!!! time to maniacally eat your rival *dances* it's all in good fun and there's no need to break out the crazy on every other cyclist. the roadie hate* is funny because there's a lot of racing out of context there. there's no telling how long they've already been at it, or how long they have left on their rides.

*-roadie hate: only as serious as you make it. "if i can beat him, i must kick ass!"

I'm a 12 it looks like.

My story's similar to ACHOO's

I once caught a carbon cervelo (didn't note the shave factor) on a mup pulling a trailer with my 3 year old. I could hear my BB disintegrating as I did it, too. That has to be extra points... my FCN was growing with every revolution! :)

, Hearing the loud crunchings of my bearings, he turned around surprised and said "I would have gone faster If I knew you were there." I said "I know." and eased up.

It's a fun game. I think I knew the rules even before seeing that link. My house rules include apparent age as a factor.

Bah...
You whupped him. He should have taken his defeat gracefully..:D

Sweet, i'm a 16. That's pretty bad, hey? Seems pretty skewed though, and it doesn't account for a lot of stuff..

I mean in the UK where e-bikes are limited to 20kph, sure, maybe they belong at the bottom. But here for instance, they go up to 35kph, and accelerate and hold that speed easily. That puts e-bikes well above the bottom of the list.

And yeah, its not balanced for the sexes either.

In the end though, isn't it silly anyways?

Of course I chase people down. It's fun!
Since more people are riding now, I have more chase chances. It's no fun in crappy weather when all I'm doing is trying to get somewhere in one piece. But nice weather, it's on! Usually I can pass all the other women on my route, except for one but she doesn't count b/c she's all kitted out with no luggage (but if I wasn't commuting...hehe). I tend to try to chase down the men b/c it's more of a challenge. I can catch some of them on the hills because I'm a pretty good climber and that is always a sweet victory, passing someone on a hill and they never get caught up...yessssssssss!

Didn't know it was official, but I've always said there's two rules to bike commuting.

1. Never let on when you're racing.

2. You're always racing.

I'm guilty as charged since I will commuter race at times with other cyclists, but mostly it's the urban combat commute with motorists that keeps pushing my limit all the time. My commuter bikes and I are definite wolves in sheep's clothing when all the stops are pulled out, since those rush hour motorists won't wait around long for any lollygaggers.

So, once again this morning... 1 other cyclist the whole route. A girl, riding to middle school.

I'm facing a serious lack of prey here, people!