Author: admin

Your club needs you!

Posted on April 23, 2016 by - News

Our club is getting bigger and better, which means there are plenty of great opportunities to get involved and help our fantastic teams.

Check out the list below and please get in touch if you’d like to lend a hand or just find out more!

Marshal Training and the Enstone crit

Jonny Revis has organised marshall training for the Oxfordshire Road Race League on Sunday 1st May at Enstone. We know its a bank holiday weekend BUT if you’re in Oxford and you’d like to help out at a couple of races this year, please do consider putting your name down. It’s a great chance to learn about what goes on behind the scenes and you’ll be directly contributing to keeping your club members and other riders safe during the races.
Following the training there will be afternoon crit races for women plus Cat 4 and Cat 2/3 men! This course is fast and furious with lots of corners to get your teeth into. If you’re in Oxford please come and race or put your newly learned marshalling skills into practice!
When: Sunday 1st May plus hopefully one or two ORRL dates
Speak to: Jonny Revis

Ride Leading

Ride leading is the backbone of our club and if people didn’t step up to lead rides we simply wouldn’t exist! It’s been great to see new and old faces at the recent ride leader training sessions. Now is the time to put your skills to good use! With lots more people joining we’ll need more ride leaders and helpers going out, particularly at the social end of the spectrum. We’d love to encourage all members to get more involved and if you’d like an ‘old hand’ present for your first few in charge please just let us know, we’re happy to help!
When: as soon as you can! 🙂
Speak to: Cheryl Reid or Jon Harle

Time Trials

We all love a time trial pain cave. But sometimes its nice just to watch other people suffering instead! We always need helpers to do sign on, stand at roundabouts, act as stopwatch time lords or take pictures of us gurning. If you’d like to help out then speak to one of the awesome TT committee! Choose your dates tactically and you can avoid riding the 25 mile TT 😉
When: 10th May, 16th June, 16th July, 18th August, 19th September (hill climb)
Speak to: Cathy Naylor, Brett Kamino, Rob Freshwater or Tyra Rivkin

Racing

You might be aware that sometime we host our own races! (see Enstone crit above). We’re also running an ORRL race on 10 July and may even have a cyclo-cross race later in the year to play with! Similar to the time trials, we need help with sign on, marshalling and photo bombing. You can even help scope out the best place for cheerleading – aka Condor’s corner!
When: Sunday 10th July ORRL
Speak to: Stephen Tearne

Bike Oxford

Sunday 11th September is the day for the calendar! We’re extremely lucky to have our own sportive and it takes a good bit of manpower over the weekend. From putting up signs the day before, taking them down afterwards, manning the feed stations, helping with sign on or handing out finisher medals, there are lots of jobs that need doing. If you’re not riding this year please consider volunteering and you’ll get free entry in 2017!
When: Sunday 11th September
Speak to: Jonny Revis

Website Officer

Tom Woodforde did a fantastic job with our lovely website and since he stepped down, Cheryl and Jon have been covering this role. While they’ve managed not to break it (yet!) it would be great to have someone who really knows what they are doing. Uploading and managing content are the key requirements, but if you’re a technical wizard then we might find more exciting jobs for you! This role sits on the board and it means you get hang out with all the other cool board members plus have a say in what goes on in the club!
When: as soon as you like! 🙂
Speak to: Cheryl Reid

Treasurer

We are very sad to say that Hari will be moving away during the summer which means we’ll be looking for a new treasurer before long. It’s a really important role which also sits on the board – you have to be confident with accounts, budgeting and online banking. It’s a lot of fun too, as you get to veto some of our crazier ideas! (pink and black balloon tunnels, flag pyrotechnics etc).
When: around July time
Speak to: Cheryl Reid or Hari Lehal

As you can see there are lots of ways to give back. If you have any questions about these, or any other opportunities within the club please do get in touch at [email protected] or catch Cheryl Reid or Jon Harle during the next ride.

Keep the volunteering up!

New sponsors for the Cowley Road Condors!

Posted on April 18, 2016 by - News

 

Owned by top condor and Kit Officer Mark Glendinning, Green Oak specialise in all types of construction, design, carpentry and joinery. Ask nicely and they might even make you a house in the shape of a bicycle! Green Oak were instrumental in supporting us with the Helen & Douglas House charity event in March and we look forward to wearing their green leaves on our kit.

 

Four of our lovely condors work at this amazing digital design company, located off the Cowley Road. You might remember seeing some of Jo Lankester’s fantastic design work at the hill climb championship, on the membership card or the flyers in Beeline. But that barely scratches the surface of what they really do! From web design to mobile apps, White October have the whole spectrum covered. 

 

If you’re looking for the best sports nutrition delivered to your front door, look no further. Our favourite nutrition team, led by keen cyclists Jonathan Beckett and Huw Williams will sort you out a fantastic selection of gels, bars and drinks. They even offer a 10% discount for Condor members! The variety box is proving to be a popular favourite among club members, check out the full range here

 

You’ll be seeing all three represented on the kit in the next order. We are extremely pleased to that they are supporting the Condors and the club’s continued success.

Catch up on the racing news!

Posted on April 9, 2016 by - Time Trial Routes

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! 

Silverstone 2016

Posted on April 7, 2016 by - Shortcodes

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!

Time trials starting in April!

Posted on April 6, 2016 by - Shortcodes

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!

Condors help raise £4,000 for Helen & Douglas House!

Posted on March 6, 2016 by - category main

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!

HandD thanks

 

 

Broken Spoke Presents ‘A Day of Women and Bicycles’

Posted on February 19, 2016 by - Home


National cycling heroines come to Oxford to celebrate increase in women’s cycling

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]