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Old 04-24-07, 10:13 PM
  #14  
spokenword
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Originally Posted by Fonk
Not a randonneur myself (or at least not yet), I've always wondered about that last 25km rule, it having to be ridden btwn the 22nd and 24th hours. Why is that? I understand that a fleche isn't a race, but still - if the riders can, and want to, ride it faster, why not allow that? That rule actually might discourage some racer/randonneur crossovers who'd like to ride it like an extended team time trial. Just curious...
I believe the point is to discourage it from being a team time trial. If a team starts to focus on its speed, then there's a greater temptation to drop members who, for various reasons, might be holding the team back, even if they might be riding at a pace that allows them to complete the course in the prescribed time.

So, if say, the restriction were dropped, and you rode in a team of 5 all with a goal of doing it in 18 instead of 24 hours; what would you do if one of your team members had digestion issues and needed to spend more time in a control bathroom? What if the best average speed they could muster was 12 mph? Would you drop him? You still had four members and can still finish the fleche without him.

But the idea behind the fleche is not to drop him, and, if at all possible, to finish the ride as a team. By taking the speed criteria away, you eliminate a large source of possible inequity amongst various team members. If you want to make a fleche more challenging, you can do things like pick hillier terrain, opt for a weird start time, or do it all fixed. Yet, at the end, you still have a common goal, which is to finish.
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