Saturday 6th May Go Ride & Youth Ride

Another good turnout this morning with nineteen young riders signing on for Go Ride.  Michele & Calvin got the riders started, practising saddle push; a vital skill for looking cool ;-).  Once everyone had signed on we started with a warm up of Chase the Snake, the younger riders are really starting to get good at riding in a loose bunch - like a perfect bunch of grapes.

Today was essentially a skills session and our first challenge was looking behind whilst riding and maintaining a fairly straight line.  We mixed this up with coloured cones and numbers of fingers to count, then tried it one handed as well.  After so much concentration, biscuits were required, special treats today brought by Caitlin as she'd celebrated her 9th birthday in the Easter holidays.

Rider in the pit, waiting to start.

After lots of slow and controlled riding it's always good to have a 'blast', so we split into teams and ran a team enduro style relay, with two riders in the pit and one rider out on the course at any one time.  It was so much fun we had to do it again, but this time as just one lap per rider.

Post Office Queue

Giant Stop Box

Watching Damian fix a puncture!

Meanwhile, Calvin, Luke and Toni set up a monster skills circuit on the main playground including all our favourites: ride the line, slalom, dismount/remount, post office queue, bottle pick and stop box.  I swear the kids would do this all day if you let them.  However it was time to pack up so we thanked the coaches and volunteers and gave riders the opportunity to look at and try our club road bikes.  Eventually we managed to get packed up and kitted up for Youth Ride.

I named this week's route Leg of Lamb.  Well it was a combo of a vague resemblance in the shape of the route and the fact that there are so many adorable lambs in the fields at the moment.  Toni and Damian joined us (no racing for them today ahead of Sunday's Omnium), so with Malcolm, Claire, Christophe, Eloise, Hope, Luke and me we were nine.

An early puncture at Penshurst meant a brief spell in the sunshine outside the garage, then we were back on the road and enjoying the quiet lanes and hedgerows between Penshurst and The Causeway.  We turned up Hale Oak Road and climbed up to Weald before returning via Scabharbour Road.  A very pleasant 19 miler, tipping in just over 13 mph.  Well done to all the riders and many thanks to our adult riders.