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BikeManawatu Racing in 2024

Hope 2024 has started well for everyone.

Following on from our Christmas break, Bike Manawatu and our sponsors are very excited to announce a racing calendar for the next couple of months. We are working with a skeleton crew, so it’s all hands on deck to supply our club with racing all through the year including school cycling events

Bike Manawatu events on various Thursday evenings and weekends before winter, in this school term.

Added in there are a couple of out of town events from other clubs and community groups that we, as a club, would encourage you to support

  • ITT or 2 up Thursday 22nd Feb
  • Destination Ride to Waitarere on Sunday 25th….everyone invited
  • A1 Loops Road race Thursday Feb 29th.
  • Hillclimb March 3rd – POSTPONED
  • Bush Tour March 9th Various distances
  • Glen Oroua Road Race March 14th
  • Destination Ride #2 Saturday 16th March
  • WCNI Road race and ITT –  POSTPONED
  • Taranaki Round the mountain Sunday April 7th.
  • Rongotea April 13th
  • Cyclocross April 28th
  • Manfeild 6 Hour supporting Arohanui Hospice May 19th.

All events are on the Website, Timed events with entry on Webscorer link.

Destination rides have a limit to numbers so please contact Tim for details.

These Destination rides are for all abilities, around 50-60kms with a tail vehicle and ride home.

Getting back racing

Before anything else, the Bike Manawatu community acknowledge the passing of John Lithgow earlier this week. Colin Anderson, Garry Buys and Chris James were kind enough to jot down a few words about John with his family’s blessing which Vaughan has published. He will be greatly missed.

So we’ve had a bit of a break with racing. A lot was due to a cluttered calendar and not being able to get dates settled. We also had a changing of the guard in our own admin, schools cycling to get underway, and the very successful BM, Hospice 6 hour.

The board has been working on Sub committees to spread the workload across all admin areas. There’s areas of Finance, Events, Track, Cycling NZ liaising, Community, Schools, Sunday recreational rides, Future focus groups that all have their own needs and target points. A bit of a rethink with our courses for racing, what is relevant racing for our members, and also rides that the club can put on that are not racing. More of that to come.

We are joining in with Schools cycling on June 25 for a Team Time Trial. Schools always have a push at TTT’s at this time of the year and it feeds us into a trend of what racing is coming up later in the year both locally and other series close to us. North Island series is team based this year with the time based on the 4th rider across the line. We will reach out to our neighbouring clubs, WCNI and others, to reignite a club series. All this needs buy in from riders and volunteers to work.

We’ll have more information for you next Friday. In the meantime get your Teams together, in whatever grade you feel, stand by for details on the TTT and other racing coming up.

 

AGRN and AGM

Last weekend Bike Manawatu was well represented at the Age Group Road Nationals with 7 riders making the journey to Timaru. 3 of those riders stood on the podium during the weekend with Colin Anderson, Glenn Kirk and Filip Martin taking 3rd, 3rd and 2nd respectively in the ITT and then Colin backing it up with a 2nd in the Road race later in the weekend.

AGRN’s are always tough, it’s the next level up from Club and Centre races. Chris Hansen finished 5th in Masters 2 Road race with the same time as P2, just short of the line in a photo finish. Same went for Filip Martin who again finished 5th in the Road race, 2 seconds of podium.

Great efforts by Ben Murphy who had a tough weekend but would have learnt a lot as he continues to climb the ladder in under 17’s. Glenn kirk, Mike Thompson and Toshi featured well in their grades.

Special thanks to Toshi for being Team Manager for the weekend and for Toshi and Colin to stay back and volunteer on Sunday shows total dedication to the sport.

As previously mentioned before, and more so after the event, there’s plenty of comment about Cycling South Canterbury holding the event for the second time in 5 years with little support from Cycling New Zealand. It appears all clubs are having their battles with Road availability, Traffic management, Volunteer bases etc.

At BM we too have challenges ahead. With Keryn leaving to continue her career path we have vacancies with areas of our admin that will need to be spread amongst ourselves. There is a rolling over in Board responsibilities, a nurturing alliance with Manawatu Schools cycling and a need/requirement for fresh ideas to have other clubs join us in our racing on newer courses.

With that in mind it leads me to next Friday’s AGM. Please come along and sit in on our AGM. After that has been completed we’ll open the floor up for feedback and ideas on a Sub Committee model that Jonathon Hannon and the board has been working on.

Groups identified are (Briefly),… Events, Club Racing, Track and WCNI, Schools, Development and Hub, Finance and funding.

Come along to Marist clubrooms and join us in making BM a long term option for racing of all ages in our community and region..

 

Tim

April 2022 Update

The Great

It’s been a pretty full on start to the year.
Sliding out from the shadows of covid restrictions we were able to run a very successful mid week twilight road race series.
This tied in with an ITT series and Woolworths handicap race which was a cracker.
All these races are designed to ready our riders for the WCNI ITT and Road races which Bike Manawatu were proud to host again this year.
This in turn gave a stepping stone for 13 of our riders to head to Hokitika for the Age Group Road Nationals held on Anzac weekend.
A huge shout out to all of our riders who made the Journey, you did yourselves and the club proud. Thanks also to Cheryl Murphy on being our manager for the weekend.

With the Age group racing out of the way we now look forward to Interclub Graded races.
Whilst staying loyal and true to our WCNI history, we are reaching out to other clubs in the lower north island (and further afield) to join our interclub racing.
Over the last few months we have had communications from Hawkes Bay, Wellington, PNP etc on expanding our catchments.
Bike Manawatu will always stay a WCNI club, but all clubs see the importance of running regional invitational graded events. This is a great step forward for Road cycling (Click here to register)

Track this year has been highlighted as a year of the Masters.
There’s been a huge increase in participation of the older riders which encourages the steady increase and improvement of the Juniors.
Plans are in place for groups, junior and senior, to head to Cambridge for training and racing over the winter/spring months.

The board are going through lists of riders and volunteers for merit awards for 2021 at our prizegiving.
For road awards it’s on a calendar year so we intend having a Road Function in December 2022 to award this years prizes.
Track merit awards are decided at the end of the track racing season, March/April
There’s been a postponement of dates with a crammed schedule of the AGM and prizegiving….see the website.

The Average

It was an incredibly hard decision to cancel the Manfeild 6 hour this year.
Declining numbers of school riders, nervous times around Covid which is still in our community, crammed schedules are all factors that played a part.
In the end the decision was made with the prospect of low numbers, a historically challenging day weather wise, a small field was going to make an event to forget.
With riders out there potentially not being able to get into a working peloton all day it would not make it an enjoyable day out.
We believe the event still has a very important place in our calendar and we will revisit it in 2023.

Over February and March our club was part of a process asked of us by CNZ.
A remit was presented to take the voting power away from Centres (WCNI, BOP etc) and give the vote to the clubs.
BM went with the status quo, in our minds a change would further dilute the importance of WCNI and other centres.
We were out voted and so now CNZ will get feedback from all the clubs individually.
Decision made, however we feel Centres still and always has been an important stepping stone for riders and even more so for clubs to operate efficiently.
As mentioned before, BM will always hold on to and persevere with our place in WCNI.

The Scary

Last Saturday one of our riders was involved with a incident involving a car, following a difference of opinion with the vehicles driver.
Sadly we see this all the time, and we must remember that we need to be seen, and how we are seen.
There is a percentage to the population that do not care about other human beings, their property, or the implications.
If, at any time on any ride, someone hurls abuse to you ….please just throw an apologetic wave and smile. It’s just not worth it.

Stay safe,
Tim

Great turn out for race 1 01.02.22

There was great turnout to Race one of the Palmfeilds series on Tuesday 1st with over 50 riders.
A competitive A grade led away for 6 laps with the main swell of B grade starting shortly afterwards.
Couple of glitches with the Timing gear which put a spanner in the works but that is sorted for next week, as will the results for Race 1.

While we are operating under the Red light system we cannot be complacent. We are meeting all guidelines and will continue to.
The best way of treating the registration and prestart is…Treat it like a Café setting.
You scan in, do the admin etc with a mask on, then when you’re seated (on your bike in this instance) it’s ok to remove your mask and carry on.
Other guidelines outside of Covid are just as important, especially at Akers Road circuit. There is taped off areas of grass that we cannot park on, please respect this.
We are on country roads around country drivers and farm equipment, so please respect this.
As riders we ride on the road, but at Prestart and registration we must keep off the road.

Looking forward to the School age groups joining us in our upcoming mid week events, we have a full calendar to suit all abilities so everyone has their opportunities.
Enter early, ride safe, acknowledge and be thankful to our Sponsors and volunteers

Tim

Register for next Tuesday’s race here https://www.webscorer.com/register?raceid=264512