Originally Posted by
The Octopus
Leaving Saturday at 0700 to start our fleche!
Curious to hear how you guys and gals figure your ETAs at the controls and various other points along the route where you might want to stop. My route is dead flat and the weather looks to be very good (warm and dry with a slight headwind or cross-wind during the day). I've figured rolling averages of 15mph during daylight and 13mph at night for our group, plus a total of 7 hours off the bike. What do the rest of you do?
For our fleche last year, we went conservative and pegged a 12 mph moving average across the entire ride, eventhough the first half of the ride was flat and the second half was rather hilly. We figured that we'd exceed estimates early but then fall under later, and that it would even out by the end. The estimates were based on the average speed for a 400k for the slowest rider (me).
If you assume that your team will stay together for the entire ride, then the only speed that matters for estimates is the speed of the slowest rider.
Like mattm's team, we made up a spreadsheet with proposed opening and closing times for controls, and tried to place a higher priority on long rest times at night, rather than trying to spread it evenly across day and night stops.