Clubruns and continued growth

[Snoop Doug]

Will make sure this gets aired (when is next committee mtg anyone??) EDIT Friday 20 March at Lindfield Social Club starting 7:30pm EDIT - good point marco, I've been concerned for a while that we need to make what we have more sustainable, thanks for bringing this up.

Snoop

[kieran]

sometimes I have done rides from CP following the route of the ride of the falling leaves, a good workout and not too long, also it is quick to hit the countryside (half an hour and you're surrounded by fields), good for us urban based riders!

[Andrew G]

Can try Marco and don't disagree at all. Amy, Ian and others will back me up that trying to move some from the normal route is hard enough, let alone a meeting point somewhere else. I do think it shouldn't be ignored, but look at the rides that go on alternate routes, always the same folk by and large on each one.

Ridiculous in my humble opinion to always ride the same roads at the same time, etc, etc. I think part of the sometimes less safe riding is due to complacency as people start to ride on auto-pilot, different roads automatically ups the concentration if you don't know where you're going or what's coming up next. Part of my reason for doing it in reverse sometimes as that doesn't "scare" people off so much as they still have the same cafe stop. Chloe mentioned on one of these that it would be good to have say 4 or 5 regular routes and rotate them so 1st week of month = x route, 2nd week = y route and so on. People would soon get to know the different routes and you'd still have an element of familiarity. Sounded like a very good idea to me.

I'm happy to take groups on different routes but as I clear off to DCs for a lot of weekends from March to August I can't reliably and consistently try and push anything like this along.

Another option is to have 2 CR routes each week to split the field. One meet at CSS and head out to a similar area (Surrey/Sussex area) to now, another meet at somewhere like Bike+ for central, or Lloyd Park (by the car park and tram stop - may need to wait until they've finished the building work) and head out towards Westerham and Kent/Surrey borders direction. It would allow folk to switch and rotate between routes from week to week. The only obvious problem with this is the kick off and moving people over to a new route/start location (as per comment in first paragraph) and would maybe need a commitment from certain member to only do that route instead to start things off.

Regarding cafes, and even the route itself does it have to be set ones. So long as a route is roughly x amount of time does it matter? Do you always need to know where you're going every week? There are also loads of cafes and garden centres that you can use so long as it was one group going there, you only need an arrangement like we have at the Pine Cafe if you intend to turn up with 30 plus riders at the same time.

[img]http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/gallery_images/0711/0000/0162/tin_hat_2_mid.jpg[/img]

[Amy]

Apols for repeating myself but it seems a good point to slide this in from the Training forum

"[quote]Snoop Doug wrote:
What's put me off the CR last year is (in no particular order):

Pi55 poor time keeping @ the start
Too many shunts
Not a big fan of riding in poor disciplined groups (tin hat on but that's how it felt to me quite often)

Mebbe I need to come back and see what's what.

Snoop

[Roy Green]

Though not a frequent clubrunner, put me down firmly as a supporter of the 'diversity' idea. The lanes out to Kent are as quiet as those past Reigate, mostly better surfaced, and most main roads to them quieter than the A23. I can't usually join the 'alternatives' because they are usually 17s-plus runs. A J4F or 15s group could be arranged Kent-bound, and Lloyd Park (not much more than a mile away from our club-name-centre, would be an excellent, safe and spacious meeting place. Good cafes at Westerham and Polhill Garden Centre, too.