Race Secretary Dan has launched a monthly Condors race news sheet. It might be early in the season but we’ve scored points at Abingdon and Enstone crits, our club time trials kick off soon, and we’re getting ready for the Thames Velo and Banbury Star road races. Head down to Rick’s or Beeline Bicycles to pick up your copy!
After taking four teams to Silverstone for the annual 9-up team time trial last year, we were all set to up that to five teams for 2016. Sadly we found out this week that it won’t be possible after all.
Silverstone is the highlight of many clubs’ calendars so to make sure all clubs get the chance to enter teams, BMCC (who do an incredible job running this each year) have decided to limit it to three teams per club.
The Condors Board met and discussed this yesterday and agreed that we would enter two men’s teams and one women’s team for this year’s event.
We know this will be a huge disappointment to many members who were looking forward to having a go this year. Selection for the squad will be based on the Prologue (20th March) and the first two TTs (16th April and 10th May). You’ll need to log a time in two of the three events to be considered.
And for all those still eager to get a taste of team time trialing, the consolation is that we can enter as many teams as we want at the ORRL Weston TTT – which is still a lot of fun!
After a great 2015 season, we have five club time trials and the annual hill climb scheduled for 2016. If you’re new to time trialing, it’s a great way to test yourself alongside supportive club members, and with five TTs this season you can watch your self progress month by month. We’d really encourage all members to give it a go – this definitely isn’t just for the racers in the club.
New to this year will be a season long ranking and all sorts of prizes. The full schedule is below, but watch the Facebook group for updates on each one.
As with anything the club does, it can only run when club members help out. Please consider volunteering to marshal one of the events – there are points for volunteers as well as riders!
Please note, these are only open to paid up club members.
April 16th (Saturday) 10am – Stadhampton 10 HCC118
May 10th (Tuesday) 7pm – Stanton Harcourt 10 HCC140
June 16th (Thursday) 7pm – Chesterton-10 HCC260
July 16th (Saturday) 10am – Charlgrove-Stadhampton H50km/18
August 18th (Thursday) – 7pm Stadhampton- 10 HCC118
September 17th (Saturday) – 10am Watlington Hill Climb HHC007.
See you out on the road!
Thanks to everyone who came along or bought tickets for the fundraiser on Saturday night. We’ve raised a staggering £4,000 for Helen & Douglas House, a huge achievement for which we can all be really proud. We initially set a very aspirational target of £3,000 and never dreamt that we would go this far above and beyond, especially for a first time event.
The Condors have always been embedded and connected with the Oxford community, so it’s great to have had a lot of fun while also supporting a really important local charity caring for children, young adults and their families. If you missed it yesterday, please watch this video to find out why we wanted to support them.
We sold more than 150 tickets and had over 100 of you there on the night. It was great to see a contingent of Mickey Cranks riders there too – chapeau for making the trip over from Witney! As the newest club to join the Oxfordshire Road Race League we look forward to riding with (and against!) them this coming season.
Huge thanks to Steve Jenkins, landlord at The Chequers who provided the curry and venue for free, and to all the Condors and Condor-friends who donated prizes:
Beeline Bikes and Greenoak Construction
Tom Kirk at Custom Cycle Coaching
Iconic Cycling Events
Fuelit Nutrition
Broken Spoke Co-Op
Ritual Chocolate
Mike Devaney
Sarah Harries
Dave Dyer
Becci Curtis
As a result of your generosity, every penny of ticket sales and money raised is going directly to Helen & Douglas House.
Thanks also go to Dave Dyer, Jack Wilcock and Sam Elliot, our teacher trio who gave us a great quiz (who knew maths could be so much fun – I’ll never look at a graph in the same way again).
And chapeau to our watt bike challengers, particularly Kat Young for taking the women’s prize with a massive 916 watts and Andy Ruane with 1620 watts for the men’s. Special mention has to go to Pete Smith who knocked our very own one-man watt machine Mike Devaney down to third place! Many thanks to David Brown and Louise Brown from Stoke Mandeville Tri for bringing their Watt bike out for us to use and running the challenge so successfully!
We hope to make this an annual event and have lots of other exciting ideas in the pipeline to help raise awareness of this special charity and raise additional funds. Later in the year we will be running a ‘mini shop audax’ where Condors must ride round local Helen & Douglas charity shops, purchasing an item of clothing from each and wearing them for the duration of the ride. And near Christmas we’d like to organise a ‘muddy santas’ cyclocross ride! But our next event will be a fun filled ‘cream tea and cake’ affair led by Kristen Lovelock. It will be held on a farm down near Garsington and may feature welly wanging..! Stay tuned for more details coming soon!
On Saturday 5th March, Broken Spoke Bike Co-op on Pembroke Street will host an event celebrating women and cycling as part of a city-wide Women’s Festival. Speakers include endurance cyclist and author Emily Chappell, historian of women’s cycling Dr Sheila Hanlon and England’s first female frame builder Caren Harltey. This celebration of the growing space of women in the bike industry, professional cycling and on the street is open to everyone.
Despite the upward trend in women’s cycling most mechanics and competitive cyclists are men. Growing up, women aren’t generally given access to knowledge about mechanics. As a result, women can feel like they can’t fix stuff themselves, or think it’s a man’s domain. All this can also be true for people with gender-variant identities. To tackle this, in Oxford at Broken Spoke Bike Co-op a group of self-defining women volunteers set up a monthly night to give more women and trans* people the chance to learn to fix their bikes. Beryl’s Night (named for record-breaking cyclist Beryl Burton) was born and has been a big hit.
Across the UK women are breaking new ground working as bike mechanics, frame-builders, setting up bike businesses and competing in bike races. Now Team Beryl are taking their mission one step further by bringing some of these women together to tell their stories.
A Day of Women and Bicycles (part of Oxford International Women’s Festival)
Saturday March 5th, 11am to 4pm, The Story Museum (42 Pembroke St, OX1 1BP)
Tickets and full line up: http://bsbcoop.org/a-day-of-women-and-bicycles/
This day of speakers and discussions will put the spotlight on the countless ways women are leading by example and enabling other women to get involved in competitive cycling, bike business, bike fixing and building. Dr Shelia Hanlon will explore the revolutionary history of women’s cycling. Our keynote speaker is adventure cyclist and writer Emily Chappell. We will also hear from local cycling heroines like Cheryl Reid who helped to triple female membership of the Cowley Road Condors cycling club.
Organsier Karen McCallum says ‘Its really important that to hear and celebrate the stories of women in cycling, this is how we will make a really shift in cycling and bike culture.’
For photos and quotes contact Eleanor Smith on 07737754407 or [email protected]
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