Sat Slowies 6/8 Cycleskills Session Bunch Riding & Pacelines

[Stuart]

Sat Slowies 6th August 2011 Cycleskills Session – Bunch Riding & Pacelines

This Sat 6/8/11 at Slowies I will be running a 30-40 minute Bunch Riding Skills group at Centennial Park (CP). This will be aimed specifically at club members looking to step up to a Waterfall ride, those who may have done one or two Waterfall rides and are not really sure of all the calls and procedures as well as more generally at Sat Slowies riders who are not familiar with bunch riding procedures, calls, etiquette and safety and wish to improve their skills for the ride to and from Centennial, or as preparation for a future Waterfall or Kurnell ride. The idea will be to do about 10-15 minutes of 'theory' after we arrive in the park – calls, positioning, rolling-off and pace line theory. We'll then do some slowish laps practising the calls and actions, doing several types of front of the bunch roll-offs and possibly doing some pace line practise, depending on the type of riders participating.

To get some pre-study in here's a link to the excellent and comprehensive guide from SCC and our own DHBC guide from Geoff M

I'll be announcing this at the start of the ride. You don't need a road bike to participate – all types of two wheeled bikes welcome but you must be a club member to participate (due to insurance requirements). Group will be limited to 10 riders unless another coach is present and wants to help out.

Future Cycleskills sessions are planned to learn skills in areas like riding with one hand (so you can indicate and harder than you think), braking while indicating, cornering skills and more. The venue may not always be CP. I'll be adding these to the Rides Calendar

See you Sat
Stuart
CA Certified Cycleskills Coach

[Stuart]

Thanks to all who participated in this, the first DHBC bunch training - very pleased that there were 12 or 14 riders. I learnt a few things and I hope you did too. The pace line was a little all over the place and was difficult to keep going due to slower riders and cars but in future I think we should go a bit slower and concentrate on getting it right, rather than the speed we were doing today. Plan is to run these once a month if the demand is there. See the links above for guides to bunch riding skills and I hope to see some of the new riders at C25's on Sunday soon.

[Eleri]

Stuart I was watching the bunch as it went past me and it looked pretty good! It was good to see everyone concentrating on where they were on the road and in relation to everyone else in the bunch.

[marc2131]

Today was the first time I'd ever done a pace run and have to admit it was pretty intimidating. Towards the end, found it hard to make head or tail with other non-DHBC riders coming in. However it obviously needs practice and I will be up for another training run, but this time a little more familiar and a little better.
Thanks Stuart for running this.
Marc

[patn]

Like this idea Stuart! I missed this one due to illness but if you end up organising another
one I'll do my best to get there. The first and only time I've ridden in a bunch was in a
race at Coota. I got a CRASH course on 'riding in a bunch' on the start line, then I just
made sure I was far enough back in the paceline to see a few changes before it was my
turn on the front. So yes I'd be keen for a formal lesson so to speak!