Easter Fleche - Team 24 Hour Audax

You can start anywhere you like as long as you finish at the Roche monument in Dundrum. You designate various locations along the way as control points - at each one you need to get some kind of proof of passage with date, time and location printed on it, usually a shop receipt or an ATM receipt though in days of yore, getting your card stamped at a Garda station was not uncommon. Controls on an audax are generally 60-90km apart so you don't need to be stopping all the time. The rules state that you can't stop for any more than two hours in one location - in practice I have no idea how I would enforce that - and the spirit of the event is that you should be riding straight through but if you can get some shuteye in en route, more power to you.

Here's the thread from last year's fleche - there's a long writeup from me towards the end of the thread. I thought it was great but I think it was few weeks before the rest of the team were willing to talk to me again.

fat bloke wrote: »

-Is the finish supposed to be coordinated between the teams - like I know we finish at the same point, but are we to finish at the same point at the same time? Like is it Stephen Roche monument, 12 noon sunday??

It would be nice if we could manage it but it's not essential - in France I think part of the tradition was that people would carry camping gear and camp for the weekend at the end of the ride before riding (or taking the train) home on Easter Monday. I would expect the team I'm on to start riding early on Good Friday to finish early on Saturday morning but we can try to co-ordinate things so that we can all meet up at the end and have a couple of celebratory pints if there are a few teams up for it.

One more question - how do people get around the practical difficulties associated with a point to point? -Transporting of gear and bikes and team to .... Dingle for example. Then you all cycle to Dundrum, fine. But cars and gear etc are still in Dingle. - Sorry if these are stoopid questions, but this is all new to me, and it sounds intriguing . For some reason I always thought the audax thing was like a relay race. As in a van drove alongside carrying the team of people and bikes with only one rider on the road at one time.

Last year our team took the train to Cork and started from there to get around that problem - this year we'll probably go with a loop starting and ending in Dublin. If you wanted to join ROK ON's team you would probably take a train or bus to Kenmare and cycle to wherever you were starting from (I'm sure he'd cook you a lovely breakfast before you headed off - I believe he's pretty handy in the kitchen).

Audax is quite different from ultra-marathon race style events - support is verboten, it's all about the challenge of going it alone, carrying only what will fit on your bike, and there's no race aspect to it, just whether you can do the distance within the time limit. Sounds like you have something more like the Race Around Ireland in mind - teams on the RAI usually ride in relay and support vehicles are mandatory.

You rarely see panniers on audax, although I can think of one Irish veteran who hauls them for anything over 200km - almost everyone uses a road bike with a decent-sized saddlebag. On these events you're always trying to find the perfect balance between carrying as little as possible and having everything that you actually need - I think I carry more than most people and my bag usually tips the scales at 4-5kg between tools, spare clothes and food.

The Borlin 300 is an excellent ride, highly recommended. I'm sure Kevin's 400 and 600 will be well up to scratch too - I'll certainly be travelling down to find out.

If you can only make one, it has to be the 600 surely - double the miles, double the value.

It's not not an expression of interest.

I have to say I was a little disappointed that I wound up with only one entry for the Fleche again this year - it will be twenty-seven years before Easter falls so late in the year again and it could be a tougher prospect for the next couple of years. At one point it did look like there would be three teams but on the day the only team setting out was To Hell Or Connaught, a slightly revamped version of last year's Team No Particular Place To Go with LastGasp, Andreas.Voigt and myself being joined by John O'Sullivan and Cadex.

I wasn't able to sell the lads on attempting 500km and they haggled me down to a 452km loop running from Dublin to Galway and back - when I put it into Bikeroutetoaster I was pleased but very surprised to see that it had only as much climbing as the Ardattin 200. The biggest "hill" would come right at the end, with the climb out of Ballymore Eustace to the N81.

Conditions were more or less ideal on the day - a light tailwind on the way out of Dublin was forecast to switch to a westerly in the evening and threatened rain never materialised. We left from O'Connell Bridge at 7am, heading out through Phoenix Park towards Dunboyne and onto the R156 to Mullingar for the first control. The route largely followed R and N roads which isn't always the most interesting, but being able to bowl along at 30km/h on decent roads, the team working a good rhythm, for hours on end has its own satisfactions. Things remained uneventful as we crossed the Shannon just above Lough Ree and turned southwest to Roscommon. I didn't fancy taking the N63 all the way to Galway, so I had routed us south from Ballygar on back roads to join the R339 around Castleblakeney. After a few minor deviations we hit the R339 but something didn't feel right with my saddle. I got off to see if it had slipped in the clamp but everything looked okay. I got back on and managed another couple of hundred yards down the road before feeling a distinct snap.

My guess is that I had been riding with one rail broken for a while, and that was the second one joining it - evidently a 5kg saddlebag clamped to your saddle rails is not what the designers expect. The saddle more or less disintegrated as we examined it but after a couple of goes we managed to get the seatpost clamp to hold it together around the breaks, strap my saddlebag to the handlebars and push on. This meant it was jammed all the way forward and I couldn't get any power on climbs. Nor could I get out of the saddle because with all that weight hanging from the bars, any twitch on them made the bike sway violently. By the time we had covered the last 30km to Galway into the gathering headwind, my quads were threatening cramp. We spotted a bike shop on the way in - it was closed but the staff were still moving around inside so Andreas stood at the door making imploring gestures until they opened up. That was as far as the luck ran though - no Brooks to be had, so I settled for a cheap BBB model. They even took a fiver off the price so if you're ever in Galway, be sure to stop into Nigel's Cycle Store while you're there.

We tracked down John, who had gone on ahead while we ate in Roscommon, and went to an Italian restaurant on Shop Street for dinner. It was just after five, and we had done 226km in a little over ten hours, leaving fourteen hours to do the same again. No problem. Stuffed with pasta, desserts and espresso, we didn't get back on the road until nearly seven, rolling out along the bay to Oranmore and on to Athenry and Ballinasloe. We found a petrol station still open there, with a toilet, and used the opportunity to stock up on supplies and change into reflective gear for the long journey through the night. John again pushed on while we faffed around.

By now my arse was seriously hurting me (the new saddle felt like an iron bar) and my right knee was making threatening noises - little twinges every time I applied pressure - so I concentrated on spinning as gently as possible and begging the lads to hold the pace down. We made Tullamore after twelve and caught up with John in a Supermacs, a mere ten minutes before they were due to close - more good luck. At that point I was confident that we would have no trouble making Blessington by 5am for our 22 hour control, and we kept working the up and over steadily to Kildare where we even had to stop and kill some time. The roads from Kildare to Blessington were dreadful - my fault for not researching the route so close to home - and the little rollers around Ballymore Eustace seemed to have grown considerably since the last time I had been there so making the N81 was a blessed relief, not least to my sorely bruised buttocks. We cooled our heels for a few minutes in Blessington waiting for the witching hour of five am, then pushed on home.

The sky was beginning to lighten as we crested the Embankment and the sight of the entire city lit up below us flashed between the trees as we descended into Tallaght - a beautiful moment to cap a great ride. We had enough time in hand to have a cup of tea in LastGasp's kitchen while waiting for 7am to roll around, and I could already taste it as we trundled through Ballinteer when our host hit a rock and blew out his front tyre. Fortunately in the intervening twelve months since the last Fleche he has learned how to use a CO2 canister and we were quickly back rolling. Cadex and I mustered the energy for a sprint finish - as so often I went too early in spite of my familiarity with the parcours and he took the prize.

One cup of tea later and we dribbled down the hill to the Stephen Roche monument in Dundrum where emty was waiting with camera in hand to document the moment. And that was another Fleche done and dusted.

It was damn good day on the bike all told - my only disappointment is that we didn't aim higher. With the conditions we had, another 50k would have been easily achievable. Still, you have to leave something on the table for next year.

We also sing.