Audax entry etiquette

[Greenbank]

I can think of another slight parallel with 24hr TT's, they count as AUK rides but you are not required to commit to a minimum distance in advance

You have to achieve a minimum of 360km in order to get AUK points.

[Martin]

If this was enforced or expected, I'd be put off registering ECEs in the first place. I consider this loophole to be a bonus encouragement to use ECEs and ride to events.

^ this; I understand there was some debate about this before the concept was approved and I was very glad it wasn't enforced as I thoughi it would massively reduce those wanting to ECE.

One reason I set them up was to take the workload off the regional event orgs who IIRC used to admin the old DIY+Cals. I was doing quite a few 100+100s at the time and to this day have never done a longer ECE.

But I get 100s of 200 / 300's ECE'd by 100km. Would anyone want to jeopardise their 2 points / RRTY by a mishap that happened riding the ECE return leg back? I think they'd be less likely to ECE.

[grams]

And the 2 points all get allotted to the ECE so if the calendar ride doesn't get validated the ECE is still there. But it's never happened.

Ahem.

(Interestingly that rider number has been assigned to someone else in 2017!)

[Martin]

And the 2 points all get allotted to the ECE so if the calendar ride doesn't get validated the ECE is still there. But it's never happened apart from ECE Fat Finger Syndrome  .

Ahem.

(Interestingly that rider number has been assigned to someone else in 2017!)

but with the new process the correct AUK membership number is automatically added to the start sheet.

[BeMoreMike]

This all good info  doing more ECE's to calendar and perms is something i'm planning.

So something I've been thinking about (and might fit with the OP's situation) is: Travel to about 10km in a direct route from the calendar/perm start, submit an ECE that does 40km first, do the event, then another 60km ECE back to my transport. If I finish the event but can't for whatever reason do the extra then i'm only 10km from my transport home.

This scenario would give the OP options of 100km (ditch the ECE and just do the calendar event), 150km (40+100+10), or the full 200 (40+100+60).
 

[Martin]

This all good info  doing more ECE's to calendar and perms is something i'm planning.

So something I've been thinking about (and might fit with the OP's situation) is: Travel to about 10km in a direct route from the calendar/perm start, submit an ECE that does 40km first, do the event, then another 60km ECE back to my transport. If I finish the event but can't for whatever reason do the extra then i'm only 10km from my transport home.

This scenario would give the OP options of 100km (ditch the ECE and just do the calendar event), 150km (40+100+10), or the full 200 (40+100+60).

not exactly the most environmentally friendly approach (part of the ECE cache was to reduce car journeys) but yes perfectly allowed.

[BeMoreMike]

True.

In my case though i was thinking of Public transport, to be exact, i'm doing the National Arboretium 100 next month, getting the train to Derby, riding for an hour to the start then back to one of West Coast Main Line stations for a quicker direct train home.
If i need to bail at the end of the NA100 then I'm only 6km from the nearest station.

....hopefully you'll see my ECE plans soon !!

[Martin]

 In which case extra Green ECE points!

[frankly frankie]

But aside from all (valid) arguments about not having to complete what you set out to do it's impossible to police, do people expect me to pour through all the calendar results weeks afterwards and go "ooh Sir he didn't complete the calendar event!! / send me his / her ECE evidence" and then have to get onto Sue and Keith / John Ward to scrub it?

We're off-topic here, but the problem is with the way ECE's are recorded, that is as a separate event that is then somehow detected by the system as associated with some other event.  Not a criticism because it presumably seemed the right option at the time, to the people originally involved.
With hindsight a better way to do it would be to simply edit an existing event record (rider/ride) to add the distance and points.  That way the ECE won't register in the system until the event record exists (even though it could still be possible to pre-register it, as currently happens).  It's also much easier from a system point of view as it eliminates the ugly chore (thousands of lines of code in nested loops, and two extra data tables) of detecting and recording the associations, which currently takes place as a scheduled nightly job. 

[BeMoreMike]

In which case extra Green ECE points!

[hillbilly]

If this was enforced or expected, I'd be put off registering ECEs in the first place. I consider this loophole to be a bonus encouragement to use ECEs and ride to events.

Although accepting the risk of losing everything, but doing it anyway, adds to the achievement.  One might almost say it is the audacious way to do things.

[Whitedown Man]

You should have to complete the ride distance you intended when you set off. If not, then we might as well allow people to start a 300, bail out after 200 and still claim two points.

[mattc]

I can think of another slight parallel with 24hr TT's, they count as AUK rides but you are not required to commit to a minimum distance in advance

You have to achieve a minimum of 360km in order to get AUK points.

True, but the vast majority of riders get 4 or 5 points from that event; hence the parallel with ECEs where you have a sort-of "optional" 100-200km ride after your "main" ride.

[I'm not commenting on whether these arrangements fulfil the "spirit of Audax" etc etc ]

[Martin]

You should have to complete the ride distance you intended when you set off. If not, then we might as well allow people to start a 300, bail out after 200 and still claim two points.

that is a commonly held opinion which could happen if it was voted on at the AGM or at Commitee level (currently there is no such requirement). It would either require a lot more input from the organiser and also FF to flag a rider on a calendar event as "ECE pending" or something like that before both parts were submitted but as ECE's are perms they do not need to be submitted until 14 days after the ride. I don't think organisers and validators would relish the thought of sitting on their finish list for this length of time (having just gone paperless with event validation so it can literally all be done and dusted the evening of the event or the next day). It's also completely going away from the original ECE benefits but if we want it for the sake of virtuousness and purity so be it.


An alternative is the idea of having to go back and scrub a previously validated ride; this is both messy and labour / email intensive; possibly between the rider and the organiser (who may well not even know what an ECE is)

Either way  I can't even ask for a volunteer "ECE Mossad" to help me in this task as although I have start lists of pending ECE's they don't say when the calendar event was supposed to have been ridden as these details all currently only exist in emails to me and the rider or presumably in the AUK server somewhere (which creates some problems of its own now if peeps send tracks in without reference to what they are for as many riders have multiple ECE's of different configuration open at a time) so it requires a lot more work than I'm willing to put in. So I hope someone else is willing to take ECE's over.

I'm not poised with toys at pram edge just saying ECE's are a huge workload now even with FF's recent excellent entry system and I don't have time for any more checking. In fact we may arrive at regional ECE delegates at some point in the future although that's a lot of work as each would have to have their own suite of ECEs much like the DIYs are now.



It could be done if it was wanted but I think all it would do is reduce the number of ECE's especially if the calendar event was worth distance / RRTY points.

Now, who wanted to administer EPE's? 

[Greenbank]

I can think of another slight parallel with 24hr TT's, they count as AUK rides but you are not required to commit to a minimum distance in advance

You have to achieve a minimum of 360km in order to get AUK points.

True, but the vast majority of riders get 4 or 5 points from that event; hence the parallel with ECEs where you have a sort-of "optional" 100-200km ride after your "main" ride.

Good point, missed that, however there's limited opportunity to do this throughout the year (once, sometimes twice). Extending that to every possible weekend[1] (geographical logistics aside) is another matter.

[I'm not commenting on whether these arrangements fulfil the "spirit of Audax" etc etc ]

Getting points for the 24 may not be quite be the "spirit of Audax" but it's absolutely backed by Audax UK as a form of support for the 24 that used to be the gateway to PBP before Audax UK existed.

Being able to claim partial points for some rides is going to be less the "spirit of Audax" than the 24 but still seems to be supported by AUK (as it is not officially outlawed).

To be clear, I wouldn't want to see this voted on (I'd support the status quo rather than see it be specifically outlawed).

1. Midweek events too...

[frankly frankie]

You should have to complete the ride distance you intended when you set off. If not, then we might as well allow people to start a 300, bail out after 200 and still claim two points.

that is a commonly held opinion which could happen if it was voted on at the AGM or at Commitee level (currently there is no such requirement).

As Martin mentioned earlier, it is fundamental to ECEs that they don't impact the 'host' event or its organiser and volunteers in any way.  They don't have to know about the ECE.  It follows, rightly IMHO, that the event result must be valid and standalone regardless of whether the ECE is a DNE/F or not.  (This thinking is probably partly what led to the method of validating/recording the ECE as a separate event, that I referred to earlier.)
It gets really complicated during PBP qualification - a 300 ECE'd up to a 400 is a 400 for SR purposes, but for PBP qually purposes is submitted to ACP as a 300 ...

[Karla]

True, but the vast majority of riders get 4 or 5 points from that event; hence the parallel with ECEs where you have a sort-of "optional" 100-200km ride after your "main" ride.

From this year's event:

4 points: 5 riders
5 points: 7 riders
6 points: 5 riders
7 points: 1 rider

That was a bad weather year and distances were down on normal, with half the field packing.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

The York Arrows/ Fleche Velocio have a 20% distance tolerance (up or down) which could allow a team to collect 3, 4 or 5 points (or 4, 5, 6, or 7 points), depending on the conditions on the day.

People really shouldn't get their knickers in a twist about ECEs.

[Ian H]

People really shouldn't get their knickers in a twist about ECEs.

Nor about points or the minutiae of regs.

[mattc]

True, but the vast majority of riders get 4 or 5 points from that event; hence the parallel with ECEs where you have a sort-of "optional" 100-200km ride after your "main" ride.

From this year's event:

4 points: 5 riders
5 points: 7 riders
6 points: 5 riders
7 points: 1 rider

That was a bad weather year and distances were down on normal, with half the field packing.

Interesting (I suppose) ... do you have a point? I'm not that thrilled by stats, sorry

[tonyh]

People really shouldn't get their knickers in a twist about ECEs.

Nor about points or the minutiae of regs.

Strongly agree with both those posts.

[Ben T]

What about people that "set out" to ride an SR series but bail on the 600, should their 200, 300 and 400 be ripped up too? 

[Karla]

True, but the vast majority of riders get 4 or 5 points from that event; hence the parallel with ECEs where you have a sort-of "optional" 100-200km ride after your "main" ride.

<snip>

That was a bad weather year and distances were down on normal, with half the field packing.

Interesting (I suppose) ... do you have a point? I'm not that thrilled by stats, sorry

Tell you what, here are last year's stats to drive it home
400: 4 riders
500: 8 riders
600: 9 riders
700: 8 riders

That's a pretty small 'overwhelming majority' you've got there.

[Wycombewheeler]

Ah yes, that's specifically mentioned in the ECE FAQs (http://forum.audax.uk/index.php?topic=273.0):-
.....this is because the AUK website will incorrectly credit you with distance points if you do, and also the ECE-only leg will be over the time allowed.
"

Is ece required to be either side of an event? What if I ride 100km to the start because trains won't be running early enough to get me there and then just train home? In which cade i would have completed a 100 in the time limit. I dont see how that is much different to riding the event then dnf the ece aftereards.

[Martin]

No  problem to do a one way ECE but the difference is that you will have declared to ride 100 to the start, so not doing anything after the event is not a DNF

What about people that "set out" to ride an SR series but bail on the 600, should their 200, 300 and 400 be ripped up too? 

of course not; this is about a single (or is it?) ride.

Here's a solution, anyone who feels they have failed the ride by not completing the ECE just don't hand in their card and let me know they are a DNF ECE ;-)

ps sorry for dragging in the TT but it seemed the closest to a moveable feast where planned distance is not set in stone; I fully appreciate it's a special case