The Problem With Cycling Clubs…

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now on to our big question do traditional cycling clubs still have a place in 2024 we have a very extensive list of good things and some bad things and just some discussion points on this yeah we do this as an overrated underrated one week won’t we and then we talked about it so much that we thought it could be a bigger piece yeah so an obvious one for the good things about psyching clubs is they are a great place to meet people especially if you live in rural places or in super super populated places where like London’s a great example you you we lived in London well we lived in a particular flat in London for the last two years or whatever it was that we lived there and we saw we spoke to our neighbors a couple of times a month and you know like you basically don’t meet people um so clubs are a great way to do it one of our good friends Nick Harnet one of his best Mates is because he he decided to join a Cycling Club is Linton CC and then made mates which are now his life friends uh so it is a great place to meet new people um they are always regular so I am I’m a very good example of someone which finds it hard to get out of the door unless I have uh some kind of motivation which is why I like park run for running it’s there every Saturday uh clubs are all cycling clubs are great for they’re always going to be riding whatever day of the week plus whatever day of the weekend and you’re probably going to be riding with the same people or similar people and they’re always going to be there and you know it’s a good way of having that reliability and regularity which I think is good you guys got anything else to add we just listening we’re just listening to your um Ted Talk yeah I guess also if I think if you’re new to cycling they’re particularly good because you you meet people and you learn about cycling and culture and all of of that I mean hopefully not the bad parts of that because there is you know like the rules and all of that kind of stuff but the the good stuff you know etiquette and just the the sort of language people use and the sort of rituals people do and um yeah and also I guess they don’t they don’t usually cost that much as far as I can see it’s usually like something like 30 quid a year get I think it it gets expensive if you want to race yes but to just join a club yeah it’s not that expensive it’s not it’s not golf memberships no yeah and but then is there an expectation that you buy the club kit and then perhaps it does get expensive maybe yeah I don’t know how enforced they are but I can see if everyone else is buying it you wouldn’t want to be left out would you two massive positives for cycling clubes uh traditionally they would teach good riding etiquette uh inherently riding bikes is dangerous um and there are certain things that you can do whilst you’re out riding to limit the risk an easy one which I always bang on about is if you’re riding next to someone if you’re riding shoulder toh shoulder if you get hit by a crosswind or something rather you’re just going to bounce off their shoulder rather than into their handlebars and you both hit the deck so clubs typically will teach safe riding eate uh but also on the subject of racing and Grassroots racing which we’ve talked about quite a bit this episode that at least in this country that basically exists because of cycling clubs it’ll be cycling clubs that are hosting the junior races or the senior races uh the cyclocross races it’s all hosted by the clubs it isn’t British cycling that are hosting most of if not any of the you know it’s the clubs that are doing that um and it’s those events which are essentially bringing through athletes whether they’re professional or not um so without those clubs a lot of that stuff does not happen and just wouldn’t happen it’s also good for finding your rout in your local area if you don’t know which because all the different clubs will ride different places and different routes and just you can learn more about where you where you’re riding so it sounds like the answer our question is yes they’re great no cuz we thought of also we thought of some things that they maybe don’t do so well and obviously I think really this it’s on a club to Club basis isn’t it some some clubs are great some clubs are not so good yeah I’m sure that’s the case I think committee structure can be a really good thing but I think it can also the rigidity of that organized fun can sometimes cause issues so so I guess by committee structure you mean because it’s an official Affiliated Club it will have some kind of structure with someone which is in charge and there’s a hierarchy which can C which can make a club uh less flexible perhaps yeah totally and I think the the vibe of that club can really be made or broken by that committee and obviously that committee will usually change as well um and that can really make a sudden shift in the experience I would say it’s a bit I Me Maybe it’s a bit like um dating you have to find your right one not every Club is going to be the right fit for you definitely and therefore you have to shop around uh some clubs are known for being unbelievably elitist which isn’t a bad thing as long as you know that some people want that some people want elitist clubs because that fits them so yeah I’m not good for this because I think different clubs because you are Mr elitist no cuz I rule my club with an iron fist you know I mean like dictatorship properly like there’s no committee there’s no um I don’t think it’s always bad I think it’s difficult the the real difficult thing is if you’ve got a massive Club it’s really good to have all inclusive and C it for everybody so our club back home in soua Africa we used to do between four and five ride outs on a Saturday in different categories so essentially the front guys like they just called the a group um they used to race ride as hard as they can as fast as I can and there was a few professional cyclists that used to show up and it was just fast and then obviously it gets slower as it goes in different distances if you’ve got a really small Club I don’t think you can cater for everybody because we’ve noticed with our club where we’ve got less than 40 members but um the majority ride at roughly a pace of between 16 and 19 M hour average speed so if you then all of a sudden throw somebody in that’s new to cycling and can only ride 12 M hour which is perfectly fine or somebody like James that wants to ride at 28 miles hour it’s just going to cause a massive problem because then you have to make the majority of the club change their ride for the minority MH and that because you can’t make two or three groups cuz if you’ve got three groups and there’s only like six people and show it up then you’ve got people riding on pirs yeah so I think smaller clubs some of the clubs do need to start off with finding an identity of what they want to do those clubs can eventually grow muckle’s a really good example up here they started small I think Five Guys started something and then eventually now the club’s got over 100 members so it had to more from them just doing absolutely monstrously long rides to doing a few different things like chain gangs and stuff like that but yeah so you can’t being an elitist Club I don’t elit is wrong word but like a club that cases for certain if you’ve got a club where you’ve got five or six guys that just want to wear fancy CL clothes buy expensive bikes and just ride till the local CAF have a drink and ride back well so be it if you had 200 members and you’re letting everybody come in then you might want to change it up slightly I I actually agree with you in the sense that I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with establishing an identity which is we can’t possibly cater for all people whether that’s because you’re new or you you know you don’t have the capabilities or whatever I think the problem is when you don’t um sign post that and up front just be up front about it if you’re you know if you don’t have the proper structure in place to do a shorter lower speed ride whatever it is then just say that but I think the I think in this day and age sometimes clubs feel pressured to say on their website we cater for all abilities all genders all minorities da da da and then you go there and you get something completely unexpected if you’re not going to do it don’t say you’re going to do it cuz then someone can make the decision to not turn up there because as much as I was saying before it’s really good for beginners to be part of something you can also be really put off if you turn up like I remember speaking to her last ages ago this is when I was still in London and she just messaged me on Instagram but she was talking about a local Club in South London and she said she turned up and they were literally just doing hill reps up and down and she was like I have I’ve not even done a hill on my bike like it was that kind of level it was such a disconnect but she was told to turn up they would cater for her blah blah blah and then they just in her mind left her there was no support and it was it was so disconnected from what she’d been sold and I think that’s probably the problem with it isn’t it it goes back both ways when I first moved to the UK and I was racing back in the day I mean I just left I was was fast and I went onto a a local Club ride and I showed up and they didn’t advertise that it was going to be a 12 12 M hour average which is perfectly fine but for me it was just I I showed up I committed to it I start on the ride and I didn’t want to be like well this is just not what I was at that point in my life looking now would be perfect for me but back then I just wanted to go and ride incredibly hard y um and get my legs torn off um but yeah yeah I think I guess in the past there was no other option other than to join your local Club whereas because of the internet people can connect with people and probably people that they’re better suited to rather than we live in the Sim geographical area and we we we both ride bikes that we might still be completely different cyclists whereas in theory the internet lets you connect with well more like minor people if you can find the right place that is how I ended up meeting so many people that are still my friends now yeah like Chris Hall’s a prime example of it he was one of the first people I met and it was the collective concept yeah uh which was in the previous early wave of cycling so that’s post 2012 wave and the rise of social media once you hit kind of 2014 2015 it was when like stuff got cool e-commerce became a thing uh stuff became more accessible the internet was blowing up and like cycling scenes were developing and I am very fortunate that I was on the London cycling scene when it was happening and I ended up falling in line with people like Chris Hall uh Toby from cold du North because he used to spend a lot of time in London and there was this crew of us of maybe 15 20 of us uh one of the lads had an Instagram account which kind of like pulled it all together it was what did you it was 10,000 km CC and it was Richard Fraser’s vision of aim for consist it’s all about consistency his thing wasn’t about performance it was just about consistency if you’re consistent every week then riding 10,000 kilom in a year is achievable which is for the record a huge distance and most people are not able to achieve it um but that’s by the buy and we ultimately just used to ride a lot together as a collective but it is we were essentially a Cycling Club what you could argue is that’s exactly what Nick’s talking about that is a club that sets out very specifically their purpose and what you can expect from doing it if you like these things then this is for you rather than we a traditional Club everyone welcome but fundamentally it it it really was a club yeah because we used to meet on most days of the week but not all days of the week we would ride we’d go for coffee we’d go to work on a weekend we would meet up and do a longer ride this is where BR cycling is coming and pay you as a club have to pay to be part of what they do you don’t need to be part I mean exactly we’re doing this for the bike shop at the moment um we’re going to do Saturday ride out gravel this is for gravel um but anybody’s welcome we’re going to set out what we want to do the kind of idea and if you don’t like it just well hopefully you do but if you don’t you can just go your own pace we’re going to put the the root out and you just ride well I I actively do not go on your rides because they’re never actual gravel rides are you telling me that you’re actually doing proper gravel rides now are you still doing your stupid mountain bike and stuff it’s not he likes to fling people down very muddy Hills and stuff I don’t because you can walk down if you want it’s gra gravel is a weird term I don’t think anybody knows it’s just that’s what we like do most of the guys I ride with enjoy doing it and that’s why we do it my question is are your inclusive gravel rides actually mountain bike rides like your usual rides yes okay cool thank you so I still not to be going on them um we do know some amazing clubs uh I know if Francis was here he would be shouting about Kingston wheelers so that’s the club that he was a junior with they are huge they’re in London they ride around Richmond Park a lot and sorry uh we know plenty of people that excuse me have do ride for them they’re amazing Club um so I’ll shout about them on his behalf yeah do you know what I actually had a look on their website when I was trying to look at what the sort of cost of joining a Cycling Club was because in my mind it was hundreds of pounds but it’s only3 p a year but one of the things I saw so when you come up on their homepage you see an FAQ section and it said f one of the FAQs was how many women are in the club and it said there’s something like 50 you’re more than welcome we also have a dedicated women’s officer and we have a policy of inclusivity and du D du and that I would say is something that would make me go to that club just just mentioning that well it would it would actually make me want to go to that club more as as a a male yeah because for me I look if if they’re treating people like that then the likelihood is they’re not going to be horrible to me either yeah and I mean this is it you can it’s all well and good saying it but you have if you’re going to say it you have to be prepared to deal with incidents if they do occur and deal with them in the appropriate way and I do I’m not going to name names but I do know there are clubs that say that and then something actually happens and it is not dealt with appropriately so um that’s not Kingston Whalers but but you know having a dedicated women’s officer for example would be something that would make me you know if there was any sort of incident I would feel like they would I could go to them and it would be addressed properly in a way that it made me feel that I could be comfortable in that club um obviously there are other minorities as well that definitely feel are going to feel out of place in what’s predominantly a very like white male environment so I think again don’t offer it if you’re not prepared to do it and fine but if you are prepared to do it then I think that is something that is very worthy of having a club another version is uh velop posy these are all London based because this is kind of when we were looking for clubs wasn’t it velop posi are predominantly for women trans and non-binary um focused around racing sort of track but not just they do a lot of skill sessions and just ride sessions and just more bike proficiency they’re super cool as well I think they were originally like a fixed crit kind of like racy team setup sort of thing not not just about racing but they were they were very present in that space and then they grew and grew and grew yeah and I was I was part of them for a while and it was absolutely great and I’ve met a lot of people there that I rode with afterwards as well you know kind of I guess there aren’t a lot of women on bikes so that was kind of a place that everyone congregated so it helped me meet other people like that yeah this sounds horri but it shouldn’t be needed like I mean when I was a kid riding so our club back home select Cycling Club had about 450 members um and there’s loads of different categories so the race side the social side there was Juniors and then those women and they every year the club voted on captains so you got your race Captain your road Captain your uh ladies captain and your Junior captain and then you go on the rides and that person had full Authority so if somebody on a ride was misbehaving or doing something wrong they would just get booted yeah so you wouldn’t have to have like just somebody that’s got a bit of a they get voted in but somebody that’s essentially there just to say so there could be one girl with 30 guys and if one of the guys just behaving somebody just go over and say listen do one it shouldn’t be that it’s like it didn’t ideal well that would happen totally but like I said this has been happening for 20 plus years it’s just it should be more of a common thing in clubs that’s probably the first thing that should vote in um just so there’s somebody that’s there as a kind of your job is just to make sure people so if you ride too fast or you do something silly it’s just or if somebody gets dropped somebody that’s aware that there’s a new cyclist on The Beginner’s ride they’re struggling to back so that person is just going to drop back with them and kind of make sure they’re okay so just a bit of a common sense mhm maybe that’s what’s lacking from some clubs then Common Sense tell us about your experiences with cycling clubs if you love your club and you think they’re doing great stuff shout about them in the comments send us an email whatever you want to do but tell us about them we might even give them a little shout out one day maybe we can pile a list of the best clubs in the world that would be great you know how there’s that um glass door thing for business like emplo employees yeah and you can kind of give them a rating and stuff if there was something like that oh there should be there should be that be sick yeah we should um should we start that that would be awesome I don’t I don’t know if I have the skills to be able to create that but that would be really cool based on actual you know they say this what they actually offer yeah and it updates per year as committees change and all of that kind of so good accountability