Club issues

[betagirl]

So my griping to the club has caused some good discussions. We're going to have a meeting and review the "rules" of the weekday rides and see what we need to do to keep new rider interest while keeping the veterans happy. I offered to lead the B group on one of the weeknights, and some others have stepped up as well. So I'm going to be a club floozy and ride with both. The one will give me better racing training and more time riding with other women, and I can maintain the friendships I've made with the guys.

Thanks for the advice and letting me vent.

[joyrider]

These kind of discussions make me NEVER want to join a club!
Doesn't anybody ride for fun anymore?

[Pax]

Doesn't anybody ride for fun anymore?

Since many of the clubs have predominantly male membership I would guess "guy fun" is the order of the day. My impression of what they think of as "fun" can be very different than what many women think is fun.

[Dogmama]

These kind of discussions make me NEVER want to join a club!
Doesn't anybody ride for fun anymore?

Ditto. Now I remember why I ride alone so often.

OTOH, I chose my rides. Sometimes, I want to ride with the 2% body fat crowd because that is how I'll get stronger. I know I'll be dropped - oh well! If I know it's a competitive group, it's my choice. It sounds like you have more than one group out there - so I'd think that each rider could choose their own poison.

[yellow]

These kind of discussions make me NEVER want to join a club!
Doesn't anybody ride for fun anymore?

I belong to the funnest club around...Amici Veloci! My impression is that it's about riding and bonding with each other (and our bikes) and eating and adventures.

The local "club" that I ride with also is way fun. The rides are never that intense and the focus is on just getting out and riding. Sometimes I ride hard and sometimes I sweep. We usually spread way out but most of us will all have dinner together afterwards and talk about everything from the tour to the traffic.

So some clubs are still fun. I think it depends upon what you expect from the club.

[jobob]

These kind of discussions make me NEVER want to join a club!
Doesn't anybody ride for fun anymore?

(pops head up) Mee ! I do!

Hi, I'm jobob, and I'm a slacker. I don't "treat every ride as a training ride" (I cringe whenever I hear that, LOL !) and I consider hammering something you do to nails.

My husband and I used to belong to a club located in our hometown, but the prevailing attitude was along the lines of what betagirl and others wrote about. Bleah, I don't need that ! The club we now belong to is located a ways from our home, so we often (but not always) need to drive over a half hour to get to the start of a ride. But the club offers a wide variety of rides, and we soon learned which types of rides, and which ride leaders, best suit our abilities and temperments. I think the fact that there is such a large number & variety of rides allows the hardbodies to have their definition of fun, while the more social riders have theirs. It's a good mix. (If you're in the San Jose CA area, it's the Almaden Cycle Touring Club - www.actc.org - jobob sez check it out)

Sure, I'd probably be a better, stronger, faster rider if I pushed myself more. But knowing me I'd more likely burn out and quit if it stopped being fun - I have a really low tollerance for pain ! That's not to say I don't push myself when the spirit is willing, I like to get stronger and faster to be able to go on more interesting rides, but not at the expense of losing the fun.

[MomOnBike]

Oh dear, another 'Me, too' post.

Every time I read something about clubs and club rides - even those reports that are supposed to be positive - my first reaction is a shudder. I can do without all the, um, issues?, baloney?, posturing? All that, at any rate.

I'm sure that if I rode with a club that challanged me, I'd get "better," what ever that means. But would I quit riding because it would stop being fun? Then for sure I'd get "worse." No thanks, I won't take that chance. I'll ride along in blissful solitude, crawling up hills, bombing down same, chasing the occasional roadie, and just generally enjoying myself and my ride. Life is to short to NOT enjoy the bike rides.

[CorsairMac]

It's because of these posts and you wonderful ladies (and riding with Harley Chapters) that I had high expectations when I went on my first "official" club ride. and I was very disappointed and disgruntled.
It was billed as the "slowest, flattest, no t-shirt, no sag century" and it was being held by one of the local bike chapters. I had spoken with the group leader on the phone the night before and explained I was a newbie to club rides and what my avg spd was for centuries. He said this was an X ride (all spds, all types welcome). When I got there he made sure we all understood the route which would be 3 33 miles loops and then "find someone to show you where to pick up the other mile" (find someone?) We also signed a form with our name and emergency contact info.....then he and a couple of guys took off like bats outta he**. I hung in the back until I could "learn the ropes" but no one stayed back with me, there was no sweep, nada. I sucked wheel for awhile until I missed a turn off (I'd ridden the route before but didn't know part of it had been closed and I guess the leader et al forgot that we might want to know that).
I did pick up a riding buddy or 2 eventually and when we finished the ride, there was no one in the parking lot to make sure everyone was accounted for (lotta good the emergency contact info did eh?). At one point my buddy got a flat and told me to just go on and I said "no.....I don't leave ppl on the side of the road" to which she replied "oh this group never waits for anyone". Hmmmm good thing I'm not really part of "this group" then eh?
I had just never expected a club ride to be "every man for themselves", nor had I ever experienced that style of riding in a club. Even the Harley groups always made sure a newbie was paired with an oldie and if you signed a sheet saying you were going on the ride, head counts were done at every stop, and No One was left on the side of the road - or behind.
Anyway, sorry for the long rant but after reading all the wonderful club ride stories here - I was really looking forward to my first one!
I'm now back with most of you, as a rule I ride alone. Since I never want to race and I just ride for the joy of riding, I was hoping to find a group of ppl that had the same riding style - but I guess it isn't to be had in this city.

[pkq]

In cycling, you'll find every kind of rider. Getting dropped used to piss me off. The anger stemmed from my weaknesses not their strengths. I have been fortunate because most of the guys have waited at intersections or told me up front the pace would be too fast for me.

It is important to foster riding in newbies, which I do. Harder rides are done solo or with the fast group days. I have complained to a few strong/bikeshop riders about not helping others get stronger on the bike, especially those clearly wanting to improve. New riders need lots of instruction on bike etiquette, bike handling, drafting, cleaning, maintenance, etc. Most of the guys are doing a lot better at helping newbies.

This year I dusted a fella that just couldn't understand paceline riding. He took the pace up every time he led. He had the paceline strung out over half a mile and then some. The newer male riders were disgusted and somewhat demoralized. When he increased the pace to 26 mph and even some of the stronger guys were struggling, I got really pissed off. I ignorantly broke from the line blasting past that guy at 31 mph. He called me a sandbagger. I guess he'd been struttin' his stuff. He slowed when he saw me coming around him. So I slowed and nicely let him know he was blowing the paceline apart, which defeats the purpose on multiple levels. Afterwards, he maintained the set pace rather than ratcheting it up. He may have been ignorant but his actions were making the ride harder on everyone. So don't be afraid to speak up.

I dropped back to pull some of the other guys up but they didn't want to participate in a blistering pace again. Couldn't convince them it wouldn't be blistering because the burn was too fresh. So it happens to guys, too, not just us gals.

[Geonz]

I've heard these problems in most clubs I've been in or around. There's a Darwinian logic to it. People who get dropped don't come back, so only the strong survive and perpetuate the problem.

There is a huge hormonal (tho' I'm speaking more adrenaline than, say, testosterone) aspect. The very same people who gripe about being dropped will not recognize when they drop people. People will *swear* that it really, honestly, I-really-mean-it-this-time-honey be an easy ride... until the hormones take over and they're cranking out the mphs. Most of the time they don't apologize afterward though - they'll somehow believe that no, they really weren't going that fast.

Doesn't take long before people know that the "no drop" phrase is usually a lie, so even *fewer* turtles come out of their shells. Clubs are just for hammers.

And you don't have to drop 'em to have 'em not come back. I've seen rides where the fast people tried to be nice and backed off to a pace the newer riders could keep up with ... *barely.* As in, it wasn't a good time (and it doesn't help to realize that you're coughing up a lung and the guys around you haven't broken a sweat). So, when I'm leading a slower ride, I show up on my 45 pound single speed, and I try to take it down that extra 5% and, yes, ***stop and rest*** on occasion. A couple of rides like that and the people who have to hammer stop coming. Sort of reverse dropping :-) (I announce the "regroup" spot at the beginning.)

Of course it takes a while to build credibility, and this gets confounded by the fact that if nobody believes the ride will go slow, then only fast (though they don't believe it) people will come , and you don't want to go slow when there's nobody there to go slow for, so you go fast and then it's not a slower ride any more.

My theory is that you can't slow down a pace by simply DECLARING THAT THIS WILL BE A SLOW RIDE. SOmetimes you *can* win with reverse psychology - "I know most of you will go faster. We'd appreciate it if some of you kept to the advertised pace, but I understand if you can't do that." Then there's old-fashioned guilt -- "remember where you came from, folks - you were new once!"

Sometimes it really is a personal perception thing - people simply can't believe that lil' ol' them is fast.

When I joined our club, we had a moderate it's-only-for-hammers issue (and a major credibility problem with that "nobody will be dropped" line). Fortunately about five other people came out around the same time, and we realized taht if we came out together, we'd have people to ride with. There's a "critical mass" aspect - now there are enough riders out there so there *is* a real "B" group. You have to talk about it though, and keep educating people who don't realize they've gotten so much faster that now they're the dropper, not the droppee.

[Geonz]

So my griping to the club has caused some good discussions. We're going to have a meeting and review the "rules" of the weekday rides and see what we need to do to keep new rider interest while keeping the veterans happy. I offered to lead the B group on one of the weeknights, and some others have stepped up as well. So I'm going to be a club floozy and ride with both. The one will give me better racing training and more time riding with other women, and I can maintain the friendships I've made with the guys.

Thanks for the advice and letting me vent.

It's agood plan... but boy, it takes patience and persistence to change their ways even once a week.

You can suggest that people bring their funkiest oldest bike -- it's what I do. It changes both the physiology and the psychology, and I've not known people to be insulted by it; they're more comforted by it.

[runnergirl]

I'm not sure why the cycling community is so difficult sometimes...

We have a great club here, they have a huge variety of rides that stay under 14, plus lots of rides in the 15-18 range. There are however, no rides that go faster. I finally tracked down a unaffiliated group that rides on Saturdays, but if the LBS owner didn't introduce me around I would have been completely ignored. It's a hammer till I puke, elbow bumping, no one even looks over their shoulder when I drop kinda ride, but it's the best training for racing there is.

When a few of the guys from the faster group show up to a regular club ride, everyone else grumbles about them showing up. I think it's great, because then there are A, B, and C pace groups, instead of just C/B.

No club is perfect...in fact most have problems. It's sad that cycling is so hard to get into, it seems it's all about who you know in a lot of ways.

[KSH]

Reading all these *issues* with the club rides in your areas... I feel lucky for the rides/clubs I have acces to here in Dallas.

Sat. and Sun. I have "no drop" rides I go on. Everyone is really nice and friendly on both rides. I have FUN going on them!

I have a Wed. night ride I go on.... and it is faster... but people are still friendly. True, I end up riding alone at some point (in between the fast/slow packs)... but I understand.

Maybe I just lucked out and found the good rides to go on around here? I am sure that the faster rides I don't go on.. . have some people with attitude issues.