Biking Friends

Hello!

I am new to this area and looking for people to go on road rides throughout the winter/spring and road rides and mountain bike rides in the spring/summer. I am fit and like keeping a decent pace but don’t like to feel pressure/stress and just enjoy a fun ride and some good company. I’d prefer to ride with people between age 30-45 :relaxed:

Let me know if you want to go for a ride one of these days!

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Welcome to the club! There is a lot of useful information in the FAQs sections here: Docs - Waterloo Cycling Club Forum. This might help you decide which rides you want to try.

The official rides are posted in the Rides area (although unofficial rides are sometimes organized outside of this but then there is no insurance etc).

Official Road rides normally start in the spring and typically the Learn to Group Ride starts around then too. This is an excellent way to meet club members. I’ve not seen many road rides during the winter but there are often gravel and mountain bike / fatbike rides posted depending on the weather and condition of the trails.

Thank you so much for this! I really appreciate it :relaxed: So people don’t just post looking for biking friends but instead join the group rides? I’m interested in both but sometimes prefer 1:1 or a smaller group than group rides typically offer.

Thanks again!
Katrina

I was going to leave this for one of the directors but I’ll chip in again while we wait for them. I’m just a member who helps on the forum side of things, so this is not in any way the official line on this :slight_smile:

In the past the club has mostly had official club rides. We moved back to a forum format this past season and there have been some semi-official rides (organized by the club but not officially registered to qualify for insurance) and well as some posts by members saying they are going to go for a ride and would anyone like to join them ( more in the “bike friends” idea of the original post). I’m not sure how successful this has been since I expect responses might have been private messages which are not visible.

The official rides are great, everyone is really friendly and although it might seem intimidating with a lot of people hanging at the start, in reality the groups typically break down into much smaller groups ( we had some rides with just 4 people last summer in the intermediate road ride, normally though between 6 and 15 maybe?). I highly recommend trying them out, a great way to meet members of the club.

Having said that I do see the appeal of unofficial rides especially if the timings of official rides don’t work out or you just want something less structured. I’m unsure of the liabilities to the club if we supported these unofficial rides in some way e.g. had a channel for people looking to arrange unofficial rides. If something happened during these rides would the club be liable? @KevRidesGravel is there a concern there and is there an official line?

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@Oliver_Smith nailed it.

There are a variety of winter gravel and fat bike rides. They are all very relaxed and easy going. The Ride Culture page provides a rough idea of how the various groups operate. During the winter none of the rides are too big. Go out and give one a try when they pop up. A topic will be created in the Ride forum a few days or more before a ride with the details, so watch or subscribe to that section.

Unofficial rides are just that, unofficial so you don’t have the benefit of being covered by the clubs insurance. We encourage members to create posts looking for others to ride with as long as no-one is misled and it’s clear the ride is “unofficial”.

In the spring we’ll start up road rides at some point during April, weather dependent of course. Come out to some of these, get a feel for our different rides and groups and I’m sure you’ll make some friends. As mentioned by Oliver we have a Learn to Group Ride program that’s a great introduction to the club and how our rides operate. We strongly encourage new members to come out to this program even if you already have experience riding in a group. We’ll announce the dates for this program in the next month or so.

I hope this helps. Look forward to seeing you out there.

Thank you so much for all of this, that sounds great!! Will the upcoming group rides be in the upcoming events section? Thanks again!

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@Wahine yes likely the LTGR will be posted in upcoming rides, facebook etc. Don’t worry you won’t miss the announcement :slight_smile:

:pray::pray::pray: thanks!!