It's March and it's MADNESS!

There are four challenges this year:

1) The Bracket Buster: four weeks long, a play-in round followed by a tournament of champions. This one is contingent on having a minimum of 16 sign-ups, your card will not be charged until we get the 16 runners.*

2) The Dipsy Doo Dunkaroo: the whole month raw total challenge- 28 days of stacking vertical non-stop. Can you get 100k of vert? Make Dicky V proud!

3) The Diaper Dandy: the one week raw total challenge. You lack commitment but are still a baller for 168 hours? Join the fraternity of Phi Slamma Jamma!

4) One Shining Moment: one day, 24 hour challenge. Go ham for all the glory! You can choose any day to do it BUT once you submit, you're done. No re-dos.

* - When and if we do manage to get enough sign-ups, then every Thursday night in March the challenge closes at 6:59:59 pm. We will then go Live on Zoom if you want to join to hash out the last week and see what match-ups are coming up, etc. we did this last year and about half of the challengers tuned in for shenanigans. And the RAFFLE we hold every week for a yet undetermined prize.

A basketball-inspired tournament but instead of dunking on people and sinking treys, you’re trying to run more vert than them. Every day of every week until there’s only one runner left.

1. All GPS files must be uploaded to Strava. If you do not have a Strava account, get one now. We will be using a private invite-only group to tally the stats and data and having Strava is necessary these days anyway, so get one. Here is a link to the group: https://www.strava.com/clubs/MADVERT

2. Once your file is uploaded to Strava using GPS you must use the “Correct Elevation” function. This normalizes the over-reporting of vertical seen on most Garmins as well as the under-reporting of vert seen on most Suuntos. Don’t worry about this- everyone will get equally screwed.

4. You must have your GPS files and all pertinent info uploaded by the time the weekly deadline ends. Most weeks it will be 6:59 pm EST, except for the Championship round (8:59 pm). I’m doing this to give myself time to accurately look at all the data before the next round starts- I will be the ultimate arbiter of the data. If your files look fishy, I’m tossing the data. If you don’t like it, don’t sign up. Cheaters suck.

5. We will go live via Zoom every week to announce each week’s winners. Stay tuned for more on this- I'll have an official announcement by mid-February at the latest for this. Might be a dick and use Microsoft Teams, idk whatever.

Please take note: if you decide to register, the month-long tournament style version is listed as The Bracket Buster. If you choose another option don't get salty when you realize you are in the wrong event, then I'll have to chase you down to be all "yo which one you wanna do?"

So please save me the time and please notice which event you are signing up for.

The Bracket Buster

Okay here's how the tourney works:
Week One (Friday March 3 to Thursday March 9): Play-in Round. This determines seeding 1-16.
Week Two (Fri Mar 10 - Thur Mar 16): The Sweet 16. Head to head match-ups.
Week Three (Fri Mar 17 - Thur Mar 23): The Elite 8. Head to heads.
Week Four (Fri Mar 24 - Thur Mar 30): The Final 4. Head to heads once again.
The Championship (Fri Mar 31 - Sun April 2) Three days to pummel each other to death. Metaphorically speaking. But yeah, carnage.

Each match up will end at 6:59 pm followed by a Zoom re-cap of the past week. Friday at 12:00 am the next round starts. The final ends at 8:59 pm Sunday April 2nd. Zoom party and bubbly popped, etc.

SWAG!

Just for The Bracket Busters:
- a DOPE Vert Madness hoody!
- five (5) TBD prizes at the end of each round
- overall winner wins a Grand Prize: a $150 Hoka gift certificate
- second place wins a sweet Runner Up prize: a $75gift cert
- third and fourth place win $50 gift certs

Everybody gets:
- a handmade, one-of-a-kind award from Ragged Cuts
- some other dope things l have not yet decided on but if you know me I give out weird shit

What if I get knocked out?

That's okay- you're still "alive"!

If you get knocked out in the first week, don’t worry- you’re now playing for a raffle PRIZE! You can still win every week, hell- if we get enough sign-ups we will do MULTIPLE prizes every week. The Zoom meetings we did at the end of every week were super fun; you can show up, crack a cold one or a kombooch and kick it with total strangers that just wrecked themselves for the last 7 days running up and down hills and mountains. or even worse the tediousness of the treadmill- y'all are the real heroes. We perfected some trash talk, shared memes on the Strava page, it was fun. But don't take my word for it, sign the F up and feel the burn!

Event's current local time: 11:15 AM ET