newcastlecycling

 



Some of these people may simply want life to continue as it is now - they like racing the same flat boring course week in week out, in the same grade.  Merger will not put an end to that, but they might fear it will.  So you deal with that in terms of how a merged club would deal with the interests of these people, who (I am confident) are in the lower grades.

 

 
Some, but only some lower grade riders have this attitude.  I personally don't like being only good enough for the bottom grade nor do I like the prospect of continually chasing the rest of the field in nearly every race as I did in my first years of cycle racing.  I train almost every day, including efforts and track work.  As seen in the Sydney Cup last year I am up with the other women in my age group (at least on a fairly flat course). An arthritic knee doesn't help on hills.  I am quite happy to race at Minmi on occasion, but not every week for the Winter season.  And allowances need to be made for those of us who can't start on the fence.

I am quite happy to travel for races on occasion, but for example, I can only do crits in the Masters champs as other crits are designed basically for A/B riders only.  HD doesn't at present really cater for F grade riders (unless one happens to be under-age).  Central Coast have an E grade in the crits- for juniors only.  State open road races are generally out of the question also as club F graders would be riding against other club E and D riders in state F grade.

One of the other problems we have in F grade is that the differential between F and E grade seems to be proportionately higher than that between other grades.  Often an F grader is promoted and after a number of weeks is still unable to keep up with E graders who are flying along (sometimes faster than D grade, I have been told).

I am not against change but I don't want to end up in races where I would be guaranteed to be dropped nearly every time.  Hills are o.k.if they are within my capabilites (Mulbring and Minmi are ok) but not hills week in week out for F grade.  Variety, yes.

Hopefully I have another 15 years of racing in me- there are quite a few men still racing at this age, but being men they are stronger and faster than me.  ( I know some women are faster than men, but I am an "average" woman).  I can't go back to running (knee) and swimming- ugh!

So, I will be around for a few years yet endeavouring to improve before the inevitable decline.