Too much?
 

Hello...
It was long time, since my last post here :-)

I would like to get your opinion on one brevet route. We are planing to include it in next season calendar, but it seems almost impossible (from my point of view) to finish.
It's 1000km brevet, but with almost +18,000 meters (+59,000 ft) of elevation gain !!!

Here's link: 1000k

I really would like to hear your opinion on this. :-)

95 feet of climbing per mile. Yikes. That's a lot. I consider anything above 70 a lot. That amount of climbing makes for a tough but very do-able 200K or 300K. I did a 300K with 92 feet per mile and it was the second hardest day of riding I've experienced. I personally can't imagine doing that for 3 days in a row, but I am a wimp (comparatively).

The problem I see is the big climb right at 400k, and then there is a lot of climbing the next day too. Downhill for the last 300k is a nice break, but nobody is going to make it there. I suspect too many people will be sleep deprived by the first day and the second day will be too hard, but it looks like a challenge. What is the road surface like?

Since those roads are main roads, quality of surface (asphalt) is pretty good. Especially when you go to Herzegovina (lower, mountainous part), where stone is everywhere, and make good. hard surface for roads.

I'll compare this route with similar, just to see does our elevation gain is much bigger than other.
If it is so, we won't ride it, but in other case... :-)

I couldn't find the amount of climbing for le 1000 de Sud, but you might contact the organizer to ask her. A lot of people have trouble finishing that due to the amount of climbing. The Endless Mountains 1000k (PDF warning) has 46k feet of climbing and is considered to be fairly tough.

:-)
...I found full info on Le 1000 de Sud:
https://sites.google.com/site/le1000dusud/home

and

https://sites.google.com/site/le1000...parcours-route

...we have few meters more. :-)

Hm, we'll see...

There is a lot of climbing in that ride but I would guess that the Ride with GPS software is over estimating it by quite a bit. The ride is certianly doabe but it will be difficult. More to the point, the total climbing isn't as an important indicator of the ride difficulty as the steepness of those climbs. If there are a lot of grades in excess of 10-15% your going to have many more rider issues than if all the climbs are longer but in the 4-8% range.

Definitely. Zoom in on the section from 495km to 585km, for example. Are all those lumps really there? I see things like that on RWGPS maps around here that aren't really there. Here's an example on U.S. 50 between Carson City and Lake Tahoe:

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...psbe017ef1.jpg

I've ridden that many, many times and I can tell you that the road is more of a gradual uphill and that dip around mile 8 doesn't exist, and it definitely doesn't turn back uphill with grades over 15% as RWGPS would suggest. Here is the street view if you don't believe me.

Take a lot of small errors like that over 1,000km and they are really going to add up.

Yep, Ride with GPS definitely overstates elevation. I forget the exact number, but the Golden Gate 1000k that I rode last summer showed a similarly insane amount of climbing on Ride with GPS, but when I rode it my VDO 1.0 with an analog altimeter recorded an amount of climbing that was less than half of what Ride with GPS had calculated. I usually find the VDO 1.0 to be pretty accurate.

It looks to me like a very challenging but doable route, and I'd love to be able to give it a go someday.

Thank you all for your answers.
They really help me to see this from many angles, and to get good overview on all of this.

And, I'm looking to map, and some sort of plan coming to my mind. :)
If I would drive this, I'd divide this in 3 days:
First day, 361 km to Trebinje. (4.5 mountain passes)
Sleep.
Second day, 339 km to Zvornik (2 big and 2 small passes)
Sleep. :-)
Third day, 300 km to Banja Luka (flat course, with one hill)
Sleep.

Hm, I really can't judge it this doable or not.
I'm sort of have idea to ride to Trebinje, this season, and I think, I can draw some conclusions on ride and my capacities as cyclist.
We'll see.

Around here, for a 1200k, people show up from all over. For a 1000k, it's a purely local event, with local riders. If it's that way on this event, the people that ride those areas already probably have a better idea of how doable it is than the rest of us sitting half the world away.

From the RUSA procedures manual, "There may be cases where, because of the elevation gain or descent to an intermediate control, the standard opening/closing times are unduly restrictive. In these cases, a control without opening and closing times may be permitted. This requires the approval of the Route Coordinator - please explain the circumstances with your route submittal. Of course, the total time allowed for the full brevet remains unaffected." You might check this kind of thing out with your local rando organization to see if you're allowed similar flexibility.

That's also my experience. RWGPS regularly overestimates total climbing by a factor 2x. For example, a 300 km brevet I did that according to the organizers had about 2,800 m of climbing came out as 5,300 m on RWGPS.

If you are going to run a ride that hilly, make sure you list it as such in the description so that people who prefer a little less climbing will know to avoid the event and not get caught partway through, suddenly realising that they are going to DNF.

You say that you don't know if it is doable. Well ... go do it. If you can do it, it is doable. It is as simple as that. Print out your instructions, follow them to the letter to ensure you've got the instructions right ... and do it. Don't unleash a ride like that on the public until you've done it.


BTW, isn't the PBP only about 30,000 ft?

BTW - by "go do it", I mean, go ride it, on your bicycle, within the time limit allowed.

Pick a weekend soon, ride it, and report back. :)

:)
I hoped I could avoid this, but when you bring it up...
Since this ride is in plans for 2014, I hope I will find some weekend this year and ride this.

And don't worry, it will be advertised as hilliest ride in our lives. So that half of cyclist wanting to do this, just say:"It's too much, I'm off..."

BTW. Italians have 1001 Miglia with 22,591 m (74,000 ft) of elevation gain.

It's good to know our route is not the hilliest one.

Definitely, our route mus be "tested" before unleashing to widerness...
I hope I will find someone to ride with me, just to share expirience, and to have to someone to talk to in those long night hours.

I smell randonneuring spirit in air tonight... :-)

2010 Mille Miglia was pretty hilly but I don't believe that climbing total. The first 400km was just about pan flat. I got round in under 5 days and I'm no better than average at climbing.

+1. The organizer needs to have some skin in the game. :thumb:

And I had. :)
Last season, which was first in our country, I drove them all.

But, I really don't know how to wrestle ride this long. 600k which I drove turned to be very enjoyable, and perhaps nicest of them all.
1000k is almost double 600k. For now, it's very far, very big ride.

Right now, I'm wrestling with idea to ride this as "test" ride, just to see is it doable, at least from my viewpoint.
As I sad, we'll see...

And thank you all, for great suggestions, and giving me more viewpoints on subject.

Driving the route is a very, very different thing than riding the route. Driving a route is something you need to do when you first create the route, and a day or two before the event is run. In between, you need to be out there riding the route.

There should be no "wrestling with the idea of riding" ... you, as the ride organiser, need to get out there on your bicycle and ride it. You need to experience what the potential riders are going to experience. You need to know first hand where riders will need controls. You need to discover first hand that the shops in a particular town are closed by the time you get there. You need to experience the road surfaces from the seat of a bicycle. You need to be aware, from the perspective of a thirsty cyclist, where water might be available.

If the ride is scheduled for 2014, you've got lots of time to ride the route several times.

Once you've ridden the whole thing in one go, keep riding it in sections throughout the year to monitor the conditions. Ride it again a few weeks before the event is held. Then finally drive it a few days before the event is held.

We randonneurs can tell when the ride organiser has not carefully and consciously ridden a route ... and those are usually the worst events.

All of our rides were/are pre-run. There are so many things that you just don't notice from the seat of a car that may need to be in your route sheet. Especially from the point of rider safety. I don't think you'll find that ride as difficult as you think once you ride it. You have over a year before you were planing to run it so you should have plenty of time to do it.

:thumb:
Guys, thanks for pushing me.
For now, this ride seems to me like, I don't know what to say, like unbelievable high and big mountain, which I must conquer. :)

And, I made one new category in calendar, named: Test Rides, for this one, and for some two or three route ideas.
As StepnenH said:"...this rando stuff is addictive, and Dan's pusher..." :)

Calendar for this season is filling pretty fast. I'm thinking early September. :thumb:

I don't think you have to ride the whole thing in a single go, unsupported. You can ride it in pieces. Also, it pays to have volunteers pre-ride parts of the route. Scouting in a car is fine as long as you aren't using a gps to navigate.

I do think he needs to ride it as a though he were doing an official 1000K ... within the 75 hour time limit and all. He can have support at the controls, of course, as anyone can.

The thing is, he needs to discover what's open and what's closed on the route, what it feels like to be tackling the big hills in the heat of the day or middle of the night ... what the riders will experience. And if he rides it and discovers that all the shops are closed at critical times, maybe there will need to be an adjustment to the time the ride starts. If climbing the big hills in the heat of the day is absolutely exhausting, maybe it would be a good idea to have a volunteer -run water control at the top. If decending the big hills in the middle of the night is frightening and dangerous, maybe there needs to be a different adjustment to the start time of the event, or warnings about the nasty bridge at the bottom of the hill or whatever ...

You don't get that sort of experience by doing little pieces of the ride in ideal conditions. And if he can do the whole thing within the time period, then he knows it is indeed doable.

However, after doing the whole thing once, then it is a good idea to get out there and regularly do little pieces of the ride to stay on top of the road conditions etc. You just never know when the council will decide to remove a road or something (has happened to me once!)

You can certainly scout it in a car but I think you risk missing things that you wouldn't on the bike. Especially traffic patterns and road hazards. I've done a number of brevets and been on roads I'd never normally ride on because of the type of traffic or other road hazards that you might not notice from your car. A couple examples; one brevet had us on a road with a continuous barrage of logging trucks and with drivers who had very little patience for cyclists on "their" road. The organizers didn't realize there were so many trucks on that section of road because when they drove it they didn't notice the trucks. Another brevet had us on a road with sewer grates every 100yds for several miles, the kind that have the grates parallel with our direction of travel and love to grab front wheels. We had to ride into traffic to go around them. Finally, an RBA routed us over a metal grate bridge. One lady lost control of her bike on the bridge and face planted. You don't want to know how ugly that was. There was no need to even go over that bridge as there was a simple alternate route. Those are just a few examples there are many more. That's why I would encourage actually riding the route instead of driving so that you get an actual idea of the hazards involved.

some people are clueless even if they do ride it on their bike. If someone scouts a route of any complexity with a GPS on a bike, it is nearly worthless. It's really tough to properly scout a route anyway, particularly on a 1000k or 1200k. For example, I was on a route that apparently has huge traffic only on Fridays at 3:00-5:00pm. People who rode as fast as the organizer saw almost no traffic, everyone else was livid. I considered DNF'ing. Seen this to some degree even with very conscientious RBA's.

Did you mean conscientious RBA's? As I interpret your post, "conscientious" would make more sense.

yes, edited, thanks

It has become practice in some regions for the organiser and officials to pre-ride the route together under all the normal rules and qualify as finishers of the event if they get in under the required time... for the very important following reason:

To check the route for errors in the instructions (which are more common than most people are prepared to admit);

To check the distance readings on the computers used to set the course (to ensure some semblance of accuracy); and

To check road conditions, including signposting, surface and traffic flows.

There is a duty of care that lays with organisers to ensure that all those facets of the event are taken care of before the participants set off.

These are all valid, and most (all?) can be served by scouting by car.

I agree that scouting by bike can be better than by car, for other reasons mentioned in this thread though.

I think what may help, most specifically with cue sheet accuracy, is having someone otherwise unfamiliar with the course do the car scouting / bike pre-ride. Organizers who are familiar with much of the course already are sometimes apt to miss bad cues, just simply because their brain inserted the correct information (instead of what the sheet said) when they arrived at the turn.

Just speaking for myself, it means a lot when my RBA has done the route on his bike. It means that he has experienced much of what we will, and "eats his own cooking" for lack of a better term.

Even though an RBA is under no obligation to ride their routes via bike, I would have a much lower opinion of him if he just hopped in his minivan to scout it out and said "good luck!" on the day of the event.