Specialized Ladies Ride 12th September from Rutland Cycling, as part of CamCycle Festival 2018.
With the nights drawing in, and getting a little chilly, I was very proud to have a full peloton of ladies ride out with me last Wednesday evening. I’ve written a little summary below.
In conjunction with Cam Cycle Festival, the ride was supported by Rutland Cycles and by my ambassador team at Specialized.
Why cycle?
We know the benefit of cycling, not just for fitness and mental health, but for the adrenaline and challenge, and as a sustainable transport option. Women are less likely to be involved in sport, just 31% do 30 minutes of sport once a week, compared to 41% in men (Womeninsport.org), and this is certainly obvious in cycling. The main barriers to cycling are the equipment (and confidence in fixing it if something goes wrong), and riding on the roads.
Cycling is great form of exercise because it’s low impact, meaning you can go further than when you’re running, and it has a huge variety of activities (mountain bike, road, commuting, gravel riding etc…) so there really is something for everyone.
As an ambassador my aim is to encourage and empower women into cycling together. So many women turn up to group rides and have bad experiences. They never go back, and their confidence is knocked. I never want my ladies to experience this with me.
How do I encourage participation?
So far I have been leading monthly bike rides and running bike maintenance courses at Rutland Cycling. Being teamed with Rutland is great as the staff are fantastic, and as enthusiastic about women’s cycling as I am!
Many of the women attend a maintenance course, then a ride, and then they bring their friends. My August ride was a perfect example of this – our Leading Ladies Ride encouraged each lady to bring a friend that hadn’t ridden much before, and they were rewarded for their hard work with a great pair of Specialized socks!
My most recent ride, Wednesday 12th September, was for beginners. The ride included a mix of bike skills and group riding. We played it safe on Cambridge’s Guided Busway (a fabulous cycleway with no cars for over 13 miles!). Here, we practised some group riding and learnt the art of the ‘chain gang’, we did some mini sprints and practiced on the drop handlebars. We even popped to the pub afterwards!
The most important thing about my rides is the social aspect of being part of a group, it’s much more fun to ride in a group of likeminded ladies, develop those riding skills, and even get lost every so often (and laugh about it later!). Anyone can go out and blitz it on a route that they know well, but not many have a group of women to laugh and joke with along the way.
The feedback we have received has been fantastic; ladies have signed up to cycling holidays, and sportive rides because they’ve grown in confidence, one lady even said she smiled whilst riding a bike for the first time since March!
So – come join the rides, join our growing Strava group, and get chatting on our WhatsApp group, because that’s what it’s all about.
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