In article <[email hidden]>,
Mike Kruger said:A few questions about club ride leaders.
It seems to me that complaining publicly to the ride leader during a ride is
occasionally appropriate. I can think of two general sets of issues:
1. Safety concerns
2. Social contract concerns: if the ride is advertised to be at a 13-14 mph
pace for 30 miles, going 16-18 mph for 40 miles isn't appropriate.
(Perhaps there are other things that I'm forgetting.)
But people often do complain -- possibly not realizing how petty and mean
they sound -- and not every ride leader has a very thick skin. If you've
ever seen this problem, how has it been dealt with?
There's rides and then there's rides. The ones you seem to be discussing
(15 mph, 30 mi) are pretty casual by boy-racer or
audax/rando/Seattle-to-Portland standards. Which is fine, but the issues
will be different.
I assume that on these pie rides, the leader's safety responsibility
generally amounts to ensuring the ride moves through intersections
safely, keeping an eye out for dangerous riding in the pack, and
hopefully picking out a route without any egregious hazards or outright
errors.
Social contract is clearly a concern: if the ride isn't as advertised,
and it's a problem for some of the participants, the ride should be
returned to the advertised form, or the ad should be changed.
Our regular boy-racer club ride (2-3+ hours at 30 km/h, depending on how
you finish it off; the first 2 hours is pretty much all together, and
it's a no-drop ride with a designated sprint in the 3rd hour) has no
designated leaders.
There are, however, several riders who are more senior, or more
experienced, in the club. They generally make sure that the ride doesn't
drop people, that arrangements are made when someone has to stop for a
flat or mechanical, and that the ride isn't going wildly over the speed
parameters.
Of course, this is a ride that has gone at 9 am every Saturday of the
year for years and years. At least five, maybe even a decade. It's a
well-established ride. All the regulars know the route off by heart,
including the standard decision point on whether the ride will be done
counterclockwise or clockwise (to fit best with the prevailing wind).
If I was ever on a ride where I thought the safety issues were
untenable, I'd either talk to the leader (if I felt it would help, and
probably only if I knew them or the safety issue was outrageous and
maybe endangering riders too inexperienced to understand the risk), or
just drop off the ride. Life's too short to die on a bike. At least not
for a few decades.
I'm not really in the business of telling people how to run rides unless
I've paid for the privilege.
--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos
