| Editor: Ed Ward | 52 Shearing Hill, Gedling, Nottingham NG4 3GX | Tel: 0115- 9615477 | |
| Treasurer: Martin Edjvet | 5 Fourth Avenue, Sherwood Rise, Nottm NG7 16LB | Tel: 0115-9620572 | |
| Membership Secretary | 8 Dark Lane, Whatton, Nottingham NG13 9FE | Tel: 01949-850326 |
The next few months are when you can expand on your training – but don’t overdo it! Turbo training is very useful to avoid dark icy evenings on the road. This can be very boring so try the communal sessions on a Tuesday evening. There are various pre-season reliability trials in which numerous members intend riding. Visit the Virtual Clubhouse to join the discussion on which to ride or talk to others who may be interested.
It was most disappointing to see only 18 attend the AGM (out of a membership of 128).
There were some changes to the elected officials. Martin Edjvet has taken on the Treasurers position following Terry Kelly’s retirement. The other half of the Terry’s job as Secretary remains unfilled and we are seeking a volunteer for this. The job involves attending the Committee Meetings, taking and publishing the minutes, attending to various correspondence and general administration duties.
Trev Adams has taken on the Press Secretary’s job from Pat Ward and Neil Walker is now the Younger Members Representative previously Stephen Adams. Barry Fisher was elected as a Committee Member without Portfolio. Terry Kelly was elected as an auditor to the accounts.
Many thanks to the retiring members for their invaluable work and I’m sure the new officials will continue the good work.
The Club finances are in a healthy state following the efficient management by Terry. The Club does need a substantial amount of working capital to finance things like Club Clothing stock, equipment such as marshalling jackets, signs etc. and financing of courses and projects.
To safeguard our income and to provide more funding towards our “Go-Ride” enterprise and to compensate for a hefty increase in CTT levies (up from 20p to 50p for each club time trial ride) the following fees were approved by the meeting:
Membership Fees: Seniors (including vice presidents) £15, Juniors £4, Juveniles £1 (under 12 free), Associates (non-cycling) £5. In addition to encourage family membership, for each adult fee of £15, one family member under 18 may have free membership.
Club Racing Fees: Seniors and Juniors £1.50 (season ticket £20), Juveniles 50p (season ticket £5). 25% of racing fees will go to the “Go-Ride” fund.
Nigel White was third in the N. Notts Christmas 10 with 21:05 despite having to brake hard when a van driver pulled up in front of him to complete a phone call.
We now have a strong contingent in cyclo-cross with Steve Adams as our star rider. He not only has the National Champs coming up at Sutton park but has now been confirmed to represent Great Britain in the World Championships in Holland at the end of January. Here are some of Trev’s reports from the Forum.
National Trophy Abergavenny. Wow, what a roller coaster! Steve's gears jumped on the tarmac road start and he went straight over the handlebars. I thought "Well, that's Steve race over". Having given the rest of the field a 30 second start, he set about catching them up. He was onto the backmarkers within a lap, but a break of 5 had already gone away.
Steve cut through the second group in no time, riding where others had to run,
then he set about bridging the widening gap to the leaders. Meanwhile, the lead
group had started to splinter with Steve's main rivals Tom Last and Dave
Fletcher getting away with Jon MacEvoy. I thought "there goes his 2nd place
overall". In another lap he was across to 5th placed Adam Turner, then onto 4th
placed Sam Webster.
Sam
refused to work with him to get across to the leaders and just sat on Steve for
a lap. Steve was having none of it and put in a big attack on the run through
the planks to open up a 20 yard gap and he was away, alone in 4th place.
Meanwhile, the lead group had split up with Tom going clear in 1st, Jon in 2nd
and Dave in 3rd. If Steve could hold on to 4th, he'd retain his 2nd place
overall by a slender 2 points.
There was a hundred yard gap between Steve in 4th and Dave in 3rd. With a
supreme effort, Steve bridged the gap and then dropped Dave to get up to 3rd.
With a lap to go, Steve was now starting to pay for his efforts, with Sam
looking strong behind, but Steve managed to hold on to maintain his record of
finishing on the podium in every round of the Trophy. Steve's thrilling comeback
really got the crowd on his side. Commentator Hugh Porter sought him out and
shook his hand at the finish. He finished second overall in the Trophy series,
actually extending his lead over Dave Fletcher.
In the 18 December round of the Notts and Derby League at Sansom Wood we had 4 Sherwood riders in the main race and one in the Youth race
14
year old Joe Peake, our newest member, rode his Mountain bike to sixth place in
the youth category, resplendent in his brand new Sherwood jersey. An excellent
result for a beginner. I spoke to Joe and his mum afterwards and he seems as
keen as mustard. He'll be doing most of the remaining rounds.
In
the main race we had Chris Regis, Paul Monaghan, Adrian Staiano and James
Horsepool. Chris had an excellent ride, finishing in 11th place, 5 minutes
behind the winner. Paul was lapped in the closing stages but still finished 24th
and 2nd Veteran, winning £10.
Adrian didn't feel very good before the start and was around 60th for much of
the race. He recovered and went on a late charge to pass a dozen or so riders to
end up 45th and 2nd junior, one of his best results.
James had a good start and was in front of Adrian for a while. He eventually
finished 67th of the 75 finishers (quite a few dropped out) and was 3rd in the
junior category to score some ranking points.
Steve & Adrian decided to
forego the pleasures of Brickyard Farm to ride the Macclesfield Supercross where
a top class field turned up including many of the contenders for the Senior
National champs. It was bitterly cold and frozen underfoot, but there was no
snow. They started in the old style - all spread out in one long line. Steve
didn't have a brilliant start but soon worked his way through to the front
group. He got in a break of 8 including Nick Craig, Liam Killeen, Ian Field, Ian
Bibby, Steven Roach and Paul Oldham.
Steve stayed with them for 3 laps but then his wheel slipped on a corner and he
lost contact. He spent a couple of laps in no mans land before the 2nd group of
3 picked him up and he stayed with this group until the end, losing contact in
the last half lap to finish 11th.
Adrian was lapped 3 times by the leaders, twice by Steve, but still finished
52nd out of 80 finishers. He said it was one of the hardest races he's ever
done, much harder than your average Notts & Derby race.
TURBO TRAINING SESSIONS
There will be turbo training sessions at the Wheldon School on Tuesday evenings starting at 7 p.m. and lasting just over an hour. Bring your own bike, turbo and a towel to catch the sweat! These will continue until the evening tens start.
Go along and give it a try, it is better than training alone and you get much more motivation. Participants really felt the benefit last winter.
“GO-RIDE” MTB SESSIONS SHERWOOD PINES 10.00 A.M.
The “Go-Ride” MTB sessions continue every second Sunday of the month with the next on 8 January.
CLUB RUNS
Club runs meet Shearing Hill/Burton Rd junction on Saturdays at 9.30 a.m. and on Sundays at 9.30 a.m. Wednesday runs meet at Lowdham War Memorial 9.15 a.m.
I’m hoping to get back out soon to “moderate” the pace!
CHRISTMAS LUNCH SUN. 18 DECEMBER
28 members and friends enjoyed another excellent lunch at the Ferry Farm, Hoveringham. Thanks to Ann Spencer for organising the meal.
CYCLO –CROSS SANSOM WOOD SATURDAY 11 FEBRUARY
Trevor Adams is running a round of the Notts & Derby League at Sansom Wood (off Longdale Lane) and will be in need of help on the day. Racing starts from midday but helpers will be needed for setting out the course. Contact Trev if you can help on 9614415 or e-mail t.adams640@btinternet.com or Trevor.adams@defra.gsi.gov.uk .
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Rain before the start failed to deter 13 hardy souls, but the best time-trial bikes stayed at home. The cold northerly wind didn’t help the times either. Alisdair did exactly what Nigel said he would and won the event – not bad for his first race! Jon was only just behind though with Giles third.
A pity I couldn’t manage my annual “race” to challenge Lesley and Paul for last spot!
Thanks to Trev and Karen for timing.
After the event a large group went down to the café at Gunthorpe for tea and toast where Pat helped out behind the counter as such a rush was unexpected. Tea and toast made a change from the old days of 3 hours in the pub!
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In following on from the
concern raised by Craig and others after the AGM I'd like to post the following.
I've spoken with both Craig and Neil about this, and they are both in support of
my comments.
A lack of committed
volunteers for club activities, and leaving all of the work to the same few
people is not unique to Sherwood Cycling Club or cycling in general. In my job I
visit and work with lots of different cycling clubs and other sports with the
same problem.
I would like to make a few suggestions as to how we as a club can help ourselves, because the most successful clubs across all sports in the country are those where the workload is shared far and wide across the membership. This has the obvious benefit of key volunteers not becoming despondent, and therefore pushed to a point where they get sick of the amount of effort they are putting in without support, and at the same time it often leads to clubs being able to offer more opportunities (riding, coaching, racing, social) to a wider membership and thus strengthening and expanding the club.
Old sayings are often
right: 'Many hands do make light work'.
I know that a lot of people
who are involved in voluntary sport and activity do so for many different
reasons and that volunteering creates a lot of concern and in some cases fear,
because they feel that if they 'dip their toe in the water', they'll get dragged
in and drowned. The classic situation of volunteers putting lots of effort and
work into their club/sport exists because of the lack of volunteers, so
invariably the workload is left to a few individuals to get everything done.
IF more people share the workload, everyone ends up having to do less. Its
that simple!
A couple of things that we
can do are:
1. Write Volunteer job
descriptions. This helps members to understand what is required of them, and
therefore might enable them to choose a volunteer role that suits them. For
example, a way in which someone could support the Go-Ride coaching activities
would be to carry out the registration of young riders coming to take part. That
way it allows the coaches to get on setting up activities, doing bike checks,
risk assessments, etc. This would take on average 15 minutes, and involves
entering the names of the riders on the attendance sheet as they turn up,
ensuring that we have parental consent forms and collecting any session fee. And
that's it.
Such a job could be on a
rota system. So using some basic maths. Say we run 12 coaching sessions over the
summer, and we have 4 volunteers who take it in turns to do the session
register. That requires you to do that 3 times, that's a total of 45 minutes
over a summer of activities. You could waste more time than that watching TV on
one evening!
2. Mandatory event
volunteering. I personally think that to enable everyone to benefit from club
racing activities, ALL members who wish to take part in those club events take
it in turn to time keep/register a club race event.
With a membership of over
120 people, many of those who will turn up regularly to take part in club
time-trial activities, I know for a fact that we could easily cover the
voluntary man hours that are required to run the evening 10's, etc, etc, just by
taking ONE TURN to time keep, etc.
That's ONCE during the
racing calendar, providing that we get enough volunteers.
There are lots of other
ways in which we could help to motivate, or indeed make people volunteer some
time to make the club successful in running its present activities, and to
develop new opportunities. The bottom line is, without people volunteering their
time, we wouldn't have a club to be members of.
I'd like to suggest that
either by contacting committee members directly, through the membership form
that Karen has reworked, or through the forum all members should indicate
how/where/when they can/would like to volunteer to club activities. Be honest
with yourselves, can you find an hour or so every few months to help out? Would
it ruin your season if ONCE you didn't ride, and instead you took the role of
timekeeper?
Do you fancy yourself as a
coach?
And to make events such as
the Acorn Road Race a great success and therefore a fantastic advert for the
club all the work during the preparation and on the day shouldn't be left to one
person. Can you help?
I hope my comments have the
desired effect of motivating people, and not making members wish they were in a
different club!