I am now taking entries for this year’s Easter Flèche.  You can find more detailed rules on the Flèche page, but essentially the idea is that a team of 3-5 riders devises their own route for a 24-hour ride over the Easter weekend with honours going to the team that completes the longest distance.  Last year’s winning team managed 452km.

For want of any better suggestions, the finishing point for all routes will once again be the Stephen Roche monument in Dundrum.  The entry fee will be €25 per team.  Routes need to be with me two weeks before Good Friday i.e. Friday March 23rd.  The length of your route will be assessed as the minimum distance between your specified control points according to the walking directions on Google Maps.

The Flèche is a unique audax event – always early enough in the year that there’ll be long hours riding in the dark, and potential for rough weather conditions.  The aspect of riding together as a team also gives it a different flavour in what is often a very individualistic discipline.

A Flèche is one of the required events for Audax Club Parisien’s Randonneur 5000 medals (a full SR series including a 1000km, Paris-Brest-Paris, a Flèche and enough other rides to make your total up to 5000km) so I’m hoping to see some interest from our numerous newly-minted PBP anciens…certainly I’m looking forward to sending my completed application in once I get my homologation number from PBP.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email me.

I am now taking entries for the Easter Fleche. The Fleche is a 24-hour team audax event – each team devises its own route, and rides to a common finishing point (which will be the Stephen Roche Monument in Dundrum again) over the Easter weekend. You can start at any time between noon on Thursday and 10am Saturday, with the honours going to the team that completes the longest distance. Full rules are in the Gazetteer.

If you’re interested in entering, send me the names of the members of your team – minimum of 3 members, maximum of 5. By the 1st of April, send me your proposed start time and route which must be at least 360km measured by the minimum distance between the control points – this is to provide enough time to make any changes that may prove necessary. The entry fee will be €5 per individual and Cycling Ireland membership will be required.

This is a particularly favourable year for doing a Fleche as Easter is very late in the calendar, and it will be excellent night cycling experience for anyone planning on doing PBP later this year. Completing a Fleche is also one of the requirements for a Randonneur 5000 award.

Last year was the first year of the Fleche in Ireland – one team entered, managing 430km in bitterly cold conditions in mid-March. It would be great to see multiple teams on the road this year. If you have any questions, please get in touch.