Category: News

Cowley Road Condors are proud to release their first ever digital membership card, thanks to the design talents of Jo Lankester and technical expertise of White Chilli creative studio.

This change has been made to reduce time spent on hand writing hundreds of cards every year – many of which are uncollected – and will save some trees in the process!

New and re-joining members will find this attached to their subscription email, while existing members can download theirs from the website. Please check your emails for instructions!

Any questions or problems please contact us on [email protected]

We were delighted to have a 4 page spread in the latest Cycling Weekly magazine, celebrating the Condor ethos and origins. In particular, it reflects upon the original idea for the club, conjured up by the 4 founding members after a night down the pub. We’ve come a really long way and the article reflects very positively on our journey, especially on our growing female membership.

Cycling Weekly has a circulation of 28K readers and has been in print since 1891!

Read the full article here 🙂

We were very proud to see the club mentioned in the Oxford Mail this week, as we celebrated the achievement of reaching 100 women.

Read the article here!

30 women and 8 men braved the arctic winds last week – cycling up to the windmill at Brill Hill to celebrate the club reaching another major milestone: over 100 female members! This is a fantastic achievement for a cycling club and we are so proud of everyone involved in helping us get to this stage.

100th Woman

Natasha Williams, our 100th woman, says “I did a couple of newbie rides last summer and I really enjoyed the camaraderie of the group. I like to think that I soar like a condor when I’m flying down hills!”. Sadly she broke her toe last year and this meant she wasn’t able to ride very much. But she is more than making up for it this year, with a 300km cycle round Sweden’s lake Vättern in June! Natasha has a busy schedule of training rides before then including Bike Oxford and the Tour of Cambridgeshire. We wish her the best of luck and look forward to celebrating on her return!

100th woman Natasha (in yellow) gets ready to set off with president Cheryl Reid (left) transporting the balloons!

Friendly and Inclusive

Women’s Officer Aimee Jones said “It’s testament to the friendly and inclusive ethos of the Condors that we now have 100 women members. I’m so proud that the Condors are now the go-to club for female cyclists in Oxford, and hope we continue to inspire and encourage more women to take up cycling!”

Full Club Support

Club Secretary Jon Harle added “It’s been fantastic seeing not just the club growing steadily, but the women’s membership growing too – and at an even greater rate. It’s something the whole club have got behind, and I’ve been proud that it’s not just been a women’s initiative, and so many of the men have wanted to ensure this too”

Increasing Female Membership

For anyone out there reading this article and wondering how on earth your club can do the same – we’re pleased to say there are lots of things you can do to encourage ladies to join. In fact we recently featured in Total Women’s Cycling outlining some of our initiatives. Read the article here!

Looking ahead

We plan to run Ladies Summer Sessions again in July to help those who are nervous of group riding or need a bit more fitness to get up to social pace. Keep an eye on our website and facebook group for news updates.
If you feel ready – please come along to one of our Meet the Condor rides (second Sunday of every month) or a Tuesday night social. Men and women all welcome. Look for details on our facebook group.

We look forward to seeing you out on the road soon 🙂

Cowley Road Condors are proud to have reached another fantastic milestone as they kick off the 2017/18 season.

For the first time in the club’s history, we have reached 250 current members!

The membership base is made up of 156 men and 94 women who love to ride, spin, climb, time trial, race, and stop for coffee and cake.

This would not have been possible without the many contributions from club members – past and present. We’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has ever led a ride, been involved in training, marshalled an event or done countless jobs behind the scenes. We couldn’t have done it without you.

But that’s not where it ends! Our next challenge is to make sure we continue to deliver on all the things that make us so great: being friendly, being inclusive, and supporting all our wonderful volunteers who put their time and energy into the club. Let’s keep up the good work and wear that pink & black with pride 🙂

Chapeau to the brilliant, inspiring and fun loving Condors!

Cheryl Reid
Club President

Cowley Road Condors are excited to kick off the 2017/18 season with fantastic new sponsors and a kit refresh by the talented Joe Wilkins. The Condor logo finally takes centre stage and we’ve made lots of tiny adjustments to make sure the design sits well on the panelling and looks good from all angles. We’ve also reduced the number of sponsor logos to keep the look clean and streamlined. The infamous pink & black flames are here to stay and we look forward to seeing you all out wearing our kit this summer.

So how do you get your hands on the latest deisgn?

If you want to order skins suits:
Email Joe with the sizing you’d like [email protected]
There is a medium sample at Beeline that you can try on. For the sake of everyone involved, please keep your pants on.
Orders for skin suits need to be placed by Thursday 30th March

If you want to order a standard club jersey:
We have placed a large bulk order of XS/S/M/L/XL in both men’s and women’s cut.
These will be available to buy from the website from May at a cost of £45 each.

If you want to order anything else (e.g. bib shorts, caps, gilets, a size not listed above):
Go to the champion system website and place an order.
If you have never done this before please follow the instructions on the members area page!
The order window will close at midnight on Thursday 6th April

The fantastic three new sponsors joining us this year are…

Have you been to Oxford’s amazing cycling cafe? If not, head over to Peloton Espresso for all your caffeinated needs and to sample the legendary banana bread and cinnamon rolls. There is plenty of space out the back for your bicycles and all cyclists are welcome. They broadcast cycling events on TV and even have an alcohol license for the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix! Cowley Road Condor Matt Rees and team have done a fantastic job of helping to get Peloton off the ground and we look forward to spending lots of time there.
Peloton Espresso will be worn with pride on our jerseys in the new kit refresh.
Special Condor discount: £2 per coffee

For those of you who know and love Ricks – who looked after us so well in our early days when we were a much smaller club – we’re pleased to say they understand why we want to support Peloton and they will continue to support us with a 10% discount!

Adele Fowler, MSMA of Optimum Body is a fully qualified Clinical Sport and Remedial Massage Therapist, RockDoc and Gym instructor, located on the outskirts of central Oxford. She specialises in injury treatment and kinesiology taping – ideal for anyone who is suffering from their time on the bike!
Special Condor discounts:
 – £10 off first hour appointment which includes a FREE 15 minute consultation and postural assessment (£35)
– Subsequent hour appointments – £5 off (£40)
– Kinesiology taping – £10 off (£5) however if taping is required, Adele will tape in the treatment time at no extra charge
– Block booking discounts – 5% off 5 sessions (£190) and 10% off 10 sessions (£360)

James Sherwood and Sam Calder are bringing marginal gains to the world of socks!
Their specially designed and carefully tested AeroSox change the airflow around your leg to save you all important watts. And if 10 or more Condors club together they can even arrange for a custom design…
Pink & Black anyone? 🙂
Special Condor Discount: 20% off with code CONDOR20

These existing sponsors remain on our jersey and we wear them with pride:

And last but not least, our very special named charity:

Cowley Road Condors are all about being friendly and inclusive. Which is why we have decided the time has come to spread our wings further and offer half price membership to students at both Oxford University and Oxford Brookes University.

Undergraduates, graduates and PhD students will benefit from the huge range of membership benefits, including access to rides, discounts, club events and socials.

In addition to this, we are pleased to confirm standard membership prices will be frozen at £30 until the end of 2017. This is the third year running without an increase which has been made possible by the club’s growing numbers.

We are delighted to be in a position to support those who are studying in Oxford.

For more information or to join as a student, please click here. We look forward to riding with you soon!

Some highlights from each month!

We announced the new board back in October, comprised of seven completely new faces and one old one!
Cyclocross began in earnest for those with a ‘love of mud’ and we had great fun on a fancy dress Halloween ride.

November saw the return of the legendary spinning pain caves, this time with military style Strength & Conditioning classes for those brave enough to stomach the cold outdoors. We visited Helen & Douglas House which would later inspire the fundraising event in March. 

Many of us had a good old knees up at the Christmas party in December and a festive ride to the Milkshed! In January we would fend off the cold in style wearing our amazing Condor bobble hats. Cyclocross racing continued with some members still struggling to stay on the bike.

Road racing kicked off again on a cold, dark, and very wet February at Dalton Barracks. Aimee Jones took 6th in the women’s and Ian Studley 4th, Andy Ruane 5th, Ben Keneally 6th and Nick Sanderson 8th in the men’s.

In March we enjoyed the Zappi crit series at Enstone, with Brett Kamino taking several top 10s. We launched the new membership card, trebled women’s membership and raised £4,000 during our fundraiser for Helen & Douglas House. Cheryl represented the club at the Broken Spoke ‘a day of Women & Bicycles’

New sponsors joined us in April in the shape of Greenoak, White October and Fuelit and we headed to the pub to watch Paris-Roubaix. The women’s Spring Sessions kicked off and we were delighted to have so many lovely ladies joining us. The first of our club time trials set off in the snow – bad weather would turn out to be a theme for the year.

May was a busy time with everyone training for Silverstone. But we still found time to run a crit with Mickey Cranks at Enstone and deliver another club TT with dreadful weather.

In June we launched a new partnership with Broken Spoke and celebrated the birth of a our first 100% Condor baby, Jack Wicks! We were able to enter two men’s and two women’s teams at Silverstone, with the women’s A team bringing home medals in third place. 5 Condors qualified for the UCI World Championships at the Tour of Cambridgeshire, and we had lots of ‘pink and black’ representing the club at the Wallingford crits. 

We wrapped up the Oxfordshire Road Race League in July with Ben Kenneally taking 6th and Tim Jones 9th – both in their first seasons racing for the club. Overall the men’s team came third, while the women’s team were second behind the mighty Crankettes. But the top of the league was till ours as Aimee Jones took the podium top-spot. Anthony St John Bond took the under 23 title, narrowly beating Andy Wilde.
The second ladies Summer Sessions went well and a group of Condors headed to France for a week of riding cols and watching the Tour. Pink wigs, full-kit, and a well-chosen spot scored us a place on the Eurosport footage. And we also celebrated our 5th birthday!

In August we headed to the track in Derby and held the inaugural Tour de Charity Shop ride in aid of Helen & Douglas House.

Dozens of Condors helped to make Bike Oxford a great success in September. Chris and Aimee took on the world at the UCI amateur championships in Perth, and later that month there was the annual Condors hill climb. This year’s fancy dress included an ET bike basket appearance from Cheryl, while Ben Short took on Watlington Hill on a fixie. And continuing to raise our profile on the women’s cycling scene, Cheryl joined the VeloVixen Cycling Hub at the NEC in Birmingham 

And last but definitely not least, there have been hundreds of great rides across the year with many of our lovely members.

Membership growth

It’s been an exceptional period of growth for the club. By the AGM we had reached 226 members; this time last year we were at 138.  Women’s membership tripled in the early part of the season to 66 – and has since grown to over 80. For much of the season we’ve had a 60/40 male/female split, which while short of our 50/50 target is impressive for a cycling club. 

Keeping it friendly

Our top aim this year was to a friendly and inclusive club. Before the AGM we ran a members survey – 80% said they felt welcome and included all of the time and 20% said most of the time. 100% said they would recommend us to a friend or have already done so.

Training and development

This year has seen men’s and women’s development rides, ride leader training sessions – including a ‘learn a route’ session around Otmoor – the ladies’ spring and summer sessions, a first aid training session, maintenance classes at Broken Spoke and CX skills sessions with Tim Jones and Jonny Revis. And over the winter Mike Devaney put many Condors through the pain of weekly spinning sessions.

Awards and thanks

We took the opportunity at the AGM to say a lot of thank yous to all the individual members who put a lot of time and effort in to running the club and all of our events, and particularly leading regular rides. And we also celebrated those who’ve achieved something special this year with race wins and TT triumphs.

Club Contribution

• Time Trials – Cathy Kirby, Brett Kamino, Rob Freshwater, Tyra Rivkin 
• Women’s committee – Tyra Rivkin, Jo Lankester 
• Bike Oxford – Jonny Revis
• Oxfordshire Road Race League – Stephen Tearne 
• Track day and Women’s Dev – Helena Coker
• Twitter – Ollie Jaques
• Instagram and Ride Leading – Ben Short 
• Cyclocross – Arran Curran, Andy Haines and Tim Jones

Individual Achievement

• Hill Climb at Watlington – Ben Kenneally and Aimee Jones 
• Time Trial – Helena Coker and Tim Jones
• Best Road Race Performance – Aimee Jones and Ben Kenneally 
• Best CX Race performance – Tim Jones and Cheryl Reid
• Most Improved – Kristen Lovelock

Ride Leaders

• May – James Neuhaus
• June – Nick Green and Ella Kaye
• July – David Whitaker and James Spicer
• August – Sam Elliott and Cheryl Reid 
• Across the year – Joe Wilkins and Will Parker
• Development rides – Matt Wicks and Sam Hampton
• Stepping up – Jack Patterson and Becci Curtis

The Board

Special thanks went to Dan Bradley (Race Secretary), Hari Lehal (Treasurer), Mike Devaney (Training and Development), Aimee Jones (Women’s Officer), Mark Glendinning (Kit Officer), Richard Quayle (took over as Treasurer in the summer), Dave Dyer (Social Secretary), Jon Harle (Secretary). And we also recognised the passion and enthusiasm – and the huge amount of work – that President Cheryl has brought to the club.

The new board for 2016-2017 was also revealed on the night.

• President – Cheryl Reid (re-elected)
• Secretary – Jon Harle (re-elected)
• Treasurer – Richard Quayle (elected)
• Women’s Officer – Aimee Jones (re-elected)
• Race Secretary – Matt Thomas (elected)
• Kit Officer – Joe Wilkins (elected)
• Training and Development Officer – Arran Curran (elected)
• Time Trial Secretary – Rob Freshwater (elected)
• Social Secretary – Louise Bower (elected on the night)
• Ride Leader Secretaries – Cathy Kirby and Jamie Kirby (appointed at the first board meeting!)

So all in all, it’s been a pretty amazing year!

If you missed the AGM you can also see Cheryl’s slide deck on the Condor YouTube channel 

The clocks haven’t gone back yet, but already our evenings are drawing in. Soon more and more Condors will be retreating inside for solo turbo sessions or getting back to yoga and spinning. But many Condors will still be riding through the colder months.

Winter riding can be great – shorter days in the saddle, or easing off the pace, but still getting out, still finding coffee spots, still enjoying the company of the pink ‘n’ black. But if you plan to continue riding there are a few things you need to do!

Read on for the essentials – if you want something a little longer, check out Jonny’s and Tom’s great articles from last year on ‘Condoring through the apocalypse’, plus Tom’s advice on winter training (or not).

Rides

Weekday rides stop being the regular Tuesday and Thursday sessions that you can rely on during the summer. Instead it’s more ad-hoc. There will be some people out, but you’ll need to check before turning up. The pink post will operate still as a place to post and organise.

Weekends will continue as normal – just with fewer people out.

Your bike

Lights – these are an absolute must for evening rides, where you need to be seen and see the road. Commuting lights that work through city streets are no good on dark country lanes. You might even need lights on grey or foggy winter days to be seen on the road. Check out the members area for advice on choosing lights.

Mudguards – while opinions on the dental advantages of Belgian toothpaste differ, many of your fellow riders won’t appreciate a blast of mud and shite from your back wheel. Think about investing in a decent pair of mudguards – again check out the members area for recommendations. If you choose not to, be prepared to be told to sit at the back of the bunch for the whole ride – that’ll certainly be my rule if I’m leading!

Switch to winter tyres – it’ll make a real difference. I got through all of last winter with no sharps-punctures, only a pothole pinch got me in the end. Condors all have different preferences – check the members area for our recommendations. They won’t roll so fast – but it’s winter, relax! They will at least keep you rolling, and you’ll feel even faster when you switch back in the spring.

Check your tyres – when the weather’s wet, you often find sharp bits of flint being washed onto the roads. These slice through your tyres in no-time. Add to that potholed roads and it doesn’t take much to pick up a puncture. While you can reduce the likelihood with winter tyres (see above) you should also check your tyres for wear – splits, bald spots – and any embedded bits of flint before a ride. No-one likes waiting in the cold for a puncture that could have been avoided!

You

Everyone feels the cold differently – so chat to people and see what they recommend. Here are a few tips.

Gloves – your hands get really cold. You might be fine up top, but your hands can freeze quickly. I have a few different pairs, long finger but thinner gloves for autumn, to huge acrtic style for the depths of winter. It depends on how cold your hands get.

Socks and overshoes – your feet also get really cold. Merino socks plus overshoes are pretty essential. I use tinfoil to add another warming layer inside my shoes. Cheryl swears by clingfilm instead… we’ll leave it to you to decide. 

Arm warmers and leg warmers – these may be enough in the autumn and spring, in fact leg warmers get me through the winter.

Fleece long-sleeved jersey – maybe with a base layer underneath. Merino is good. You’ll need a rain and wind-proof shell for the worst days.  Some jerseys have a windproof front which is good – unless it rains, I’m usually happy with my Condors winter jersey.

Bib tights – if leg warmers aren’t enough.

Cap or buff – or maybe even both for under your helmet/round your neck. You need to keep your ears warm!

Moisturiser and lip balm – for when the cold wind takes its toll.

July’s ride leader of the month – David Whitaker

Our Condor for July is a man who takes n+1 to an extreme – he could probably equip a whole peloton from his garage.

If you’ve been out for a lumpy Sunday social ride in the past few months, stopping for baguettes and beer at a choice Chilterns pub, then chances are David’s been your guide. He’s led a fair few social rides over the season, and even kept a hard core band riding through the dark winter nights too.

Chapeau David!

And an honourable mention has to go to James Spicer…

…who’s hit social riding leading with a definite bang in the last few weeks! Chapeau James!