I suspect the 215+85=300 vs 215+100=300 discussion is a bit of a red herring.
Not quite, and in the spirit of taking this discussion forward (or flogging a dead horse depending on ones interpretation) I believe there are 3 (or 4...) different distinct discussions going on at the moment:-
1) (As in your post) Should you be able to still claim the calendar event portion of an ECE ride if you don't complete the tail ECE leg and haven't notified Martin that you're not doing the ECE portion (before starting the calendar ride)?
I think this was discussed quite well before we got on to the other herrings.
There are 3 main opinions/solutions:-
a) Consider it a perk of attempting an ECE (rather than doing your own DIY or driving to/from the event) and AUK/members continue to ignore the fact it doesn't quite sit perfectly within the existing regs or interpretations of Audax
b) Consider it a perk as above, but get the regulations amended to explicitly allow it
c) Explicitly prohibit it (and have the problem of how to police this and remove validation for the rider's calendar event)
And we had people here representing all 3 of these positions (including all 3 myself) and were getting to the "agree to disagree" stage (happy to be proven wrong). Without a formal vote on an amendment then nothing is going to change.
As I said before, I'm in a slightly odd position on this:
* I personally don't want there to be a vote on it, so on that I'm opinion (a) - however it's doomed to come up again and again
* I personally wouldn't want my own calendar ride to be validated if I DNFed the tail leg of an ECE (and I now regret the one time I have done this), so close to opinion (c) - but I know I could just contact the organiser and ask them to submit my card for validation without my AUK number against it so I don't get credited with it but the organiser still gets the correct finisher numbers - so I do have the option should this occur to me in the future
* If it did go to a vote I'd probably vote to explicitly allow it - opinion (b)
2) Should ECEs be allowed where they take a calendar event, treat it as a mandatory route and then add a mandatory route ECE leg less than (x00km) to make it up to the required nominal distance (e.g. 120+80 = 200)?
i.e. You take a 120km calendar event and add an 80km ECE leg on the end to make it up to 200km. You submit, to Martin, the entire 200km proposed route and he treats the whole thing like a mandatory route DIYxGPS.
As is now, if you end up submitting a GPX tracklog that says you've only covered 199km then there is no validation, regardless of the reason (road closure, forced detour, etc).
On the day if there is a diversion due to an unplanned road closure (or similar) and the rider is forced to ride a shorter route then they should be allowed to make up the distance by riding a bit more on their ECE. (As has been quoted before, Martin accepts this now.)
If, on the day, the rider goes off route (i.e. misses a turn) and so does not follow the exact route they submitted, but it doesn't materially affect the minimum distance covered, then they should continue to be validated (within reason). This is in line with the current DIYxGPS mandatory route regs; deviation from the route does not imply automatic non-validation, it is assessed on its merits and a decision arrived at.
Personally I don't have a problem with this, it seems a perfect example of the "state in advance, do it, submit proof" part of Audax. I don't care that the ECE leg was only 80km and not 100km+. If the appears clunkily in the results pages of on the AUK site then this can be fixed at some point. My test would be that if you'd submitted the same route as a mandatory route DIYxGPS and did it on a day when the calendar event wasn't running you'd get 2 points for it.
Note that if the rider gives up on the tail ECE leg then we're back to question 1 and should the calendar event validation stand. That's no different in this scenario.
3) Should you be able to treat the calendar portion of an ECE as an advisory route, commit to riding at least x km on it such that a subsequent mandatory route ECE leg takes it up to the required nominal distance you want to claim?
e.g. Enter a 120km calendar event and a 90km mandatory route ECE leg. You therefore commit to riding at least 110km on the calendar event so that the total ride is at least 200km.
The ride is validated as a whole tracklog just as before, the ECE leg needs to match what was submitted and not contain any unauthorised extra distance, and the whole ride needs to be at least the distance that is being claimed.
As noted, this is open to some slight gamesmanship. A rider may notice (a few miles out from the arrivee) that they're going to come in slightly under their proposed distance for the calendar event (lets say 108km instead of the 110km committed) they could, given the 'free route between controls' aspect, accidentally take a wrong turn and add an extra 2km by going off route before arriving at the calendar event finish with 110km in the tracklog.
Is this any different to choosing a slightly different route between the controls at 30km and 60km? Not really.
The rider, faced with a 2km shortfall, could also do laps of a village or hill repeats. Is this ok? Personally I'd say no, rides shouldn't unnecessarily reuse bits of road. As I said before I'd suggest that a rider should get away with this once and be warned that they need to pay more attention (or plan better), or future similar incidents will result in non-validation.
What could the rider legitimately do if they notice this close to (or even at) the arrivee? The least unappealing option would be to add extra distance by minimising unnecessary reuse of roads but there are going to be situations where this is tricky (imagine the arrivee being on a road with no other roads for 5km and you've already ridden the road either side of the arrivee.) I think "don't take the piss" applies mostly.
Another way of phrasing this is whether ECEing a calendar event forces the ECE portion to be mandatory route (such as in #2 above) or whether you retain that little bit of freedom and slightly less strict "state what you are going to do in advance".
My opinion is that it #3 should be allowed (although I'm wavering a little), again for the reason of promoting ECEs rather than "oh it's just easier to do my own DIY ride from my door on my own route rather than jump through hoops to ECE to a calendar event".
4) grahamparks' exception to this #3 above was that it is close to (paraphrasing) "here's a (non-mandatory route) DIY with a bunch of controls with MDBC of 285km but I will use free route between those controls to submit a tracklog that will be at least 300km long, if I ride less than 300km then I agree that the ride is not validated, it's 3 points or nothing, if I ride 402km I still only get 3 points".
It's an interesting concept and I can see the logic behind the comparison with #3 but, for me, it not quite analogous and comes down to the extra leeway that using/extending calendar events should be given in order to entice more people to ride to/from calendar events.
(To be clear, submitting a tracklog for such a ride showing a ride of 299km would get 0 points and the time limit would also be based on the nominal 285km, not the eventual distance ridden.)
I actually like the idea, but I'm not sure Audax UK (or the majority of its membership) would feel the same. Maybe in a few years it might be worth floating such an idea again.
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I hope that's a fair and balanced portrayal of the various discussion points. Have I missed anything?
[ Maybe these need splitting up into 4 different threads. ]
