Considering RRtY

[alfapete]

The reason RRTY is such a good challenge is that even the fittest rider will take 11months and 1 day to complete it - it needs perseverance and patience which are qualities most cyclists are blessed with.

10 months and two days would be the shortest possible option 

Now there's a target for somebody other than me! 

[Socks]

Perseverance and patience - something I need to work on.  I'm sort of pondering a RRty, although whether I get round to doing it is another question.  It will require me to do a few DIYs or Perms for the first time, so that would be a new experience.

Anyone know the answer to one question (obviously I can email someone at Audax UK but the answer may be known here).  I'm doing the CTC Manche to Med tour in May next year, which apparently can be used as a perm to claim a 1,000k BP award.  However from the notes on the Audax UK site, it needs to be a BR or BRM event for the purposes of RRty.  So I would need to fit in another 200k ride in May.

Does that sound correct?

[grams]

Anyone know the answer to one question (obviously I can email someone at Audax UK but the answer may be known here).  I'm doing the CTC Manche to Med tour in May next year, which apparently can be used as a perm to claim a 1,000k BP award.  However from the notes on the Audax UK site, it needs to be a BR or BRM event for the purposes of RRty.  So I would need to fit in another 200k ride in May.

Unless one of the days is 200 km in under 14 hours and you make it a DIY, yes, that's correct.

10 months and two days would be the shortest possible option 

And the absolute minimum is 305 days if you start in January or August.

(and I suppose you could start your first ride at 23:59 and your last at 0:00 to get it even shorter)

[mattc]

My worst weather conditions - Heart of England April 2016 - Blizzard - 50 started 18 finished

The other 32 weren't on the RRTY treadmill.

[whosatthewheel]

My worst weather conditions - Heart of England April 2016 - Blizzard - 50 started 18 finished

The other 32 weren't on the RRTY treadmill.

I remember that day... I was out too with friends doing 70 miles and we got caught by a snow blizzard on Edge hill... the morning was really cold and wet, but then it cleared around lunchtime and the afternoon was actually quite nice

[Delph Cyclist]

The previous RRTY organiser told me ...

I wouldn't listen to a word he says

10 months and two days would be the shortest possible option 

For the shortest possible RRTY you would need to use a 28 day February, and having the first and last rides on either side of the International Date Line.  I can't be bothered to work it out though.

[Greenbank]

The reason RRTY is such a good challenge is that even the fittest rider will take 11months and 1 day to complete it - it needs perseverance and patience which are qualities most cyclists are blessed with.

10 months and two days would be the shortest possible option 

The shortest RRTY to date could have been just 9 months and three days (possibly 9 months and two days depending on the interpretation of the rules).

[Marmitegeoff]

The good thing about DIY is that if you have a GPS course ready, you can literally enter minutes before heading out of the door... so all you need is a 9 hour window of decent weather.

I like 12 hours.

but then I am slow

[frankly frankie]

November to February RRTY events are a pain in the arse. Always cold, always wet, always snowing.

But at least there's nothing better to do.
The nearest I ever got to RRTY was an 11-month run - the missing month? - August.

[whosatthewheel]

The good thing about DIY is that if you have a GPS course ready, you can literally enter minutes before heading out of the door... so all you need is a 9 hour window of decent weather.

I like 12 hours.

but then I am slow

Nothing wrong with 12 hours, but you might not have the luxury of 12 ice free hours. Assuming ice clears by 9 AM, it might have iced again by 9PM.
Of course it's down to where you live. I have zero confidence in my local council. Last year alone they "forgot" to grit the roads on 3 separate occasions, despite clear indications that temperatures were going to hover around the zero mark overnight.

[tonyh]

(.... and ice is horribly possible even when the air temperature seems to be a reassuring degree or three above freezing.)

[BeMoreMike]

I'm really enjoying the RRTY, I've just done month 6 of my first attempt at the challenge....although i'm a bit daunted at the next 3 months.
Just as it says on the AUK site, I didn't realise I was on the train until 3 months in. I'm glad in a way I started earlier in the year as I now have too much to lose by missing one of the winter months. If i'd only just started now i'd feel less bothered about failing early.

A question to the greater knowledge out there: Is there such a thing as AAA RRTY ? I remember seeing it mentioned somewhere, but cant find it on the AUK site.

[hillbilly]

Is there such a thing as AAA RRTY ?

Yes.  AUK website has information, about half way down this page:

http://www.aukweb.net/results/aaa/aaawds/

Note that (unlike the non-AAA RRtY) it doesn't require Randonneur events.  In some senses this makes it more feasible to do in winter as you can ride in daylight.  But against this is that, by their nature, hilly regions tend to be more ice/snow/weather affected.

[BeMoreMike]

Cheers 

I haven't seen that page before...the AUK site is a mine of (sometimes) hard to find but very useful information.

[Whitedown Man]

What's the highest number of RRtYs that any one rider has completed simultaneously?

[Greenbank]

I did a google search for "site:aukweb.net aaarty" and that page didn't come up. I checked the robots.txt file and that URL isn't forbidden for crawlers so I would have thought it would have been indexed. Odd.

[Greenbank]

What's the highest number of RRtYs that any one rider has completed simultaneously?

In the 2014 season Mike L's leanest month had "only" 8 BRM rides in it, so that's a starting point.

(Although some of the rides could have counted for different months if they were calendar ride route checks or helpers rides, and there might have been rides starting near the end of the month counting for the following month, etc).

[jochta]

Strangely though I found the summer, holiday, months the most difficult.  We go away for 3 weeks in July/August.  It only takes an extra social event to leave you short of a summer weekend.

Me too. Finding a spare weekend to do a 200 in July and August was the toughest part of my two consecutive RRtYs. I ended up doing a Perm on Friday 31st July to keep my 2nd one alive. And I did a perm during my family holiday in August!

It's a good idea to get a few perm entries in early so all the paperwork is done and you have the brevet ready to go. If you get desperate you can just call on one of those to keep your RRtY alive. Just let the organiser know the morning of the ride (or the day before) that you are using the entry. I've still got one to use!

I did calendar years BTW, starting in January and ending in December. A mixture of calendar, perms, ECEs and DIYs. In each year I did a different ride each month as I set myself the rule of not repeating a ride. It wasn't my plan to do a 2nd but after I finished the 1st in December I ended up doing a ride in January, then February and then the OCD kicked in!

It's a very satisfying achievement

[SR Steve]

I considered RRtY many times before actually attempting it. Generally I was worn out my September and hung up my wheels until March. I started my first attempt in May 2010 and intended to ride through the winter in preparation for the 2011 PBP. In December 2010, I couldn't get out until New Year's Eve and was knocked off with 10 miles to go. My bike was trashed with the right crank bent round into the back wheel and I couldn't start a new attempt until March 2011 due to my injuries. I qualified for and finished the 2011 PBP, but had too much DIY work to do at home that September and chose brownie points in favour of the dog house, so another attempt was scuppered.

In March 2012, I started my first successful attempt and completed my tenth this month by finishing Mr. Pickwick's Cymraeg Cyrch. I find RRtY a great way to retain fitness over the winter months, especially as I don't do much other cycling. Riding 200km regularly and fairly briskly has helped me cut hours off my PBP and LEL times even though I'm getting older and carrying a few injuries. It's certainly easier than starting from scratch in March like I used to.

[Delph Cyclist]

... Riding 200km regularly and fairly briskly has helped me cut hours off my PBP and LEL times even though I'm getting older and carrying a few injuries.

RRTY can also be a good source of a few injuries, so winter rides have to be undertaken with care.

[Ivan]

And the absolute minimum is 305 days if you start in January or August.

(and I suppose you could start your first ride at 23:59 and your last at 0:00 to get it even shorter)

You could shorten it even more by doing a couple of helper rides for strategically placed calendar events, one a fortnight before and the other a week after...

[Somnolent]

Is there such a thing as AAA RRTY ?

Yes.  AUK website has information, about half way down this page:

http://www.aukweb.net/results/aaa/aaawds/

Note that (unlike the non-AAA RRtY) it doesn't require Randonneur events.  In some senses this makes it more feasible to do in winter as you can ride in daylight.  But against this is that, by their nature, hilly regions tend to be more ice/snow/weather affected.

Tried a 'proper' AAA RRtY (all BRs) once upon a time. First month was a calendar which just squeaked into AAAness on the basis of one section.
Second month I worked out a mandatory route DIY that did the same.  Got through the hilly section but a catastrophic tyre detonation later on, in the dark, in the wet, put paid to that ride so I went back to choosing 'flattest possible' for the winter months.

[Greenbank]

And the absolute minimum is 305 days if you start in January or August.

(and I suppose you could start your first ride at 23:59 and your last at 0:00 to get it even shorter)

You could shorten it even more by doing a couple of helper rides for strategically placed calendar events, one a fortnight before and the other a week after...

Except that helper rides only count for the day you actually rode your bike, not the day of the calendar ride.

It's up to the rider to let the RRTY organiser know if the helper's ride was done in a different month to the corresponding calendar ride when claiming for an RRTY.

See here (and the post below): https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=105667.msg2225279#msg2225279

[Banjo]

Its a bigger commitment than you realize at the start .Personally I would stick to the basic requirement of doing a 200km (or more) each calendar month and not try to find loopholes in the small print of Audax Rules .

On my one and only RRTY I became ill with food poisoning 150 km into the final ride.I struggled to get back into Wales over the severn bridge at one point I was leaning on the handrail with my head hung down when a "good Samaritan " clearly thought I was going to jump and wouldn't go away despite my preference to vomit solo.Eventually rolled off the bridge  into Bulwark and more or less collapsed onto the grass verge to wait for the cavalry to rescue me.

A week later triumphantly completed another DIY but declined the chicken sandwich .

[Bikeabilityman]

Since joining Audax in March 2013, I've been RrtYing ever since (didn't realise I was on it for a few months, and didn't realise I'd overlapped the end of one year and the start of the next, until the org pointed it out). I wish I'd fitted another 200 DIY in last Jan, so I could finish year five in Dec, but I have a habit of leaving them until the last day of the month (luckily I don't work much in Winter). RRtY is a slippery slope!