Mason English Department Chair's Challenge: 224 miles, 24 hours!

A fleche is an annual ride in "randonneuring" (endurance bicycling) in which teams of 3-5 ride 360 km (about 224 miles) in 24 hours.  There is no competition among teams to be first; the only goal is for all members of the team to complete the ride. Hence the fleche emphasizes teamwork rather than competition.  I'll be riding with three bikers who have completed the crown jewel of randonneuring, a ride of 1200 km (about 745 miles) in 90 hours!  I am buoyed in my ambition to finish the fleche by knowing that I am undertaking it with such strong riders.

Here are more details about the rules of the ride from The DC Randonneurs Blog:

"The DC Randonneurs fleche will be held on the weekend of April 15-18, 2010. A fleche (French for “arrow”), is a team event in which each team rides different routes toward a common finish location, like arrows toward a target. The minimum ride distance is 360 km, which must be covered in a period of 24 hours.

Most people who have done a fleche consider it to be one of their favorite randonneuring events since riding together as a team for 24 straight hours builds strong bonds between team members, and is great fun! This year we have again scheduled the fleche for two weeks after Easter weekend, which permits people to ride who previously could not ride on the traditional Easter weekend. The target this year is the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington, VA, where the teams will also rejoin for a hearty post-ride brunch.

The fleche has its own set of rules that are somewhat different, and perhaps even more arcane, than those for a standard brevet. Some of them are summarized here:

• Each team must consist of three to five bicycles. (Note that a tandem counts as a single bicycle, so teams will sometimes contain more than five riders.)
• Teams can start at any time between noon on Thursday and 10AM on Saturday, and must finish 24 hours later. (However, we encourage teams to finish between 6AM-8AM on Sunday morning so that we can join together for the brunch!)
• The traditional fleche route starts at some distant location and then heads for the target, but a loop route is also allowed, as long as the start location is far enough from the finish to be considered as a different postal jurisdiction.
• As in a standard brevet, the routes must contain control locations chosen so that the shortest bicycle-legal route through the controls is equal to at least the minimum distance of 360 km. However, the fleche has an additional requirement that one of the controls must occur exactly 22 hours after the start and be at least 25 km from the finish. Note that this requirement, as well as the one that states that no rest stops can be longer than 2 hours, ensures that teams take nearly the full 24 hours to complete the ride.

Additional information about the 22-hour control will be provided to all registered team captains, since a full understanding of the rules for this control is essential for achieving a successful finish. Many experienced captains even recommend bringing a printed copy of the rules on the ride since they can be hard to recall at 4 in the morning!"