Tag Archives: club

New Look Thursdays

As the Club continues to evolve we need to ensure that our training rides remain safe, relevant, consistent and predictable.

We recently introduced the “Fast Too” group to cater for riders wanting to ride a little faster than the main group, which has worked well up until now. What has become clear, however, is that a further separation of the groups is required to keep the size manageable and safe as well as to achieve an overall consistent pace for each group.

From this Thursday, we will break the groups into categories based on the SPR Thursday (Gairloch) Strava segment (https://www.strava.com/segments/5958997) as follows:

Group 1 – Less than 54:00mins

Group 2 – 54:00 to 59:00mins

Group 3 – 59:00 to 1:03mins

Group 4 – Greater than 1:03mins

We will target group sizes of between 18 and 20 riders so that any ‘towing’ effect is significantly reduced; this means that there will be a greater incentive for everyone to contribute more evenly and improve rolling through on fairly narrow roads. Smaller groups will also be better placed to manage occasional splits at roundabouts, pedestrian crossings and traffic lights (ie: short periods of light-pedaling).

Ride leaders have been asked to encourage riders in their groups at the commencement of each ride to be more controlled, so that a steady ‘training mode’ roll-through along Mounts Bay Rd is established; we wish to promote full group co-operation at a manageable speed before the first hill after Steve’s in Nedlands. Ride leaders have also been asked to support adjusting the pace on the return journey depending on the capacity of the whole group.

For this to work, what we need from all riders is the following:

  1. Review your last 3-6 months on the SPR Thursday (Gairloch) Strava segment (https://www.strava.com/segments/5958997) and find out which group is for you based on current fitness
  2. Review the new Thursday Ride Start Map  to know where your group will be leaving from
  3. If there is the need to break riders into 2 groups of the same category (that’s why we need you to wait in the right spot!), please respect the call of the Ride Leaders when they are dividing the groups. Remember, the ride will be at the same speed whether you go in the first or second group
  4. Send a link to this post to everyone you know who rides with SPR on Thursday’s but may not read the blog or Facebook page
  5. Ride for the “group” not just yourself; take your turn on the front but don’t try and pull the legs off other riders; you can still ride hard and keep the group intact
  6. Some groups may not have a designated ride leader, so help out by talking to each other and reinforcing the aim(s) of the ride

If everyone chooses the right group it will help us to achieve the goal of keeping the group together for the whole lap. Please note, we are not saying you HAVE to go in the group that your Strava time suggests for you; this is simply a guide. Some weeks you will feel stronger and want to have a go and hang on; other weeks you will want to take it a little easier. All we ask is that you respect the overall purpose & intended segment time of the group you select and ride accordingly.

south perth cycle club helmet

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as you are aware there are many great bike things available at a cheap price online through the many overseas shops.  unfortunately, bike helmets are also readily available to be shipped into australia.  this is unfortunate as these helmets do not have an australian standards sticker inside of them.  it is not to say that they are an inferior helmet, but the testing for the australian standards is much higher than that of the usa and the uk.  for one thing, the aussie standards test a sample of every batch of helmets that come into the country.  other countries just test the initial model and give all of them the ok.  there are also different tests performed on the helmets here that give them a higher safety standard.  these involve impact tests that more reflect the types of conditions that a cyclist may encounter on the open road.

anyway, why is this important.  firstly, many race organisers are starting to check helmet standards before the race.  it happened at the team time trial here in perth last year as well as the masters nationals that mike and stu went to in canberra.  if your lid is not to standard you don’t race.  the reason is that there is a good chance that your insurance claim could be void as you are not wearing an aussie standard hat.  this is also the case with club training rides.  that little bit of cover you may have, may not be worth anything if you are not following the road rules that state you must have an approved helmet on.

what we are looking at doing is trying to standardise the helmets so that they become a part of the club kit.  it is great when you get a whole bunch of the spr crew together on a ride all with the club kit on.  the thing that stands out to me is the wide variety of colours and models of helmets out there.  everyone has to wear a helmet, so why not make it part of the kit.

to cover both the aussie standards and the standard kit, we have managed to get a deal with TBE in Belmont to provide a Giro Atmos (white/silver) helmet to the club at a reduced price.  how much, i hear you ask.  well they retail for $470 and we can get them for $239.95.  if you look online this is quite close to the price you can get them from overseas, but these ones have the australian standards sticker inside.

so, what do you need to do.

well firstly, this is for club members only.  to get this deal you must present your cycling australia card to Dave Rice the mananger at TBE in Belmont.  once he has confirmed that you are a member of south perth cycle club, you can get your helmet.  this applies to both full racing and recreational licences so all you need to do to save $200 is to get a recreational licence for $77.  apart from putting a bit of coin back into the club you also get a bit of insurance coverage. 

now this is planned to be an ongoing deal with TBE so that new members can still take advantage of it in the future.  we are aware that accidents do happen and you can need a couple of helmets per year if you are unlucky.  however, please do not try to take advantage of the situation and buy more than you need.  we will be taking note of who is buying the helmets.  we are hoping to also get some sticker sets made for the helmets to make them true spr lids.

hopefully this will just be the start of some “member benefits” that we can get organised for the club.  so, if you need a new helmet, head on down to TBE and Belmont and talk to Dave Rice.

notice of annual general meeting

this is to provide notice that the annual general meeting of the south perth cycle club will be held on 20th march at 9:30am at 43a ryrie ave como.  see attached notification.

the meeting will provide an opportunity for any financial members to raise any item that they wish to be discussed at this meeting.  please provide details of this via email and it will get added to the agenda. 

also, all committee positions will be available for re-election.  if you wish to nominate for a position, please send an email through and you will be placed up for election on the day.  the positions are as follows : president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer and 7 general committee members (whose roles will be determined later).  current committee members will need to nominate themselves if they wish to continue to hold their position, otherwise it is assumed that they do not wish to be on the committee.

peter mah – president south perth cycle club.

SPR Breakfast and AGM

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this is to give notice of two events that are coming up on march 20th.

the first spr breakfast for 2010 will be held at the presidential residence directly after the saturday morning ride.  due to lorriane’s high training workload, this breakfast will be catered for by kate.  she has requested a bit of help from anyone that is willing to offer up their morning (or their partner’s morning).  the usual food, coffee, hot chocolate will be on offer as well as raffle prizes and a bike weigh-in.  we will post a reminder closer to the date to get some rsvp’s for final catering numbers.

after the breakfast, or probably just blending straight in, we will have the club AGM.  This will be open for any financial club member to attend and ALL committee positions will be up for re-election.  i will post some further details about the positions a bit later, but if you want to be actively involved in the running of the club, let me know.

ride routes 20th & 21st june (spr breakfast)

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well after months of unseasonally warm weather, it looks like it will be a wet and windy one for the winter breakfast.  for those of you fairly new to the spr group rides, every three months we have a social gathering in the form of a breakfast after the ride.  the ride itself is usually a bit shorter to allow for the fact that we will be taking it easy plus it allows more time for socialisation.  the main and fast group will not split as there will be regroup points along the way to make sure everyone gets to the breakfast which will be at my place in como.  the novice group will do their standard ride, but i would suggest that you skip the applecross section so that you are back to the breakfast in time.  i will explain to you how to get there on the day.

as usual, lorraine will be catering so for $10 a head you will get coffee, hot chocolate and all manner of gastronomic delights including the famous spr brownies.  there will also be raffle prizes and there have been some very generous sponsors this time around to provide many a great prize.  we will also finish up with the standard bike weigh-in so you can get you bike weight added to the leaderboard.

there will be one formal part to the day where we need to have a quick general meeting to pass a resolution on changing a couple of bits of the constitution.  this should be fairly quick and we will explain a bit more on the day.

hopefully by now you have sent an rsvp through to lisa (see previous post here) so we can finalise the catering.  i hope to see you there.

south perth rouleurs saturday breakfast ride

south perth rouleurs saturday novice ride

the sunday ride will do a loop around mundaring weir but also manage to take in welshpool and kalamunda rd.  only 4 climbs but just over 100kms by the time you get home.  at least the rain keeps the really, really cold mornings away.

south perth rouleurs sunday ride 12 (welshpool & mundaring & kalamunda)

1st anniversary – the year in review

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report by peter.

 

about a year ago, i headed down to the coode st carpark wondering whether there will be any one down there wanting to go for a ride.  i had decided to not lead the bikeshop rides but it was up to everyone to make their own choice of where they were riding.  luckily for me, there were people wanting to ride and hence the south perth rouleurs came to fruition. 

we decided to concentrate on our strengths, which was a good solid core of riders that had developed a strong group dynamic.  people knew what we needed to do on our group rides and that we needed to cater for everyone in the group.  we happily continued on our way and the group started to grow.

the website has also evolved and what was once a blog of my perspective has now become a proper site full of information and stories. 

towards the end of the year the racing scene started to gain some prominence within the group.  the highlight would have to be the joodalup race in december last year when we had about 15 or so riders entering various grades in the final race for the season.  this became the catalyst for transforming the south perth rouleurs into a proper cycle club. 

fast forward though the technical bits and we now have a constitution, committee and are affiliated with the sports governing body.  our membership has been steadily growing and the last official count had us at around 40 members.  a little over half of these have racing licences and half have recreational licences.  we have started making our mark on some of the races on the perth calendar and sent a strong group away for a trip down to pemberton.  we hope to continue to offer a bit more than just being a club that you give money to and want to offer support to all our riders.

and it is not just about racing.  the group rides have now become training rides and the long standing saturday ride has now been split into three groups.  this allows us to cater for all levels of riders without adversely affecting anyone’s enjoyment level.  the sunday hills ride has also grown and we often get between 20 – 30 riders all willing to hurt themselves in the surrounding hills.  there are also now three weekday training sessions giving people more opportunity to get some extra km’s in.

so, saturday afternoon gave us the opportunity to reflect on just how far we have come in the last year.  a family lunch was held and it allowed the partners and kids of some of our riders to meet with the people that seem to dominate the saturday mornings of their lives.  there was about 40 adults and about 20 kids in attendance and all enjoyed a nice casual atmosphere although it was sometimes punctuated by some french class or violin lesson.

lisa, kate and lorraine did a great job of organising everything and as we enjoyed the food the kids seemed to take over the playground.  i didn’t realise there were that many kids in the group.  maybe we could start to target junior riders as well.  something to consider.

so after a year as the south perth rouleurs where do we see ourselves heading now.  with up to 70 riders fronting up to a saturday ride, it is obvious that we are doing something right there and so we must keep on doing what we are doing.  the inclusion of the novice ride will do a lot to help continue the development of the riders skill levels and i am looking at the rest of the group to assist in helping out by leading the novices every now and then.  the racing side is progressing well and with a number of races coming up, i hope that we can attract a few more members by the way that we present our club.  the development of a women’s racing team is something that we are also looking at and hopefully we can offer a pathway for those that want to take that next step.

by may 2010 it will be interesting to see how spr has changed after another year.

membership for spcc online…at last

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after a few aborted attempts, it seems that the online registration for new members has finally been resolved. 

if you want to sign up as a new member, before you do, there are a few things you need to ask yourself as this will determine what type of membership to get.

firstly, do you want to race???  if yes then you will need a racing licence.  if no then what i would recommend is that you get a ride senior licence.  this will offer you a bit of protection in the form of public liability insurance and some personal accident insurance.  see here for more details.  the cost for a ride licence is only $57 plus the club fee so a bit of piece of mind for a dollar a week.

so you want to race, well which licence to get.  this is kind of determined by your age.  see the chart here to determine you category.  now the tricky thing is that even though there is a masters 1 category (30-34), there are no real events for these riders and generally they are thrown in with the open field at state races.  now don’t let this worry you as it only applies to state and national races.  all other races are generally graded and you can go in b or c or whatever.  if you are not looking at competing at any state level races, then just go for the masters 1 licence as this is the cheaper option.

so you have worked out your type of licence and which category you are in so now go here and start filling in your details.

i was shown another category today and that is a KIDZ membership.  this is generally aimed at primary school kids and is a recreational licence within the junior category.  i might get one for ben, just so he has his first licence as a member of spr.  for $5 it is a bargain.

if you want to renew your membership for this year and need to change the club to spcc, then you have to send joanne at cycling australia an email to request it.  she will then change it on the system and you can just renew as normal here.  this also applies to a change in type of membership i.e. from a ride licence last year to a full racing or masters licence this year.

look we are an affiliated club
look we are an affiliated club

reminder reminder reminder

just a reminder that you only have till the end of march to transfer clubs at the reduced price of $15. after this time it will cost $55.
for those that have transferred i have found out from cycling wa that even though you paid a club fee to the previous club, you must also pay one to south perth or you are not a financial member. this is especially important to those on the committee as it is in our constitution that you must be a fully paid member.  i will be chasing money very soon.

saturday 7th mar – benara rd

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ride report by peter.

 

07032009002a quick dash from the barrack st jetty this morning as i needed to bring some documents along to the coffeeshop for our meeting after the ride.  i felt like i needed lights and was glad to see that the latest polls had perth pretty much rejecting daylight savings.  lets move on.

we were going to split today no matter what.  i think we have given the fast group enough of a taste of what to expect that they tend to want to go hard every ride.  it caused problems last week when the group’s overall pace increased.  and this was with most of the fast guys away racing. 

with an easterly wind predicted, a course was set for benara rd.  the main group would do the usual route, and the fast group would head out a bit further and do an extra 8km before heading to benara rd.  i doubted that the main group would be caught, but it always gives some extra incentive when chasing a rabbit.

i would say about 50 or so riders were out this morning and we headed off together along great eastern at a leisurely pace.  chris had already “volunteered” to head the main group and once we hit the turn to ascot, the group split with about 30 in the main and 20 in the fast group. 

we started rolling through when i got tired on the front, but we managed to get all the lights until we were well past the airport.  this made the roll through a bit difficult, but it was more about staying out of the wind than smashing a hard pace.  my aim for the day was to stay with the group until we got through some of the back roads and onto great eastern again.  i was sure that people didn’t know which way to go, as this was a new route, and some would get lost.

as we left the traffic lights behind, the pace quickened with a more consistent roll through.  by the time we hit guilford, some people were only just hanging onto the back and not rolling through at all.  the crosswind meant that the guy in front offered little protection and it was sorting out the boys from the men (lorraine and lisa had stepped up today though).  the group slowed to get onto west rd and past the golf course, but when the pace picked up we really started to shed some people.  by the time we reached helena valley road, there was no chance some would be getting back on and i hoped that they had looked at the map (there was a shortcut at this point). 

i was beginning to sit on the back as i just needed to conserve as much as i could to act as navigator for the group.  we turned just before roe hwy and detoured through midland to get back onto great eastern, but now heading the other way.  the tailwind made this a bit more pleasant but also upped the pace.  no turns for me. we finally got onto west swan rd and headed towards benara rd.

however, this is where the crosswind really sunk the dagger into a number of riders.  with heavier traffic (single file) and no where to hide from the wind, the group quickly broke up into a number of little echelons.  i managed to leap-frog across a couple of them and tried to bring the others up the road with me, but some people were really struggling by now.  we turned onto benara with ryan and the others about 100m ahead. 

with a group of about 6 on my wheel, i started to time-trial across the gap and was pushing a nice pace.  we could see the we were gaining, but my heart was also doing about 189bpm and was pretty much at it’s limit.  i looked back to find that only lorraine had managed to hold the wheel.  we got within about 20m but couldn’t hold the pace any longer.  lorriane managed to get a springboard off my draft and bridged up to kimbo who had drifted off the back of the front pack.  i sat up a bit trying to suck some oxygen in and was soon caught by a couple more riders.  the next set of lights determined the make up of our group that would stick together for the rest of the journey.  kimbo, lorraine, steve, lindsay, dr mark, john and myself all did what we could to keep the pace on but we knew that we weren’t going to catch the front guys.  i must say that today’s ride was the longest time on benara rd.  it felt like such a struggle and even though we had a tailwind, it seemed to go on forever.

the rest of the trip was uneventful as it was mainly trying to keep out of the wind.  we met up with brett and dan who were coming the opposite way onto whatley cres after they managed to miss a turn and ended up at the base of ridgehill rd.  myself and couple of others were caught at some lights in east perth so managed to come in after our group, but made it nevertheless. 

i gathered my documents and we had out inaugural meeting of the south perth cycle club.  all the points on the agenda were ratified and carried and so we are now formally a club.  it hasn’t even been a full year since the start of spr and we have made so many big steps in such a short time.  i get emails all the time from riders i have never met but have been reading the blog and are interested in coming out with us.  i think if we continue on our current path, we should be in for a successful year.