Cycling frend or cycling club.
- Thread starter cycling34
- Start date
The best thing to do is join a cycling club. From there you will be able to become friends with others who ride at the same level as you do so that you or they will not need to tone down their riding to accomodate the weaker rider. It does make it easier to train when you are riding with someone who rides at your level and is trying to get better. Another advantage to joining a club is that you can learn from the more accomplished riders. But then there are still those times when it is nice just to get out and ride by yourself.
Hey kdelong,
I live in the Seattle area and just started. I checked out a bunch of local cycling club's sites but they all looked really exclusive and intimidating, haha. Are clubs pretty much exclusively for race teams, or are there any for recreational pleasure out there? Nearly all of them seemed to be race-only. I'd love to find a group to go out and do some intense rides with throughout the week.
Check with your Local bike Shop(LBS). They will know of all of the clubs in your area and be able to point you in the right direction. I cannot comment on the Seattle area clubs but in my experience in other areas of the country, most bicycling clubs have a "team" of racers, but also have other divisions within the club. The local clubs that I have been associated with usually had different major categories of cycling for club rides, usually advanced, intermediate, and novice. Advanced is usually sub-categorized into competitive and non-competitive. The non-competitive may also be further split into touring and sport categories. The other main categories were also further split depending upon levels of ability and member interests.
While the clubs sponsored some highly organized rides, most of the riding was done by small groups of members getting together to ride at a time and a route that was set between them. That is the beauty of a club, you can find people with the same interests and of similar abilities to ride with.
With all of the riders in the Pacific Northwest, I am sure that you will find a club that includes non-competitive cyclists. It may be that the clubs that you found on the web was just touting their racers because some of their members were competing in the Amgen Tour of California. While guys racing on that level make up a fairly exclusive group, there are a lot more casual cyclists out there than there are racers and I am sure that they have formed one or more clubs in the Seattle area.
While the clubs sponsored some highly organized rides, most of the riding was done by small groups of members getting together to ride at a time and a route that was set between them. That is the beauty of a club, you can find people with the same interests and of similar abilities to ride with.
With all of the riders in the Pacific Northwest, I am sure that you will find a club that includes non-competitive cyclists. It may be that the clubs that you found on the web was just touting their racers because some of their members were competing in the Amgen Tour of California. While guys racing on that level make up a fairly exclusive group, there are a lot more casual cyclists out there than there are racers and I am sure that they have formed one or more clubs in the Seattle area.
Best advise is to go around to some of your Local Bike Shops (as previously advised) and also look for your Local Bike Shop's web pages. Many LBS have clubs and teams riding out of them. It's in the LBS best intrest to not only have a club but to welcome new members, because new members = new loyal customers.
Aslo have a look at the United States Cycling Federation website. You can look up sanctioned clubs AND teams for your local area there. Don't be too intimidated by the word "Team" because as previously stated, most teams are divided in to many subcatagories. Most teams will also have a Club as well, and even if they don't most teams out of a LBS will have teams that include riders that are classified all the way down to a Catagory 5 racer... which is a completely new racer.
There is a link in my Signature below... if you link to it, there is a silver button towards the bottom the will link you to the USCF website, you can search clubs and teams from there.
Aslo have a look at the United States Cycling Federation website. You can look up sanctioned clubs AND teams for your local area there. Don't be too intimidated by the word "Team" because as previously stated, most teams are divided in to many subcatagories. Most teams will also have a Club as well, and even if they don't most teams out of a LBS will have teams that include riders that are classified all the way down to a Catagory 5 racer... which is a completely new racer.
There is a link in my Signature below... if you link to it, there is a silver button towards the bottom the will link you to the USCF website, you can search clubs and teams from there.
I say get your friends involved! Me and a friend of a friend I met last summer became good buddies and he had recently gotten into road biking maybe a year ago. He did a few centuries and was doing a lot of 30-40 mile rides with some friends of his. I have been biking all my life, but always mountain bikes. With his help, I decided to jump into road biking and see how I liked it. Bought a bike off CL and went 32 miles my first time out with him and another dude. Got hooked immediately. Now we ride all the time just the two of us or with a few other guys. I'm sure there are plenty of 'teams' and 'clubs' around this area, but I'd rather just be able to ride with friends at whatever pace we choose and whenever we want. The good part is, since I was already in decent shape, I jumped into biking at about the same skill level as he was, so we could ride the same pace over the same distances. Only been riding since about October, but I'm definitely a lifer already. Plus having friends in the sport gives you a lot more motivation when you are discussing it every day and friendly competing all the time.
The funniest part is, the guy that we were mutual friends with had no interest in biking whatsoever. I don't think I've ever seen the kid on a bike in the 10 years I've known him. He is in good shape though and just so happened to have a lot of free time after work. We finally convinced him to get a bike and he bought one just this past week, so now we have another person to ride with. At this rate, we can start our own club!
The funniest part is, the guy that we were mutual friends with had no interest in biking whatsoever. I don't think I've ever seen the kid on a bike in the 10 years I've known him. He is in good shape though and just so happened to have a lot of free time after work. We finally convinced him to get a bike and he bought one just this past week, so now we have another person to ride with. At this rate, we can start our own club!
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