Club members from other East Coast NI clubs riding as visitors at our club tours has brought a different and positive flavour to these events. However, some of our club members don't seem so aware of the different dynamic this brings to our club racing.
During the last tour it was commented on that some of our club riders were riding as if they were in a normal club race, treating all riders including visiting club members the same, and taking points off fellow club members who potentially had a better chance of overall success in the tour. While we want to be hospitable to visiting club members, we also want to encourage friendly rivalry. There is little glory for our club or its members in having Ramblers place 2nd to 10th in a grade when the person who wins it is from Gisborne for example. And remember visitors will be coming here to do as well as they can.
The Ramblers club tours are a good, relatively low-key opportunity to learn and practice team tactics and experience a multi-stage event. While the ITT is an individual event, we encourage members to approach the road race in particular as a teams event – us versus them.
The upcoming tour is a good place to start becoming more aware of what’s happening around you in a race or tour:
• Where do your clubmates sit as regards points in your grade going into the road race?
• When visitors attack do you all respond, or do you delegate one or two to do this, while at the same time protecting key clubmates?
• Or worse do you leave it to your clubmates with more points to wear themselves out doing the work?
• When it comes to the sprint do you all go for it with no thought about where your leading clubmates are, or where the visitors are?
• And do you know which of your clubmates it is in the club’s best interests to get to the line in the best position.
• If you are lucky enough to get a group of your clubmates off the front in the road race do you work together to consolidate your break and then sort yourselves out at the finish?
These are just some thoughts to consider and that’s the point. We encourage those Ramblers taking part in the club tour to think about these sorts of things rather than treating the tour as a race like any other. The intention is not to make it super–serious but rather to broaden the experiences of our members and hopefully make their racing more interesting as a result.
