TO:  Interested Members

FROM:  Alan Wickman, Ride Director (past)

SUBJECT:  Planning of Club Rides

Over the years, the Club has tried a number of different ride formats, but only a few have seemed to work.  That is not to say that we aren't open to experimentation.  The purpose of this page is to give you my perspective as to why & how we have ended up where we are; what we have tried; what we haven't tried (and why), and to extend an invitation to anyone that would like to participate in trying something different.  (If you haven't already read the page that describes our current ride tendencies, I recommend reading it first.)

Our planning of Club rides is quite informal.  The Board of Directors has a meeting every two months or so during the season.  The meetings are informal and any member is welcome to attend.  The meetings are shown on the website and are sometimes announced in the Chain Gang.  At the meeting, members will volunteer to be "ride leaders" for one or more specific rides at specific times.  For instance, I might volunteer to be a ride leader for a Sunday ride that starts at 11:00am at 14th & Superior and will go to P.O. Pears at Branched Oak Lake and return.

During this process, there is nothing to stop us from having rides on both days of a weekend or to have rides on weekday evenings.  A couple of years ago, in fact, we made a practice of having rides on both weekend days, but we have since largely stopped doing that when we found that it really didn't attract new riders, but just made for two more thinly attended weekend rides.  (In general, Saturday rides have been more popular than Sunday rides.)  There is also nothing to stop us from having rides on weekday evenings or some short slower rides at almost anytime, but we have had disappointing results whenever we have tried short slower rides.  Fast paced rides on weekday evenings may be something with more promise for the coming year.

Once the rides have been selected at the board meeting, we'll show them on this website and in our Club newsletter, the Chain Gang.  The ride leader will then be the primary contact for persons having questions about the ride.  For a ride involving logistics (most don't), the "ride leader" is responsible to check them out.  Most importantly, the ride leader is obligated to show up at the starting point at the designated starting time.  Once the ride begins, the ride leader isn't expected to be a "leader" that rides in front of the group or anything like that.  Our groups will often spread out quite a bit, depending on the ride and the riders.

We are aware that large bicycling clubs in larger cities often have different rides with different paces, like A, B, C & D, where an A-pace ride would be at a hard training pace where the pack doesn't hold back for stragglers, down to a D-pace ride that might be a 15 mile roundtrip at a very leisurely pace.  In contrast, all of our rides are B-C paced, with a few coffee shop or ice cream rides thrown in that would be more like a D pace.

The reason for the lack of A-pace rides is something that I can only guess at.  The simple explanation for the lack of these rides is that we don't seem to have any members that are interested in them.  The part that is difficult to explain is why we have not attracted riders with any interest in such rides.  My personal take on this is that there is a relatively small number of people that race, and that most of these people will either want to train with their racing partners or they will want to train alone or with a specific riding partner that complements their pace.  After all, a rider doesn't need a bicycling club to call up a friend for a ride.  Having said this, we'd certainly be open to having A-paced Club rides if some riders are interested in doing them.

The explanation for the lack of shorter or slow rides is a little different.  All of us take short rides and we'll go slowly at least some of the time, but it seems that the people that show up a couple of times of month to ride with a group will invariably be those people that enjoy longer rides.  And then, in turn, the people that enjoy longer rides will be in adequate condition to want to go at least a moderate B-C pace.  For whatever the reason, whenever we have had members volunteer to lead such rides, it often turns out that no one else or almost no one else shows up.  There just isn't the interest.

In addition, at least in part, there might be a bit of an intimidation factor.  Consider ... persons that have never been on large group rides will tend to worry that they will find themselves matched up with a bunch of Lance Armstrong - types that will leave them gasping far behind.  I can tell you that we'll bend over backwards to avoid dropping a new rider, and we'll try to make them feel comfortable, but it is still intimidating to go on a group ride for the very first time.  Once you've been on rides with a few groups, then that factor is gone completely, but it can be there for first timers.

One thing that we have never done is to try ladies-only rides.  The majority of our riders are male, which simply seems to be reflective of a preponderance of males appearing to have an interest in riding longer distances.  But we have ladies on the great majority of our rides.  Would you be interested in trying a ladies-only ride?  Well, then, come to one of our meetings and volunteer.

The bottom line is that we're willing to try most anything.  That is not a promise that many or any people will show up if you want to have a 6am ride on Monday mornings restricted to ladies-only tandem teams.  But we'd be willing to post the ride on our website, put it in the Chain Gang and, if it sounds like fun, some people may just show up and it will catch on.

If you have any questions or ideas, please send me an e-mail and I'll be glad to discuss almost anything with you at great length.  Larger rides are desirable because that better accommodates a variety of paces; more rides can accomplish the same thing, but we want to avoid having a large number of thinly attended rides, because that often isn't as much fun.