The coach on Sunday asked why Addiscombe don’t race as much as others.
My answer was that we are more of a social club rather than a pure race club, but do have racing members.
Personally I’d rather be a member of a friendly sociable club with large numbers than a smaller club where the club runs consist of a dozen people in a chain gang trying to rip each others legs off all the time. If that is what you want there are others that cater for that, or you could go in the training group.
Many clubs have gone down the pan or struggled for members, and or finances, over the years because they become too elitist. As for losing members, I think the growing club run sizes show that they are growing rather than shrinking. One of the good things is everyone talks to everyone else, there aren't divisions between the fast and slower guys at the cafe. I've certainly not noticed any egos.
Not competitive, don’t race…I think the Results section tells a different story of the last year in both RRs and TTs, and more members are having a go at racing all the time. That doesn’t include all the sportive riders in the club, which is the fastest growing area of cycling.
It seems a popular moan about Addiscombe about a lack of racing compared to the membership size. That seems odd to me as if we had the same percentages of racers as those with smaller memberships there’d be a peleton with 100 ACC jerseys in it at the races in the SE. Do they really want to try and get past that in a race!
Cycling’s about a lot more than racing.
Sorry, I’ve stabled the high-horse again.
[quote]sponsors are for poor people
More about class surely, Barca never used to have a sponsor as they didn't want it to deface the jersey.
Stu - If you service your own and know how it works you'll always be in better shape than if you always have to run to someone else
. None of it's that complicated. If you can make it try and come along to the next training session on the 3rd Dec. You're very quick and are bound to go well next year when you start racing, but I think you might find it useful if you haven't raced before as it's run by a BC qualified coach so you should learn something to help you.