As many of you will know I’ve decided to withdrawl from all club dealings for the foreseable future, for reasons that I won’t go into here, however I am still a member of the club and for the last 5 years have probably been the club member that puts most back into the club after Chris, so I think my thoughts need to be said.
We’re a bit different to most clubs, as not only do we run events, but we have provide training and have riders who race for the club, and we also have a social side running rides and trips.
In the last year we’ve ran:-
2 XC races
1 road sportive
1 Off-Road sportive
A Criterion series
A hill climb (WLC Series)
A Coast-to-coat MTB trip
An Alps road trip
A trip to the Liege-Bastion-Liege sportive
A French MTB Sportive trip
Various trips to major Road or MTB races/events.
Weekly road and Mountain bike training session.
Numerous road and mountain bike rides
Looking at other clubs they don’t have such a wide and varied program.
We are and always have been a general cycling club, I would suggest that nearly 90% of our membership have both Road and MTB bikes, even Paul Williams has been seen on a mountain bike. If people really are choosing a bike club on the name, then the question should be do we really want them in the club anyway?
The whole MTB vs Roadie label thing is complete b******s, if you not prepared to help at out at a club MTB event because your a roadie, or vice versa then you’re a pretty sad individual.
A club is about the people who make it, events and rides can only take place if people are prepared to help out. I would say that over the last couple of years 90% of rides have been proposed by myself or Chris. We then feel obliged to to turn up and lead these rides, which not only puts a lot of pressure on us, but also isn’t sustainable. Whilst myself, and I’m sure Chris feels the same, don’t mind leading rides, occasionally we just want to relax and be a sheep as well. What makes it worse is that the some people don’t seem to mind leading rides for their own clique, but don’t open these out to the wider club. If we had more people who would step up to plate then its easier to organise multiple groups in a ride at different paces. In the past, it would be regular thing on a Social MTB ride to split in fast and not so fast groups and all meet up at the end.
I’d say the one thing that we aren’t is a leisure riding club, e.g. doing 8km on hybrids, however I feel that we have a undeserved reputation of not being “novice” friendly. I say undeserved because we have had people join and then improve as riders. There are several people who probably would have described themselves as leisure cyclists when they joined but then last year completed a strenuous tour of Northern Spain, which would have probably been beyond the ability of most people. There are some others who originally struggled on a social rides and are now riding national series events. Even on my first West Drayton social ride I was pushing up the dips on Shires Lane and that was riding with Paul Buckland. I will say that when I first stumbled across the website it did take me a year to decide to join the club because the website had a big picture of 50 people all in club gear at a race event, and sometimes the club weekly update does seem to be purely racing/training focused.
So in terms of a name change, I think that is just ‘re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic’ and won’t achieve anything. It does mean a lot of effort and expense, changing kit, changing paperwork, domain registration (if available) and not to mention the loss of well known (in cycling cycles) ‘brand’. I would say that over 50% of the membership live outside of the M25 and we do 99% of our riding outside of London, so is West London correct? No. As said above does it really matter if you a roadie or a mountain biker, West Drayton MBC is just a ‘Brand’. If people really think its important we could say it standards for West Drayton multi-sport biking club, hell we even accept tri-athletes and BMX riders.
If we want to attact new members IMHO what needs to change is:-
1.) Website and communications needs to be re-jigged to show that we have both a training/racing and social element to the club.
2.) More people need to get involved. Whether it’s leading a ride, posting events that may be of interest to people, and assisting with club events.
3.) Define some club guidelines for what makes a social, pacey or training ride and label rides according to the category. If you’re on a social ride leave the Testosterone at home or be prepared to lead a faster group, similarly if your on a training ride/session MTFU and push it, or make sure you know how to get home.
4.) People are like sheep, if events/rides are well attended and are inclusive we will attact new members, however if cliques and private riding groups form, club rides will die.
5.) Communication channels need to be improved, having to post on Whatsapp, fB, website etc is a burden. Some members may not use FB or Whatsapp.
6.) People need to remember its a club, none of us get paid for this. People put a lot of their time and effort into organising things that will appeal to the majority of the membership, and not everything is going to suit everyone. If you don’t like it, rather than whinging, volunteer to organise it yourself next time.
As I will not be attending the AGM, my proxy vote will be submitted to Chris.
I wish the Club well in the future, and a Merry Xmas to everyone.
Note: No “they’re are all good points” type bullshit replies are needed.
WayneC.
