35dollars wrote: »

@Jakess1971 @TheBigYin

Reading back over the thread, there were a number of posts about "confirming" rides and then a later one about being all automated. Being a neophyte to all this, can you confirm whether there's anything I need to do for my rides other than load them into Strava via Garmin Connect, or does the automation cover everything now?

It's all automatic on the logging front - the wonderful CycLeagues routine even weeds out rides that are indoor/virtual and doesn't add them into the reckoning for this particular challenge. I'll be doing a few random "audit check" type of inspections, just to ensure that the rides do have complete GPS backups, and that the speeds and distances aren't skewed by (say) forgetting to turn the Garmin off, then jumping on a Express train for 300km before riding the last 5km back home. Don't laugh - that's actually what someone did by accident a couple of years ago...

Anything that I notice to be wrong, I'll most likely start a "TdF - Checks and Queries Thread" where I'll publish the problem, suggest a fix to the person and flag it as fixed - just to keep all the "fiddling about" all open, transparent to all and above board...

35dollars wrote: »

And on a similar tack, reading back over some of the older threads, are the "one ride per day" and/or "one ride per weekend" rules in effect for this one as well?

Nope - the one-ride rule was for the Classics Challenge - nothing to do with this one - the whole ethos of the Classics Challenge was to try and replicate a typical Spring Classic - i.e. go out for a long, long, long, cold, miserable weather ride and earn your food and drink bonuses. Not just pootle down to work, then out to the shops and back, then back home from work...

For those of you regulars wondering "when's he going to open the TdF 2016 Logging Thread - senile old bleeders forgotten it again...." - no, I haven't. Hopefully there isn't going to have to be one for this challenge, or for the rest going forwards...

Instead, everyone in the various Teams has to be a member of CycLeagues - and, CycLeagues basically does around 70% of the smart-stuff for me now.

It takes a Strava feed, for a specific set of riders, weeds out any "non cycling" activities, bins "virtual rides" or "indoor cycling" and basically just keeps the outdoor, GPS logged rides. It then aggregates them together into a total for each day of the Tour, for each rider - in Kilometres and Metres (even if the rider is logging their rides in the quaint/archaic Miles and feet). And, then, as if that's not enough, it also pushes everyones ride data out into a text file that is parsed by a variation on the "logging spreadsheet" that most of the regulars are familiar with...

here's an excerpt from the "giro" logging text for my rides (and a couple from riders before and after me, as an example...

308,Pastana,Thomas Seest,667197,day 18,2016-05-26,0.0,0.0,0,[]
308,Pastana,Thomas Seest,667197,day 19,2016-05-27,0.0,0.0,0,[]
308,Pastana,Thomas Seest,667197,day 20,2016-05-28,58.4911,37.7,12128,[http://www.strava.com/activities/591197778]
308,Pastana,Thomas Seest,667197,day 21,2016-05-29,35.0243,25.2,6862,[http://www.strava.com/activities/592508651]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 01,2016-05-06,23.0535,205.0,3614,[http://www.strava.com/activities/567147098]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 02,2016-05-07,34.0302,350.0,5627,[http://www.strava.com/activities/568181779]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 03,2016-05-08,68.6911,433.0,10698,[http://www.strava.com/activities/569415850]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 04,2016-05-10,21.0776,152.0,4130,[http://www.strava.com/activities/571419311]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 05,2016-05-11,29.531301,206.0,6016,[http://www.strava.com/activities/572508549]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 06,2016-05-12,0.0,0.0,0,[]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 07,2016-05-13,20.8582,126.0,4257,[http://www.strava.com/activities/574609530]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 08,2016-05-14,53.840397,516.0,8964,[http://www.strava.com/activities/575569060]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 09,2016-05-15,41.640602,399.0,7449,[http://www.strava.com/activities/576628162]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 10,2016-05-17,23.087,199.0,4006,[http://www.strava.com/activities/578836104]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 11,2016-05-18,24.0612,130.0,4793,[http://www.strava.com/activities/580093507]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 12,2016-05-19,34.0729,316.0,5630,[http://www.strava.com/activities/580996253]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 13,2016-05-20,19.7256,149.0,3044,[http://www.strava.com/activities/582114389]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 14,2016-05-21,30.913,248.0,6427,[http://www.strava.com/activities/582977499]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 15,2016-05-22,80.5686,414.0,13204,[http://www.strava.com/activities/584221848]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 16,2016-05-24,33.2993,319.0,5684,[http://www.strava.com/activities/586327605]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 17,2016-05-25,19.718,169.0,3184,[http://www.strava.com/activities/587429903]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 18,2016-05-26,19.7001,146.0,3344,[http://www.strava.com/activities/588446182]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 19,2016-05-27,31.667,297.0,5087,[http://www.strava.com/activities/589690211]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 20,2016-05-28,82.2145,463.0,12993,[http://www.strava.com/activities/590712963]
309,Pastana,Mark Burrows,165533,day 21,2016-05-29,32.8591,320.0,5491,[http://www.strava.com/activities/591724249]
311,Pie ProCycling,David Alavezos,666136,day 01,2016-05-06,0.0,0.0,0,[]

Now, the Mk2 Auto-Logging Spreadsheet takes over, and distributes this data into the individual rider "tabs", saving me going into each entry of the 36 riders every day and keying in the distance, ascent and duration of the ride. All the other data in this spreadsheet came from those three simple figures, repeated over and over for 21 days, for 36 people. You may not believe this, but simply keying in those 2,268 entries probably consumed around at least a hour per day of my time - 30 minutes each morning to catch up with the American riders from the previous day, then 15 minutes in the afternoon to book my own ride in (and any bits between the morning post and this point), and then, probably another 15 minutes in the evening, to try and give the US riders an idea of how things were standing before they went out for their rides that day.

Now, it should be fairly "up to date" - the Google Spreadsheet "back end engine" (the bit that handles parsing external data files) appears to automatically update itself roughly hourly (with no real setting for me to automate it to go any faster/slower - though I do have a way to do a "forced refresh" but it involves having access to the spreadsheet on a decent computer - so not something I'd necessarily do from a mobile / tablet if I was away from home...)

So - What does this mean to you...

1) No more manual logging - no more of those templates that I used to insist on for your data submissions.

2) No more having to view your Strava stuff in those funny "metric" things that you don't understand.

3) The Logging Spreadsheet should always be no more than a hour or so out of date... if it hasn't added your ride 3 hours after you have seen it on Strava, then the chances are that the Hamster that operates the CycLeagues server has fallen off its wheel again, and Jason may need to go in and give it a prod... If this happens over one of Jason's "epic ride weekends" then, well, simply calm down, leave it to catch up when he gets home, and "just ride" - to be honest, going to manual updates for the intrim would break so many formulae theres no way I'm going to even think of going there...

4) IF theres an issue with one of your rides being either missed or declared when it shouldn't be, then give Jason or Myself a PM and we'll try and resolve the problem - the chances are, it's because your ride was originally "booked into" Strava as something other than an outdoor ride, and you've subsequently changed it... All's not lost - we CAN pretty much fix anything. What I MAY decide to do, is have a thread instead of the "logging thread" called "TdF 2016 Logging Anomalies and Resolutions" - where you can post queries on what's gone wrong with your ride, and Jason and myself can post "this is what was wrong, you berk... here's how we've fixed it, now don't do it again..."
Seriously though folks - a thread of that nature would keep all the "error reporting" in one place, AND be a repository for information on what CAN go wrong for others who have the same problem. It'd also provide a clear reason if/why we have to go in and change any of the formulae in the spreadsheet...


So... before we roll out tomorrow... Anyone got any questions about anything challenge related ??

brilliant explanation Jas I was hoping you'd chime in with that sort of thing - I didn't want to start trying to explain you're chunk of the whole process, as I'd probably get something wrong and then you'd only end up having to type twice as much to correct me...

I can testify as to how easy it is to remove dupe. entries - I've been testing a Garmin 520 and a 810 alongside my ageing 800 recently, and there's been loads of dupes coming through that I've had to zapp. for the duration of the challenge, I think I'm now happy enough to only update the 520 and keep the 800 as a complete backup, not attaching it to a computer unless something goes wrong big-time with the 520. Instead I'll just plug the 800 into a wall-charger to top off the battery and keep it as a backup recording device - there's loads of memory onboard to cope with a months worth of riding (at my distances and durations at least).

Just considering Potential Server Upgrades...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEKXaPU4gxE