2016 MFP Grand Tour Challenge - Vuelta Now Up and Rolling...
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heads up for my fellow Pastana team-mates... tomorrow may be tricky for me getting a ride in ...
Do what you gotta do! Today may be tricky for me. Tonight will be spent prepping bike and gear for tomorrow's 10 mile TT. I have to ride, but time and other things to do may dictate an indoor ride. Tomorrow will definitely have some kms, but probably not much more than 30-40 since all I'll have is the 16km for the race plus another 10-15 for warmup.
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Scored a road bike! It's too big but not so big I can't ride it. Did a tiny ride to be sure. Will ride at sunrise tomorrow (as it's going to 107 today). I haven't been on a road bike in EONS and I already broke a nail trying to shift (I hate Shimano! I want my Campy!). At least I'm not a zero today!5
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nerdieprofessor wrote: »Scored a road bike! It's too big but not so big I can't ride it. Did a tiny ride to be sure. Will ride at sunrise tomorrow (as it's going to 107 today). I haven't been on a road bike in EONS and I already broke a nail trying to shift (I hate Shimano! I want my Campy!). At least I'm not a zero today!
Hmmmmm, maybe you need to get rid of the nails, or get di2 shifters :-)0 -
nerdieprofessor wrote: »Scored a road bike! It's too big but not so big I can't ride it. Did a tiny ride to be sure. Will ride at sunrise tomorrow (as it's going to 107 today). I haven't been on a road bike in EONS and I already broke a nail trying to shift (I hate Shimano! I want my Campy!). At least I'm not a zero today!
Hmmmmm, maybe you need to get rid of the nails, or get di2 shifters :-)
It's a rental so I had no choice. And I cut my nails short a few days ago. At home I mostly ride a hybrid with grip shift, and when I'm on MY road bike, I have Campy, which doesn't have this stupid two levers right together design. Maybe this will motivate me to ride my road bike when I get home. I've neglected it for ages.
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nerdieprofessor wrote: »
#firstworldproblems #tourchallenge I'm in Las Vegas for work. I arranged to rent a mountain bike from the only place that will deliver to my (any) hotel. The nice man, Matt, brought their three smallest mountain bikes (I'm 5'1") in combinations of full suspension/hardtail, S/XS. He even brought SPD pedals for me. I cannot stand over the top tube of any of them. Not a one. <WHINE> He's going to measure the stand over height of their smallest road bike and if that might work, he'll come back. I am not the shortest person on earth! I am definitely not the only woman or short person who rides bikes. Why does BMC only have tall people bikes? (They are a BMC only place, it seems). Their smallest road bike is a 51cm so it's unlikely to work for me either. My road bike is 47cm and I've ridden a 48cm before, but 51cm is likely going to be too tall for me to get over. <WHINE> It's not like I ride a child's bike?!?!?!?!
I am 5'4" and I have bikes that range from 48cm to 52cm. Ntnunk took my Felt when I bought my Bianchi and he is 5'9". I rode that bike for 2 years and he loves the fit. Never quite understood how many different sizes I could own.
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I'm going to be out for another day or so yet. I had a hornet get under my glasses and I was stung 3 times before I could get it out. I have some swelling and am resting up for a few days so that I can get back on the bike sooner rather than later.
Oh that sounds horrible! I hope your feeling better
Thanks @jillyian after quite a bit of benadryl, ibuprofen and a tetanus shot later my eye is no longer swollen and I was able to ride today which was quite the treat.0 -
I just checked CycLeagues and the TdF spreadsheet. Neither one picked up todays ride activity https://www.strava.com/activities/640104689. I finished this at 3pm my time it is now 6:30 and it is still not up.0
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CycLeagues: Background Strava pull fell on it's *kitten* at 4:32pm GMT yesterday, only just noticed, now back up and running.
Lovely Strava based error:
java.net.UnknownHostException: www.strava.com
at java.net.AbstractPlainSocketImpl.connect(Unknown Source)
at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connect(Unknown Source)
at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(Unknown Source)
at java.net.Socket.connect(Unknown Source)
at sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.connect(Unknown Source)
at sun.security.ssl.BaseSSLSocketImpl.connect(Unknown Source)
at sun.net.NetworkClient.doConnect(Unknown Source)
at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.openServer(Unknown Source)
at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.openServer(Unknown Source)
at sun.net.www.protocol.https.HttpsClient.<init>(Unknown Source)
at sun.net.www.protocol.https.HttpsClient.New(Unknown Source)
What I do intend on doing come post September is implement an automated recovery mechanism that should get round the manual restart.
Let's be thankful this hasn't yet happened while I've been away on tour.2 -
So, today I finally got enough info from a security guard and a valet parking worker and managed to exit the hotel with my bike via a parking deck so I didn't have to go out on the Strip (Las Vegas Boulevard). The down side? All that climbing I had to do in the parking deck did not get measured by GPS. Hmph.0
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Happy birthday, TBY!
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Happened again, July 14th activity https://www.strava.com/activities/641054733 not picked up by CycLeagues and I finished that ride at 1330 hrs PST. Does the site not like me anymore???0
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You know I don't know why I bother when people complain so bl&0dy quickly, this is a free sodding service, seriously I'm just setting off for a long weekends riding and I get these really annoying comments, it's a beta process FFS!!!!!
Not happy!!!!0 -
The above activity finally posted to the league and tour spreadsheet. Is it now going to take 6/7 hours for my data to post? I check this everyday, started having problems on the 13th.0
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anaconda469 wrote: »The above activity finally posted to the league and tour spreadsheet. Is it now going to take 6/7 hours for my data to post? I check this everyday, started having problems on the 13th.
Quite frankly use the door, idiotic comments about a free system set up for a community are not welcome and neither are you, thanks for being a royal pain in the *kitten* and putting me in the worse mood before setting off for a tour!0 -
anaconda469 wrote: »The above activity finally posted to the league and tour spreadsheet. Is it now going to take 6/7 hours for my data to post? I check this everyday, started having problems on the 13th.
Bad mouthing a service that is there to help others and make life easier like you did in your status feed is a dick move, and you Susan are a dick, sling you hook, just wish I was near a PC so I could kick your *kitten* off the Strava and MFP groups.
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anaconda469 wrote: »Happened again, July 14th activity https://www.strava.com/activities/641054733 not picked up by CycLeagues and I finished that ride at 1330 hrs PST. Does the site not like me anymore???anaconda469 wrote: »The above activity finally posted to the league and tour spreadsheet. Is it now going to take 6/7 hours for my data to post? I check this everyday, started having problems on the 13th.
can I just ask for a little patience here everyone...
first of all, this is, as Jason says, a free service - the CycLeagues system has been written from the ground up by Jason, he's paying for the hosting of the service out of his own pocket, certainly more than we pay a month for a premium Strava account...
Second - the whole process is not quite as simple as just "book your ride in on Strava and it magically appears", at least to those of us who have some access "under the hood"
First of all, there's a process that checks Strava on a very regular basis - just "looks to see if there's been an update by anyone who's a member of the CycLeagues group". If it sees an update, then this triggers a routine to pull over that ride into the Cycleagues Database.
Second, once in the database, theres more manipulation done - so the ride can be allocated against various different challenges - so, only rides by the riders on the TdF challenge are allocated to that "pool", and are spit out into a text file that the google spreadsheet works on.
Once in that TXT file, the google spreadsheet goes to work - Google keep their terms of service a little vague, but say that links to external files are refreshed approximately once per hour, though they reserve the right to vary that frequency, especially if the update is an intensive one (it's to stop people using a Google sheet as a once-per-minute stock ticker or suchlike...)
And finally, once the raw data is in the spreadsheet, it passes out into the summary, leaderboard and all the other pages. HOWEVER, all the formatting, checking of consecutive rides for the "ride every day of the tour" bit, sorting of the leaderboard into the various jerseys and allocating points for the combined - well - that relies on manual intervention from me - and if I'm not in front of a computer, then it won't get done.
the problem we've had is that the very first stage - the "paging Strava" process is hosted at the moment on a server that occasionally "hangs/falls over" - this server is at Jasons place of work, not at a paid server farm, so, basically only he can give the system the "nudge" it needs - I believe this was done for simplicity in the first instance, because of the "beta test" nature of the whole system - I know that I've discussed it with him, and getting it onto a server that's more robust IS something that's definitely "on the list", but will require more time, a few re-writes, and (I'm guessing here, but it's normally the case) more expenditure to upgrade the server hosting to an account that can support the additional bandwidth of the "paging" and also that will allow "real time" processes to be launched on the server.
Yes, it is an annoyance when a system fails - that it's worked faultlessly for the first 10 days, then falls over 2 days running is a bit of a nuisance - but it's hardly life or death. There's 1 person that can fix things when it goes wrong - he's doing his best, but he's here in the UK, in a different time-zone to well over half the people in the challenge. Oh - and he's away from computers or servers or anything of that nature now until Monday - so if it stops updating, the whole spreadsheet and everything else will stop changing as well - i'll do my best to keep people informed on my newsfeed, and in this thread - but PLEASE, don't *kitten*, whinge, whine, moan complain about it - because theres nothing we can do until Jason gets back to work on monday and kickstarts the server again.
Don't forget, it's free folks, and there's a couple of us giving up masses of our own time (and paying for the privilege of doing so...) to make it happen for all of you.
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oh - and one more thing - before the CycLeagues auto-poster, the spreadsheet was pretty much a once-a-day update... now it's roughly about a hour out of date, and generally tidied twice a day. Without the CycLeagues integration, I seriously doubt that the challenges would continue unless someone else took on the setting up and daily running of them.
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the work you guys do is much appreciated, its got me out more and i am even upping my speed to new levels!4
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Thanks Jason & Mark, both! The convenience of NOT having to switch Strava UOM or break out the calculator to total up multiple rides in a day for a single, manually logged entry is invaluable to me. Once the points/speed element is added in to the equation, then I'll really be over the moon.2
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Agreed; this new logging system takes out the nausea of people logging incorrectly/people failing to log at all...
Much better system and this challenge has been much better for it IMHO!
Chapeau chaps; keep up the hard work & don't lett the *kitten*holes get you down1