Happy spring everyone! 
April has been off to a decent start, and we’ve got some good stuff on the horizon for May. First let’s recap a bit of what we’ve seen in April so far.
Tuesday Road:
Tuesday road rides began this month, and so far the weather has cooperated for two of the three nights this month, with the forecast for April 26th looking alright. We’ve had a lot of familiar faces out riding the challenging Bamberg loop, as well as new members joining in to see what the “fun” is about.
Wednesday Gravel:
The Wednesday night gravel rides are still going strong. I was particularity impressed twice recently.
March 30th was a fairly cool evening, but was drizzly with wet roads and gravel abound. But lo and behold, we had seven badass club members there waiting to get going at the start at the market that night. (We cut the route shorter than planned, but just seeing that many at the start was cool.)
Then just last week, I rolled up to the meeting point, and was happily surprised to see over 20 members waiting to get going. For a road ride that’s not surprising, but for gravel, early in the season, and with the route being the Gravel TT? that was fantastic.
Thursday Road:
Thursday night have seen excellent attendance as well this month. Most weeks we’ve seen either two or three relatively large groups leaving the parking lot, out to the Elora loop and the World Famous Middlebrook Madness return into town.
Racing news:
Road and gravel events have begun as well this month. We’ve had both veteran racers and first timers rock up to the start line at a few events.
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Road O-Cup #1 was held at Mosport racetrack on good Friday. This is a challenging course with significant elevation gain every lap, however the nice feature is that it’s on a closed course with perfect tarmac. If you’re looking to try road racing, this is a good one to watch for next year if you missed it this time around. Next up for road is Calabogie, also at a car racing circuit, but that one is flat and faaaassst!
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Hell of the North gravel race took place April 17th. Just a few members made it out to this event with its’ old-school mix of a lot of pavement but some gnarly sectors. Excellent warmup for P2A.
Upcoming Events in May:
May is shaping up to be a great month. More and more of our usual rides will be starting up, and we’ve got two big events:
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Learn to Group ride will start up, including a virtual intro to both LTGR as well as an “open house” of sorts for new and returning club members to get familiar with the breadth of rides we offer and some tips on our forums, and ridewithgps. Wednesday May 11th at 6:30 PM we’ll host our virtual orientation session. We’ll talk about the Learn to group ride program, and give an overview of how our road group rides operate and the whys and hows of ride formations. We’ll also provide tips on using the forums, ridewithgps,and an overview of the club rides.
The following four weeks, Wednesday May 18th to June 8th, we’ll have our LTGR rides. Rides will start at 6:30 PM at RIM park. Watch the forum and the upcoming events page for specific details. -
Rides happen in the club thanks to our volunteer ride leaders. The last two years have been challenging. Road rides were severely limited and other rides had significant hurdles for ride leaders to surmount. (Covid screening questionnaires, sign up sheets, rider attendance limits…) Once again, thanks to all the ride leaders who stepped up these past two years.
With the outlook for 2022 to be very much back to a normal year, on Wednesday May 4th at 6:30 PM, we’ll host a virtual ride leader training and refresh session. This is open to any members: maybe you’ve led rides in the past and haven’t for a while, maybe you’ve never led and are interested in learning more, or maybe you’re an experienced ride leader and just need a refresh to see what’s new since 2019 (How do I post a ride to the forum? How do I find a route to use in the club’s ridewithgps route library?)
See everyone out there on the pavement, gravel, and trails! (and see a lot of you out a P2A tomorrow)
Of course I gotta add at least one picture: Here’s a bunch of members getting ready to hit the gravel TT at full gas this past week.
