Riding Etiquette

Fellow Cyclists:

The weather is getting better and we will start riding outdoors more and more. Many of you have been riding the trainer all winter with little outside and group riding work so I am going to review some riding etiquette we follow here in Athens. This email is long but please take the time to read this in its entirety.

First and foremost, you are riding at your own risk. Cycling is an inherently dangerous sport. By participating in group rides, you accept the risk of libility. Those of you on Team Athens, you are covered under our liability insurance which covers group rides. If you are not part of Team Athens, more the reason to join. There is never enough insurance.

#2 Please, please, please, please have health insurance. If you don't have health insurance, get health insurance. Not having health insurance is a liability to everyone on the group ride. The team insurance does not give you health coverage. It is only secondary liability coverage. Along the lines of health insurance, helmets are required. NO EXCEPTIONS

#3: Obey the rules of the road. We as cyclists are considered vehicles and all traffic rules apply. Don't run red lights, Don't blow stop signs, Don't ride the wrong way down a one way street. Most importantly, DO NOT go left of center (also known as the yellow line rule). This is very dangerous and repeated offences will result in a banning from our rides.

#4. When approached by a car in the rear, let others know by saying "Car Back" (similarly, call out "Car UP" when a car approaches from the front). Form a single file toward the right side of the road and let the car pass. I generally do not recommend waving a car by. While waving a car by may seem to be a kind gesture, it puts liability on you in the off case passing car does get into a head-on accident. Let the driver make their own decision on when to pass.

#5. The law requires to ride as far right as it is safe. This is often misinterpreted as riding on the gutter. Ride 2-3 feet from the edge of the road. If there are pot holes, grates, other road anomalies, ride 2-3 feet left of that. An example is Richland avenue. The sides of the roads are pretty much torn up. I will ride pretty much in the center of the lane, as that is 2-3 feet from the bad section of the road. The reason for the 2-3 feet, is in the event a car brushes close to you and you need to go to the right, you have 2-3 feet of clean road to maneuver to. If you are riding right on the edge of the pot holes, you move right and fall into the pot hole, possibly causing damage to your bike and yourself.

#6. No headphones when riding in the group. You need to be able to hear people. I don't care what you do when you ride solo but please not in the group.

#7. Please carry repair items, such as a tube and pump. Don't be that guy who always mooches tubes on the ride.

Now onto more riding related

#8 Pacelines. Pacelines are a fundamental skill in cycling. You ride single file (or sometimes double wide) and the person behind gets a draft, making it easier to pedal. You want to ride 6-12" behind the person in front of you. Avoid crossing wheels (your front wheel overlaps the persons rear wheel). The biggest thing is be smooth and predictable. We will be having a pacelining clinic in the near future.

#9 Pulling off on pacelines. If you are up front and pulling, eventually you will want to pull off and go to the back of the group. Rule #1, don't slow down. Rule #2, don't slow down. #3, flare your elbows to signal you are pulling off, #4 don't slow down #5 slowly and smoothly pull off (generally to the left), #6 don't slow down(find a theme here?) #7 when you have verified you have completely pulled off and no one is behind you, now you can slow down and rejoin the group in the rear

#10 When you are the person behind the person pulling off, please maintain the current speed while pulling through. It is bad practice and form to speed up as the person pulls off. This creates a gap behind you.

#11 Pull off direction. In most cases, you will pull off out of the paceline to the left. Why? Well you are riding on the right side of the road, pulling off to the right will give you little room. There are some exceptions. When it is particularly windy and the wind is blowing right to left, it is customary to pull off to the right. This is called pulling off into the wind. When in doubt, pull off to the left or pull off in the direction the group is going (in other words, don't pull off to the left when everyone is going right) We will work on pulling off in a later pacelining clinic.

#12 Signaling for obstacles and turns. Please signal for potholes and turns. Also yell out firmly and loudly turns and obstacles on the road. However there is a major exception for hand signals. PLEASE only do so when it is safe. Far too often, I see people trying to signal when it is unsafe to take your hands off the bars. Such example would be going downhill and making a turn, or when there is gravel on the road. In these cases just yell out loudly your intentions.

Wednesday Worlds

We will start up Worlds rides pretty soon and here are some general guidelines.

Worlds is a weekly, high paced ride. It can be considered a practice race. Speeds are generally in the Cat3 level. We encourage everyone to try to make it out to the Worlds ride as it will give you high speed, high intensity training. However if you are not very comfortable riding in a paceline at high speeds, you may want to reconsider making Worlds your first group ride. I highly recommend coming out to other weekday rides to build up your confidence then come out to the Worlds ride. Most important thing is to not become discouraged when you get dropped at Worlds. 

Paceline tip: I find that many new riders will pull too hard for too long. This results in the rider going above their ability, blow up, and not be able to rejoin the group. Be sure to save enough to be able to rejoin the group.

Summer Membership and clothing Order

We are doing a second clothing order and we would like you to join our team!

The tentative clothing order due date is July 1st.

Why join Team Athens? Bigger numbers mean better representation. We as cyclists will have more power when we are all united as one team.

We also have a lot of great sponsors who offer great discounts to our members.

Visit the link below or email us at teamathenscycling@gmail.com
http://www.teamathenscycling.com/2010/01/joining-team-athens.html

Final Spring TT 6/8/10

Thanks for everyone coming out this spring to the TT series. It was a great sucess. Good job to everyone who competed throughout the spring. We will start up another series in the coming weeks for the summer

1	Janos	25:41.11
2	Rick	26:42.08
3	Alex	28:01.44
4	Justin	29:02.13
5	Mike C	29:38.08
6	Curt	30:32.73
7	Erika	30:47.43
8	Tim S	31:17.08
9	Doug M	34:31.58
10	Doug W	36:20.92
11	John S	41:02.11

With double points on the line today, every point counted

1	Erika	770
2	Alex	744
3	Janos	728
4	Doug W	672
5	Mike C	668
6	Doug M	662
7	Tim S	652

Final Overall

Place	Name	#1	#2	#3	#4	#5	#6	Total
1	Janos	349	400		349	349	728	1826
2	Erika	326	340	343	349		770	1802
3	Alex	325		346	372	339	744	1801
4	Doug W	333	326	345	383	382	672	1782
5	Tim S	361	362	383	324	338	652	1758
6	Doug M	380	345	325		360	662	1747
7	Mike C	325	333	372	343	328	668	1716
8	David M	315	325	334		352		1326
9	Dave G	357						357
10	Sean		337					337
11	Dave W	325						325

New State Champion!

John Lefelhocz and Rick Van den Akker traveled up to Groveport for the State Time Trial yesterday and had a steller performance.

They went 1-2 in the Masters time trial and we have another State Champion on Team Athens. Congratulations to John and Rick!

To celebrate their victory, they continued on with the Team Time Trial event and finished a respectable 3rd place.

John is the Current USAC Ohio Masters champion in the Criterium and Time Trial!

Final Time Trial Tuesday

The final Time Trial for this spring is coming up this Tuesday!

For those in the points series, this event counts for Double points!

Doug W has pretty much wrapped up the Most Improved category! Congrats to Doug. He has shaved off almost 4 minutes from his first TT.

Memorial Day weekend results

Team Athens was quite busy this Memorial Day weekend bringing in some results.

A crew of Ben, Dale and Sean made the trip down to Thomas, WV to do the Tour of Tucker county. If you haven't seen the course profile, its pretty vicious. Ben finished 18th out of 33 in the the mens 1/2/3, Dale 33 out of 46 in the Mens 5, and Sean 10 out of 18 in Masters 40+ men.

Katsu spent over 1300 miles and 24 hours in a car this weekend racing in 3 states. First up on Saturday was the Tour de Frankenmuth in Frankenmuth, MI. An 80 mile road race that averaged 26 mph. Yes 26 mph, that is crit speed. With 10 off the front, KT took 7th in the field sprint for 17th overall in the Pro/1/2 field. Sunday it was down to Newmark criterium where KT found himself in the winning break of 8 late in the race. With 80 miles of racing in the legs, KT pulled off a nice 5th place finish. Sunday was more driving and down to Lexington, KY for the Bike Lexington Criterium. A nice 6 corner L-shaped course with a slight hill. A race dominated by Texas Roadhouse, the pace was always high with guys coming off the back every lap. When it came down to business, Roadhouse set up their leadout train and pushed the pace even faster. Sitting in a good position, KT just narrowly got into 5th position.