Skills nights! Revised

Dan and I have talked and realized its time to get these underway. We both want to urge all who feel that they cannot keep up with most group rides, feel a little out of place, have not ridden much (if at all) and/or who do not know anyone else in the club to come out to these rides. We will go over some good to knows about your bike, some bike handling skills, riding in traffic skills and we will help you feel comfortable riding in a group.

The rides will be roughly one hour at 20 – 25 km/h. No one will get left behind, this is called the “no drop rule”, leave as a group and return as a group. The main focuses will be safety and having fun, it’s that simple.

The rides will be posted in the training form going forward so keep an eye open. I am offering an early bird skills ride this Tuesday, April 10th starting at 6:15 and finishing at 7:15. Meet at Bears Paw Lions Club on Nagway Rd in the N.W. If you google “Nagway Rd, Calgary” it will actually point to the location of the Bears Paw Lions Club. It’s a small road, you cannot miss it. My cell phone is below, feel free to call or text if you have any questions.

IMPORTANT: if no one responds to this by 5 pm Tuesday, I will not be there so please respond below.

Harley
403-880-7695

Hey guys, there are a couple points that I want to add. Firstly thanks to Harley for sending out the first message and getting me motivated and secondly, thanks to Trev for having such a great team and supporting our efforts.

As Harley mentioned, the focus of this night is skills and drills. We want to help people get used to riding safely in groups. With that, we will have to set some rules on the road. This year we will have a senior rider leading the group that cannot be passed. We will also have a senior rider watching the end of the group helping riders that may fall off get back to the group. It would be great to have an intermediate or experienced rider patrolling through the group communicating to the senior riders leading the group.

As far as the learning progression, I am envisioning the first couple weeks of people just coming out to have fun and ride. Drafting and pace line work will the first main skill that will take priority as we will be using narrow roads in the north west. It would be great to spend some time in some soccer fields and ride slow with riders bumping and using elbows to maintain balance. The contact drills are good to establish balance and help riders realize that they still can control their bike while making contact with other riders. After that, we can look at drifting on hills, time trial riding, fun sprints like Dave's broom sprints etc. etc. Harley and I are completely open to feedback for rides and ideas.

Please be on time and if you need to send a text or call please do so. I plan to leave by 6:35 every ride, and I'm pretty resilient, so rain doesn't bother me. I'm half as tough as Harley, he goes out even in the white stuff!

Thanks team, my cell is 403-607-4523

Slayer Dan