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.