Over the next few weeks, the Tuesday post will be focusing on ride leading and leaders.
Here's a short introduction. Our ride leaders are integral to our club, without them the club rides wouldn’t work.They operate with three things in mind – safety, enjoyment and development.
Safety
The ride leader takes a collective responsibility for making decisions that keep the group safe. They do this with good hazard perception and then communicate clearly with the group. If an incident occurs on a ride, they report back to the committee.
Enjoyment
Our rides should be fun, we’re a welcoming club with zero tolerance of abuse. By setting the appropriate pace the ride leader ensures the group is cohesive, but also monitors the group and adjusts as required. With basic repair knowledge, any mechanicals are solved and allow the group to quickly get moving again.
Development
As a role model, the ride leader is an inspiration and encourages club mates to improve and expand their skills. Whether that’s improving group riding skills or nurturing more ride leaders, they share their knowledge freely.All this isn’t rocket science – when we ride on our own we do a lot of the above anyway. When we ride as part of a group, we all still look out for hazards and communicate them – we are all ride leaders already, just with different levels of experience.
It would be great to expand the number of people willing to lead rides, particularly as the club gets bigger and our ride offerings grow.
If you have any questions please post your questions so we can share the knowledge.
If you’d like to know more or volunteer to lead, please get in contact.