But all the distance done in the calendar event belongs to that calendar event, and if you had not done all the calendar distance you wouldn’t get the ride validated.
That's the assumption that's wrong (IMHO).
Assuming the calendar event ride is not a mandatory route then there's no requirement to ride the full routesheet distance. The only requirement is that you visit the controls in order within the time limits and you should be able to assume that by doing so the ride is at least the nominal distance (
x00km).
If the route taken on the calendar ride is too much under distance (with the ECE leg added on) then this will be caught in the final ECE validation stage (see below).
Therefore if you ride an over distance 215 KM calendar event, and decided to count that 15 km to an 85 km ECE, you would get the 100 ECE, but you would not get the calendar validated.
Why on earth not?
If you say "I'm going to ride this 215km calendar event, which may be shorter than 215km in real life but I hope to ride at least 210km on it, and then I'm going to ride a 90km (just to be safe) ECE leg afterwards by this exact route." and then submit a GPX tracklog that shows that you did ride:
a) what looks like the calendar ride (which will be verified by the organiser of that ride in due course - and if it doesn't get validated for some reason then you get 0 points anyway)
b) the mandatory route section of your ECE as required
c) a total distance greater than the nomimal distance you wish to claim for (e.g. 300km in this example)
d) within time limits/etc.
That looks like a pretty fair representation of an Audax to me:-
* Declare what you are going to do in advance
* do it within the rules
* provide proof that you have done what you said you would do.
I don't see how that's having your cake and eating it.
If you only ride 209km on the calendar ride, and then ride a 90km ECE leg then you're going to be out of luck when it comes to claim the ECE because you're submitting proof that you've only ridden 299km. The calendar event will still be validated but your ECE leg will not, you still only get 2 points.
Martin does enough as it is, and his ECE role should be to validate the ECE, leaving the calendar event organiser to validate the calendar event. Obviously the validation team double checks the calendar event validation.
Martin validates the ECE leg with the added context of the calendar ride it is augmenting, I see no problem in that and it probably makes his job easier more often than not. It makes even more sense for ECE+CAL+ECE, especially if used for rare events that do not start/finish at the same place.
There is no sane argument to use calendar event distance twice, and if it were allowed, we might as well all stop riding the calendar when our Garmin turns over 200...
I don't see how you're using the calendar distance twice given that you're not using the calendar distance at all. Again, if you only ride 209km on a calendar ride and then tack a 90km ECE on the end of it you don't get the ECE part validated because you've only ridden 299km.
Likewise if you stop riding the calendar event when your Garmin turns over 200 you won't be validated because you haven't visited all of the controls.
[EDIT] To be clear, as I understand it, if you ride a 215km calendar event with a 90km ECE leg afterwards and only submit the tracklog for the ECE section then it will not be validated as Martin has no proof that you rode at least 210km on the calendar ride in order to be satisfied that you have ridden at least 300km in total. All he has to go on is the assumption that the calendar event would have been at least 200km.