guidelines for new brm routes - audax€¦ · location. 1 -route creation ... reading for your...

COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE FOR CREATION OF BRM ROUTES

BY DIVYA TATE

With RAGHU VISHAL

1 -Route Creation – Planning

A - Conceiving a Route

• Use your local knowledge of roads, terrain, distance and road conditions to conceive of a route, for a particular distance.

• A whole year’s calendar can have routes with a variation in it in terms of difficulty level.

• Also variations in route will engage the regular club members to come back to ride new routes, not just to the required distances.

• Keep in mind if there are dangerous areas and only design routes that you yourself are prepared to ride.

Rann of Kutch

Ellora Caves

B – Route Variations and Factors

• Visiting different cultural, historic places, different terrain adding routes with scenic beauty are some of the things to keep in mind

• There are many conditions to keep in mind when deciding whether or not a route is suitable. Road conditions, traffic, availability of food and water stops, rest stops at suitable times on route, safety from crime especially on night stretches, logistics for sections that require volunteers, are some of the factors to be kept in mind.


Use the Terrain to ‘UP’ the challenge

Pune 200 BRM with 3000 M elevation gain

C - Finalizing the Details

• The checkpoints should be more or less regularly spaced between the brevet start and finish. additional checkpoints at any possible short-cuts. According to the distance there should be

o 2 to 4 for a 200 km Brevet

o 3 to 5 for a 300 km brevet




o NO MORE AND NO LESS

• Route selection should always be the shortest possible road between two points. An organizer or ride marshal cannot personally police every single rider to ensure no short cuts are taken.

• Start point and finish point need not be at the same location.


PBP 2015

D – Selecting control points

• Selection of control point is also very important. We usually set the control point as a restaurant or an ATM point located near settlements or major landmark so the CP is easily identifiable. This allows riders to check-in at the control point and take rest / refresh at the restaurant / dhaba.

• An ATM point has the advantage of being an unmanned control point where even if the ride marshal is not available due to emergencies then riders can still reach the control point and swipe their ATM card for a slip with date & time stamp for proof of the ride.

• Alternately the dhaba can also stamp the brevet cards with date & time if you trust the vendor. We also permit food bills with computerize date & time stamps to be presented by riders as proof of ride.

• All night cafes have proved to be good controls especially for unmanned controls.

• Avoid setting finish point inside the city on busy roads if the finish time is during peak traffic hours.


From roadside picnic spots to cafes, dhabas, hotel, bus stops, atmand bike shops… find what is suitable!

A – Online Mapping Tools

• Start by creating the route on Map my ride -https://www.mapmyride.com or Ride with gps -https://ridewithgps.com/

• These two give you distances that are very accurate (they all use google now anyway) and give options to download files in various formats. You may use any other that give you similar mapping flexibility, but these have been tried and tested.

• Doing this mapping itself needs a fair knowledge of the region and a lot of things will fall into place wrt distance, landmarks, route design

• They both allow you to zoom in to a very detail view of the road and surrounding to ensure accuracy of navigational details, landmarks, or keep a google map open in another tab to co-relate if required.

2 -Route Creation – Mapping

https://www.mapmyride.com/

https://ridewithgps.com/

Note Control point at 125 km to ensure no short cut is taken

B – Finalizing distances

• Some things may be fixed, like start or finish venues, or perhaps there are a few options that you can use. The rest you can tweak, like turn points etc, (since these mapping tools give you distances right to every 1 km) to get the exact distance you need.

• Of the two tools, map my ride gives you more flexibility to edit while drawing it. You can try out different options for the route if possible to either avoid major urban areas or to include some mountains etc.

• Out and back routes are the simplest to run. circuits add more logistics and management to the event, convoluted looping routes are very hard to manage and control and need more man power to prevent short cuts.

• One way routes may also be done, if you wish to end elsewhere, but come with their own challenges of logistics.

• Spend time on doing this properly before a physical recce. Most of the planning work is done in this stage. You will get a good idea/picture of the qualities of the route thru this stage itself

• Once you have it saved, you can download the file in various formats that you can either upload to any of your navigation devices or use an app to do so. for android, GPX viewer which allows to upload the track and show your location wrt the route.

2 -Route Creation – Mapping

A - Route Recce - Physical survey

• A physical survey of the route is recommended before the actual use of a route for a brevet and if the route has not been used for a long time or after a bad rainy season. So that you can give riders a fair idea of what to expect.

• This may be conducted by automobile or cycle.

• For the actual route recce keep the track loaded on one of your devices or GPX viewer and ensure you are following it.

• Use the car odometer readings for cross referencing... Just remember tho that for cue sheet these reading are inaccurate, especially during a recce, and won’t match with other cars.

• Bear in mind what time of day or night different sections are likely to be covered during the brevet. in long brevets, the riders get spread out a lot, and the difference in time between first and last rider may be 12-16 hours, so not all will face same conditions at same time of day.

• Note all major landmarks, towns, villages etc. you cross during the route recce and even take pictures of important locations, possible control points and turn-around points along with Km reading for your cue-sheet.

3 -Route Creation – Recce

B – Checklist for observations

Additionally, keep a log during the physical survey of...

• road surface quality,

• services availability (petrol pumps, food, provisions etc)

• landmarks,

• scenic sections,

• hazards like traffic, congestion,

• toll booths, diversions, road work

• potholes, bad speed bumps,

• animals,

• blind turns etc

• alternate road that may give shortcuts

• Wind conditions, exposure to elements

• Challenges of climbing

3 -Route Creation – Recce

A - Post Recce - Finalizing Route• Post recce, revisit the map and edit until final. Mapmyride

and Ridewithgps give you map handle point allowing you edit the route, correcting deviations or adding them, and adjusting start, finish and turn points till you have your final distances.

• Use the online map, with detailed distance markers, to make a detailed navigation guide that is to be followed by riders.

• Bear in mind that riders may come from anywhere in the world for your brevet, cue sheets need to be made easy for anyone to follow even if unfamiliar with the region.

4 -Route Creation – Cue Sheet

• B – Importance of making a detailed Cue Sheet

• The cue sheet HAS TO BE ENTERED IN COMPLETE DETAIL on the Audax website.

• Do not simply write “Start” or “Finish” on the cue sheet, you should mention the address with landmarks for the start & finish of your route.

• Do not simply write “take left” or “take right turn” on the cue sheet, again you should mention the landmark or location name where the rider is expected to take turns.

• A rider should be able to navigate your route using only the cue sheet and the road signs / landmarks along the way. DO NOT assume all riders will use your strava route or google maps while on the ride. Mobiles & bike computers are not a mandatory requirement for riding a BRM.

• Even if the rider is on a straight highway of 100Km without any turns, you should still list some major village/town on the route at 15 - 25Km intervals so riders can understand how many Km to next town / control point.


HOW YOU SHOULD NOT MAKE A CUE SHEET - VIZAG 200

It seems obvious that a rider cannot ride this brevet based only on the cue sheet

GOOD EXAMPLE OF DETAILED CUE SHEET – PUNE 200

DETAILED CUE SHEET 40 LINE OF NAVIGATION – PUNE 200

C – Preparing the final Cue sheet for Upload

• Login to rider login on website

• Go to Club Dashboard

• Go to Routes Dashboard


C – Preparing the final Cue sheet for Upload• Click on Add New Routes


• Option 1 - Download the Sample XLS file at bottom of Route Registration form page.

C – Preparing the final Cue sheet for Upload

• Follow instructions on excel, that only requires the first 6 columns.

• Fill in all details of Navigation into the excel.• Bear in mind that Partial Km refers to the distance covered

between each row in your navigation grid. • You may enter a formula in col G to give you Total km of

route, for your ref.• It is a good idea to cross check both total and partial km

against the map and any notes, before uploading.• Name the file by route name and distance ready for upload


D – Uploading new route to website

• Fill in details on Route Registration Form.

• Upload the excel sheet and submit.



D – Uploading new route to website

• Option 2 - Fill in details on Route grid directly to website.

• This is more tedious.

• Click “Recalculate Controls” after selecting CP & before submission, also to avoid a time-out

• Check grid for controls, timings, total distance and cut-offs before submitting.

• Routes may only be edited in a very limited way on route dashboard if they have been used.

• Add contact info for ride marshal / volunteers of each event in cue-sheet as shown in next few slides

• Issue hard copy of cue sheet with brevet card to all riders, downloaded from the website.

• DO NOT issue cue sheet different from audax site

• Technology can fail, the cue sheet is the defining navigation guide.

5 – Cue Sheet Usage

To put Message on Cue Sheet:Click “Update Events”

Enter Details in ‘Message on Cue Sheet’

Message appears on Cue Sheet at the Bottom

LET’S LIGHT THIS PLACE UP!!

guidelines for new brm routes - audax€¦ · location. 1 -route creation ... reading for your...

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