Ardechoise

stifflersmom

Also posted in the Tour section but te has anyone done this event and know the registration process is? If you want to ride the sportive on the Saturday is it a ballot entry, and is there a different process for group entries. The website isn't particularly clear on this. Thanks.

knedlicky

I did the Ardechoise in 2014 and in 2015.
In 2014, I rode the Saturday only (La Volcanique, 176 k) and in 2015, I did a 4-day option (day 1 - L’Ardèche Verte, the 90 k route; days 2 to 4 – La Chataigne-Loire, 410 k).
In 2014 I was on my own, and there was no ballot entry for the Saturday (but there is a cut-off date for registration).
In 2015 I was part of a group and, given we wanted to ride 4 days, obviously our choice of accommodation level had to additionally be made on our registration as well as our chosen route (note that the cut-off date for accommodation is earlier than the cut-off date for event entry).

As far as I remember, in 2015 each of our group had to be registered individually. So it was recognised we were a group which wanted to ride and overnight together, the registrations had to be sent together (or made online on the same day), with a principal POC being named for the group. I don’t remember how this was done – maybe in a cover note/email.

On the registration form, if each person of a group marks that he/she wants to take part in the “challenge inter-entreprises” and in a following line on the form gives the name of the ‘entreprise’., e.g. Team Stifflersmom’, it will also alert the organiser to the fact that there will be others from the same team registering, whether for the competition or for accommodation. We did this too, without any ambition to get a good placing in the team challenge. There was no extra cost involved.

Everything went smoothly with our group registration except for when we had to ask for one proposed accommodation to be altered because it was planned to put two 6 ft, 13-14 stone males in a double bed only 4 ft 6 ins wide! The organiser had incorrectly understood from their names that they were a married couple.
It ended up, our whole group was relocated to another accommodation for that night. Not all accommodations are close to one’s chosen route – in the case of our relocation, it added 30 k to our basic route distance.

stifflersmom

Thanks, that is really helpful :-)