..the fiver's in the post, Charlie...!
Things I'd like to see the club doing? Well...
I think if the club's going to be more than just a bunch of people who prefer company to riding alone (and I'd emphasise that I think the club already IS more than that) then I think it needs to have ways of helping people to develop - so they can do more adventurous stuff and feel satisfied and encouraged by their progress.
There are maybe two ways of doing that; one is to organise activities and events, which we already do. I'd like to see us organising an even broader range of stuff, so we look at the margins of what we currently do and we expand the range. So.. ..MTB stuff - great. The Monday night pub ride - let's publicise it more, by word of mouth or whatever. The TLI SPOCO series was excellent but we failed to attract ANY women or juniors - let's ask why, and see what we can do to make next year different.
A second way of helping people develop would be to look at bringing in coaching expertise in some way. We've had a couple of really good young people in racing this year but we've had no structured way as a club to help them. And what about the rest of us? I got up to a certain level of ability fairly quickly but have just stuck there; I'd love help with getting further, and answers to why I have bad weeks (or months!). It's been interesting seeing how as a club we're topping the regional road race rankings, but entirely due to the individual abilities and motivation of the riders who've won the points. Imagine the buzz if - as a club - we had the resources so we *knew* we could help bring people on, if they wanted to.
Other slightly more random thoughts are...
-I think as a club it would be good to talk about how we attract young members, otherwise in ten years time the club will have the best vets racing squad in the country and the longest beards on the Audax circuit but nothing else. Go Ride seems like too much of a commitment (at the moment) but maybe we can look at less formal stuff (again maybe through MTBing). And see below..
-I think we need to involve more members in organisational stuff. I appreciate that some people just want to ride their bikes but - as I said above - being in a club is about more than that and it all takes organisation. Which works better with more people! (and maybe then we *would* have enough people to think about Go Ride or similar stuff..)
-I agree with Steve about the chaingang. I know for some people it's the one chance between weekly races to top up the speed, but it would be good to maybe make it more inclusive, to make it easier for people coming into racing to be more able to use it as a training tool - to learn through and off, close riding, doing sprints, etc. Maybe ride out as one group, split into faster and slower, faster does two laps of the triangle and slower does one, both ride back with faster trying to catch slower. Slower group always to have one experienced racer who helps it all work as a group at the fastest pace they can collectively manage (vary length of turns, etc). Maybe?
-I also agree about the Saturday rides. No knocking Tony who led us all off around some great bits of Yorkshire last winter - some good rides - but it would be helpful to have a more regular route and a more predictable timescale. Perhaps alternate Leavening / Kirkham with Malton / Terrington so we don't go completely cuckoo. More regular route might tie in with the coaching possibilities...?
That's it for now..