I think that is a good point @JohnnyG about looking for people we recognize. I certainly do that both on the ride and on the forum beforehand. If there are people who I know on the forum posts as “Going” then I know there are at least a few people I can hopefully hang on with.
Maybe we can more strongly encourage the use if the “Going” button so people understand both the makeup and size of the group attending that night? That might also encourage people who want to try out the ride to attend a ride where there are a lot of other similar riders showing up and have a better experience. And conversely, maybe not have a single intermediate rider show up if the only other riders confirmed as coming are G1s. ( or maybe not, my brain is currently powered by Dayquil so all my ideas seem amazing )
Great points by everyone in the thread. There wasn’t really an option for me in the poll. There are four reasons why I don’t ride Tuesdays anymore.
I’m really sick of the aggressive drivers on that loop. There have been many near misses and I don’t want to witness a friend getting hit/run off the road or get hit myself
The pavement quality has degraded over the years. It’s not super sketchy but we regularly average 40-41kmh for two laps of the loop (in a tight group with lots of attacks) and getting rattled/banged around on crappy pavement isn’t always the most fun
I’m “retired” from racing M1 and the format of the ride doesn’t really suit my training goals any longer. I prefer the Thursday ride for the hard ride of the week
I enjoy steadier gravel rides earlier in the week to decompress from work and often do those on Tuesdays
Hope this helps from a former group 1 / racers perspective.
Hi I just joined again after an 8ish year hiatus. I will be joining tuesdays again as soon as I buy myself(or convince my wife to let me buy) a road bike. It used to be my second favourite ride next to thursdays. Sad to hear the turnout isn’t as good as it was in the 20teens. Hopefully it comes back.
So a quick update post yesterdays ride. The numbers were up a little ( I would say about 20 in total, I should have counted!)
Small G1 group headed out then a sizable G2. Still not many G3 riders or intermediates came out. I decided to run a small group 3 with another G3 rider and some intermediates. That didn’t work out very well, just too much difference in pace and we had issues from the first hill.
Reading that thread we were a bit concerned with numbers last year at the same time of year but we were nearly double the riders to what what we have now (and 3 or 4 groups vs 2) so the trend is down year over year.
I’m replying as a WCC member who turned out regularly for the Tuesday night rides from 2012 until about 2019 when there seemed to be quite a shift from “we can accommodate all riders across Groups 1 to 5” to “we only have groups 1 to 3 available now…if you’re a Group 4 or 5 rider there’s no group for you”. I personally can’t hang on to Groups 1 through 3 so if there’s no option for slower riders they won’t show up.
Pretty simple really - there used to be 20+ riders spread across Groups 4 and 5 but there’s no place for those riders now. I haven’t done a Tuesday night ride since pre-covid days.
Another element that seemed to reduce numbers was the periodic summer Crit training sessions that also ran on Tuesday nights…hard to be in two places at once.
Hey @bdoberst, we are at a bit of a chicken and egg situation at this point. We need more riders to come (of all ability levels) to get the number of riders we need to have 4 or 5 groups of differing abilities.
However, with less people showing up we have less groups so those that do show up have less options. And they if they don’t enjoy the ride, they don’t show up next time, perpetuating the issue.
We actually only have 2 groups at the moment. I tried to run a third group last week with a couple of intermediates but the difference in fitness / power made it really tough to keep the group together. The hills really mean having significant differences there cause major problems. I could try and do that again but if I’m honest I’m not sure I would enjoy it (which is kind of the point for coming out in the first place )
I wonder if we can get people to use the going / interested buttons on the event to signify they are going to be attending? Maybe seeing other showing up will encourage others to join and we can build a decent size group for these rides again?
Never done a Tuesday ride before LOL.
But the Wednesday intermediate and fast gravel rides are often posted as one event. I usually guess who is doing the fast from the “Going” list based on what those riders did previously. Someone who isn’t very active/new perhaps couldn’t do this and might not be sure if their group has enough people. Is that a barrier to entry? Would it be helpful to have 2 or 3 independent “going” lists for groups 1, 2, and 3 separately?
That is a good idea @VikramSubramanian if you don’t know the riders you might not be aware of the ability of the people attending the ride.
@MarkW , @jeremyhaak@KGale do we need to have a seperate leader for each ride or could I just post three seperate rides just for this purpose of showing riding level ( since there is only really one ride going on?)
We haven’t really required separate leaders for the individual groups for Tuesday rides in the past, so I don’t think we necessarily need it if posting for different speeds etc. I do think, though, that if we advertise a ride as an Intermediate ride, for example, we should be making an effort to provide that, which isn’t really being the one intermediate rider left off the back on the Bamberg Loop. It’s the chicken and eggs situation all over again.
What might work out is having a ride leader for a second Bamberg Loop ride that targets a bit more of a hard intermediate pace, but without the drop ride culture which might provide a more positive experience for participants who would then want to continue to come out. This would then also effectively function as the sweep group for the faster groups with the traditional ride culture for Tues nights. We’d need to find someone who wants to lead this ride and then also find a core group who actually wants to come out - effectively we’d be starting a brand new ride.
Thanks @jeremyhaak . I was thinking the intermediates are one of the groups that most use the going / interested buttons so if only one intermediate clicked going then the likelihood of anyone else not showing up is probably pretty high (and maybe just mark themselves as not going and not show up for the ride). I’m not sure we have an intermediate ride leader available for it anyway. The way I was viewing it was to give visibility for those looking to try it out and make sure it will work for their ability level. I think it might work for rec riders too.
Ideally, having proper ride leaders for each level would be perfect but we are tight on leaders and the ones we do have are sometimes running multiple rides already. Realistically, I don’t think it will happen.
We could run a “how to ride the Bamberg loop” session or even write something up about how it has been traditionally ridden to give new riders to the loop and idea of what to expect, I feel it has a bit of a reputation which isn’t helping things. The ride itself is just a road after all
)
