school holidays, a week off work, weather not too bad, what’s missing??? actually any other time i would be smashing out hundreds of kms this week, but i am still in a bit of a funk when it comes to cycling. i am actually spending more time in the garage restoring an old clunker to ride around than i am in the saddle of my proper road bike. not sure where the love has gone, but it is hard to love something that hurts so much at the moment. so my alternative is to try to live through my 6 year old and his biking exploits. i have put an old garmin on his bike now so he has his own strava account to keep track of things. just need to purchase a hr strap that fits him to complete the picture. oh, and strava keeps telling me to “enter a valid weight” when i try to put in his body weight at 19kgs. we took a ride down to the southside bmx track the other day and he did about 12 laps, including 3 stacks where he didn’t go fast enough to get up the jumps and rolled backwards. he hit the deck, was in tears, but still managed to worry about his “beautiful bike”. when it was suggested that we head home, he just wanted to do more laps.
state team time trial – good luck to the spr teams competing down in pinjarra this weekend. there are 3 teams that i know of, so good luck and see if you can bring home some medals.
focus group – the kids ride is on this weekend as it is the first saturday of the month. feel free to bring your own kids (about under 10 yrs old) along for a ride to the causeway and back.
ride routes – there is still lots of issues with some of the groups and their attempts at roll throughs. it is important for people to get more exposure to it so that they can get better at it, but lately the experience they are getting is not particularly good. my suggestion this week is to not roll through until the ride gets to west coast highway. since it is after ewan st, the size of the groups should be whittled down somewhat which makes rolling through easier. up until that point just ride two abreast with both riders pulling off to the right when changing.
saturday 6th october
ride starts under the narrows (cityside) at 5:30am
early lap – spr earlybird ride
all rides start at coode st carpark at 7:00am
development group – spr saturday 35.48km (novice shelley)
transitional – spr saturday 40.86km (rebold hill)
fast & main groups – spr saturday 50.23km (ewen st)
ride starts behind boatshed cafe (coode st carpark) at 9:30am
focus kids group – ride along bike path to causeway and return (7kms)
sunday 7th october
ride starts under the narrows (cityside) at 5:30am
early lap – spr earlybird ride
all rides start at coode st carpark at 7:00am
short – follow long course out to the kalamunda climb
long – spr sunday 90.10km (kalamunda & chookenberg & observatory)
7am at Coode Street on Saturday morning, Interesting to see the number of cyclists moving from one side of the Main 1 congregation to the other just to make sure they were going to be in the first Main 1 group to leave the car park. Must be the lure of getting back to Dome asap for one of Toby’s coffee’s!!
The second Main 1 had a great ride – smooth roll-through’s, good pace and sensible riding in the windy conditions.
Would have been a perfect ride except for the P-plater in Claremont who leaned on his horn for a bit too long as he was passing us. I think we need to come up with a clever, standardised Club response to tossers like that, rather than yelling “wanker!” 😉
Any ideas??
The Main 1 group to leave first today was too big, some sloppy riding where riders were sometimes 3 abreast and pulling out in front of others and some near crashes (someone near the front braking too quickly for some unknown reason on Mounts Bay Road near the bewery). Last weeks ride was awesome and the roll throughs very good, a much smaller group. This week not so good and some people need to read the ride etiquette. I’m starting to sense the Main 1 rides are becoming a bit unsafe lately with too many crashes and near misses. Anyone else feel the same?
Geoff, if the group was too big, did you sit up and wait to join the second group?
Luke, I don’t know how that is supposed to resolve the situation!
groups too big…riders sit up…groups now smaller.
And safer. No good you riding anxiously in a large group that you don’t feel comfortable with.
If some riders take the lead and join another group, the ride leader’s role becomes much easier. “Unsafe” riding is much more visible in a smaller group, and the errant riders can be educated directly on the point of etiquette they’re failing at.
As you’ve said, better roll-throughs occur in smaller groups, so people can pick up the proper learned behaviours more quickly this way – the rides improve.
There are some great people leading the various groups at SPR. We’ve all got to support them as much as we can, especially with our own contribution to the rides themselves.
“I’m starting to sense the Main 1 rides are becoming a bit unsafe lately with too many crashes and near misses. Anyone else feel the same?”
Main “X” is not unsafe. People are unsafe.
Everyone loves a disney analogy…..
Huey, Dewey and Louie all want to step up to the next group.
(They think there is a merit badge.)
Huey: Can ride in the pack, but wants more PB’s.
Dewey: Can rides on the front, or in the pack, can ride on the front all day if needed.
Luey: Want’s to ride with his mate.
Work the rest out….
sounds like snow white and the seven dwarves need to get on the front and ride a nice steady tempo…forcing those pesky ducks to sit in and behave
To change the subject completely, apologies for the confusion on the Sunday long ride today. I mis-read the map and this resulted in a splinter group doing some of the ride out of order. Still we all ended up together on the last climb and got home dry! Changing the route did not make Chookenberg any easier.
No worries, Dr J. Doing the chook later in the ride after more kms and climbs i.e. on tired legs obviously produced the right degree of penitence.
Shame you didn’t take a few more of the strong young men with you when you left.
(The split may even have made the ride safer.)
I feel the need to defend Geoff’s comments, as I think that rider safety is the primary focus here……For those of you that were amongst the first main 1 group on Saturday, Geoff’s right, it was sloppy….. the problem in my view were the 4 or 5 off the front trying to stretch the group out and perhaps the absence of a fast group contributed….we all know how the lacky band effect works….fatigue then sets in and people get careless and ultimately the risk of someone going down is far greater….In my opinion, we should be restricting group rides to members only??…..where we have a better chance of educating our members about how to ride and safely, rather than attacking people for what they should have or could have done. There’s no single solution to the problem, but it appears there are a number of riders riding for themselves rather than for the group camaraderie and their ego gets in the way of their rationale.
Neil, There are a number of issues that Pete and the committee are attempting to address. One of the things that attracts people to the club is the inclusiveness of the club, ie you can come along and ride with us without being a member. This is what encourages new members to join. I suspect that the ones on the front on Saturday may have been club members anyway, so making it a club only ride, may not have had any effect.
I don’t profess to have all (or even any) answers to this issue, but I do know that we need to do something about it.
Talking with others around Perth, if this sort of behaviour happened, then the offenders would be given a right bollocking by the senior members of the club.
Other suggestions are that when that sort of thing happens, let those people go. Sometimes it is the responsibility of those in the group to make a decision and be brave enough to sit up and tell everyone else to let them go. Once there is a small group of retrobates off the front, the group as a whole may settle down and everyone will have a more enjoyable ride.
Like I said, I don’t have all the answers, but asking one person (Pete) to enforce the rules across 200 odd members + the additional non members over 8 groups without people within those groups stepping up, is almost an impossible task.
there was a fast group. i was in it XD
Transition Ride – as is the current trend it seems, we had our first un-scheduled dismount on a T Ride on Sat. Its not that we were riding fast – paired up around 27 kph and on the home run; but possibly more a case of a bit tired; maybe lack of water or food leading to a dose of hypo-glycaemia & loss of concentration, a touch of wheels and ugliness follows. Lucky to have a sloping kerb and grass to land on otherwise body & bike damage could have been worse . . . . but the lesson is for the experienced and fit on the ride to keep a look out for those who may be struggling and to give a hand; ask them how they’re going, slow the group down & let the ride leader know. If you’re on the ‘T’ ride and you see someone wandering out into the middle of the road, or not looking before overtaking, or falling off the back – you must say something to them – or at least to the ride leader. We all have to look out for each other and getting home in one piece with a smile on the dial is a collaborative effort.
Sunday short hills ride – my first time back after 6 months and thanks everyone (‘specially Emma) for giving me a wheel and consistently dragging me back into the pack. Very tempted half-way up Kalumunda to turn around and head back for a lie down a cuppa tea. No-one seemed to know what to do once hit we hit the carpark at Kal, so we headed off for the Pickering Brook circuit. Nice lumpy course with no traffic – road’s a bit rough in places but a great ride all the same and the round trip back to S-P is 75 -80 klms – perfect distance for me. Think this one should be included in the standard short hills ride list.