Audax rides

wilkyboy and hippy discuss ECEs...

"I live in Cambridge and my shortest Google-walking distance to Tom's starts is 50.8km. I literally just put my address in as the ECE start/finish, submit a link to the Google-walking map and it really doesn't matter what route I ride, because (in theory at least) it's guaranteed to be at least 101.6km, so an extra point. I rode the exact shortest distance on Saturday, although I was helping so I only registered one leg for the 50km badge. For the Horsepower helpers' ride ECE two weeks ago I added on about 120km to make it 200 miles, my first of the season, but I still only had to give my home for the start and end controls — I made the route up as I rode home to bring the overall distance up to 323km/200mi.

The only time you need intermediate controls is when the minimum Google-walks distance to the start is less than 50km — the accepted best-practice for most riders is to ride the short leg to the start, ride the event, and then ride the remainder of the ECE, i.e. the longer leg, to get home again at your leisure. If you ride the long leg to the start then you can end up riding the whole day on your own, because everyone else is fresh and you're already 60-70km into your ride, so they drop you from the off, DAMHIKT :facepalm:

You can do it by GPS or by brevet — if you have GPS then it's MUCH easier because you can put your controls anywhere on the map, but you must remember to start your GPS to record your progress and keep it charged up during the day. With paper brevet ECE then you have to collect receipts, which can be tricky at midnight-o'clock when you live in a sleepy village. Whichever you choose, just remember to pass through all your nominated control points — if you have lots of intermediate controls, it really does pay to print out the virtual brevet and take it with you to remind yourself — tired and confused in the cold and dark on the way home and it's surprising how easy it is to forget where your controls are ... ::-)"

"Ahh... that makes it way easier. I thought there was faffage required - planning the extra bit, adding controls, etc.

I'm not bothered about short (50k) rides to the start, I'm thinking more about my longer rides where I'm tacking a whole audax onto a calendar event, it seems like I should get some points for my club from it.

I rode the whole lot on my own anyway on Saturday since I was maybe 1hr / 20-30k behind the only two guys I knew I was never likely to catch them unless they had issues. Obviously I tried though :)

I only ever ride with GPS, not route sheets so the Garmin is always recording (when it's not crashing, losing routes, etc).

So, say I want to ride 180k to the start of an event, ride the event and then ride 180k back from the event. Do I need to do anything other than submit start/end points? Will I need to invent some controls or is having a GPS track of the 180k to the start enough?"

"The trick is to use Google Maps to give you directions from your home to the start of the ride, then click on the navigation by Walking, and set the units (in Options) to kilometres — that is the basic minimum requirement for a route to qualify for AUK validation. IF the minimum distance is already above your desired whole-100km target then you don't need any extra intermediate points.

For example, you've said you'd ride 180km to the start and 180km home — that's 360km, so effectively just 300km for points. If your home is at least 150km from the start by Google-walking then you don't need to add any intermediate points because no matter what route you actually ride, it will be at least 300km and so will qualify. HOWEVER, if you want the extra point for extending the ride by 400km then you would need at least one intermediate control point on one or other or both of the legs — you can make the route as complicated as you wish, within reason (one control per 50km or so, roughly), but you're going to have to ride it, so simplicity is usually best.

The exact route you ride on the day doesn't matter — ECEs don't yet qualify for mandatory routing. Your ECE will be validated so long as you pass through all your nominated control points in order — and can prove it — and the ridden distance is at least the nominal minimum you've selected (300km or 400km or whatever), as sometimes if Google distance is close to the limit then you can find the on-road route is slightly under — a couple of minor detours down side streets or round-about lanes can add on the necessary extra kilometre or two to roll it over.

Once you've done a couple, all this detail is simply detail and it will take you just a couple of minutes to work out what each ECE is going to be like and to book it.

If you're not after the points then of course ECEs are moot and you should probably just enjoy the ride ;)"

https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=95545.msg2003517#msg2003517

@ad441