10th Annual Winter Warrior Challenge - Rules & Information
Hey everyone - I’m Rob! I love the cycling culture in our area, I love to see people get passionate about cycling, and I love to see the TOLEDO AREA BICYCLISTS club grow.
In conjunction with TAB and several local bike shops we are hoping to bring the you the best season of the WINTER WARRIOR CHALLENGE to date! We have scheduled some new rides and ride options that will hopefully get people excited about riding bikes and pushing the limits of their comfort zone.
Weekly prizes will include custom Winter Warrior pint glasses and select winter-themed merchandise from 45 North and other brands.
Mountain Man and Cyclewerks are also providing prizes at the finale this year and the entry for these will work the same as for the Grand Prize. A list of riders will be presented to the shops and you just have to stop and fill out a raffle ticket to be entered into the year-end raffle. Anyone can enter - the more rides you complete the more entries you receive!
The Challenge covers 22 winter rides set up like a stage race where you receive minutes of lead time when you ride or do something for the ride. You must be a current TAB member to score minutes.
The colder the temperature during the ride the more minutes you get. To get the temperature of the ride, I use the temperatures recorded at the airport from 9 to noon as reported in the Sunday Blade. If you show up and do anything less than ride to the halfway point you are awarded 1 minute. There could be exceptions to this, such as an injury requiring life flight or a frame-destroying bike failure - these will probably still get you the day’s full minute award. This will be up to the Spoke Life Cycles staff. Crying or complaining is not allowed on Winter Rides and will never get you more minutes.
You can also get the full minutes awarded to you by:
1. Supplying brunch for the riders
2. Spending the entire ride time chasing the riders around taking ride photos
3. Anything else that I feel enhances the ride experience or encourages others to come out and requires considerable effort on your part.
- If you complete half of the ride (generally to breakfast) then bail, you will be awarded 60% of the days minutes.
- If you deviate from the route to make it easier (moving from off road to pavement for example), you will be penalized a percentage of the days minutes based the percentage of the total ride miles you were off course. In no case will this penalty exceed 50% of the days’ total minutes. Remember I can be a bit grumpy.
WINNERS
- The winner will join Hubert Backes, Rick Metcalf, Allen Kraus, Ric Hummel, Jason Sheidler, Matt Cleland, Greg Rogowski, Hugh Benning, and Chris Crandall as Spartan Winter Warriors - the highest honor a TAB winter rider can achieve.
- The 2nd thru 5th place finishers will be recognized as Winter Warriors.
To compete successfully in the Winter Warrior Challenge you do not need to be fast, you need to be determined to ride and/or like to cook (see #1 above). You need a reasonable winter cycling wardrobe and need to be able to ride on any surface. It’s going to help to have several different tire types at your disposal. We will be riding on pavement, gravel, rocks, stones, dirt, mud, snow, slush, ice, leaves, and grass. Sometimes we get all of those on the same ride! Winter rides present a different challenge every week. No cue sheets are provided. On road rides you are expected to keep the group in sight. (Local bike shops have rental bikes available on a first-come, first-serve basis)
We aim to ride every Saturday regardless of the weather - usually it will take a Level 3 snow emergency for us to cancel. In that event it will be posted on the TAB Facebook page and on the TAB email by 8:00 am. We have never canceled because of rain, that is up to vote of the riders present. Remember, if we ever do cancel at the start, those present would be awarded 1 minute.
The Winter Warriors are emerging... long live the Winter Warriors!
Minutes awarded are based on the ride’s lowest temperature (F):
40 & up 2 minutes
30 to 393 minutes
20 to 294 minutes
10 to 195 minutes
0 to 9 6 minutes
-10 to -17 minutes
-20 to -118 minutes
In addition, if all Spartan Winter Warriors in attendance on a ride agree, one additional minute can be awarded to any stage for over-the-top extreme conditions other than temperature.
