I'll be interested to follow this discussion. I joined a women's "team" last fall- not a race team. We are sponsored by several local businesses and last fall we received kits (we paid a portion of the cost) and had our entries paid for the big local event, El Tour de Tucson. But a lot of the gals who joined didn't stay committed after El Tour was over, and we have dropped from 25 down to 15 people (with a couple replacements). So even though we are specifically a group for women, we have had some growing pains in trying to structure the group. We tried to accommodate members by rotating the start locations and alternating Saturdays and Sundays, but it has mostly led to confusion and not to greater participation. On some rides the stronger riders took off and left others behind, which led to some hard feelings. We are currently planning team rides based around improving our skills and safe riding practices, and recommending that team members do their serious training on the other weekend day or during the week.

I feel we still need too develop cohesion as well as skills, and get familiar with each other as riders so that we can ride together safely. I find it frustrating when some of the group report don't show up for rides and later report doing non-team rides on facebook - so that commitment isn't really there yet. Eventually we want to help newer riders and do more community service, but we aren't stable enough for that yet.

So any ideas that help us reach out and keep our group going are of interest.