"Rach what on earth are you doing, you're just a beginner?" - that's what I kept expecting someone to say when I first came up with the idea of forming a Women novices squad to develop as riders and racers.
I first started riding road in 2009 when a combination of factors - felt too frightened on the MTB, wanted to ride more in the mornings before work and thought i should buy something nice with my first real paychek - led me to buying a fairly nice roadbike for someone who had never owned one before.
I went to every shop in Canberra at first, feeling like an idiot for not understanding the multitude of options for sizing, gearing, compact this and carbon that. Finally I found Bianca at TLC Clyces in Phillip who was great and talked me through buying my first road bike.
I was pretty stoked with mybrand new, full carbon, red Felt F5 (2.5 years on and thats still really all i know about it) and pretty soon my commute to work was taking longer and longer as I took ever increasing detours on the way because I was having so much fun.
I loved the challenge of seeing how far I could ride on weekends too - I remember feeling on top of the world the day I did my first 100km ride in about 5.5 hours and there were times I turned up to meet friends who would have to explain i wasnt really on happy gas - I was just excited from riding my bike.
I think for anyone who struggles from time to time with anxiety or issues in their life - cycling is really worth a go, the kind of buzz, energy, challenge and excitement you can get from tackling a long distance or climbing a hill and then whizzing back down it is the best kind of release I know.
For at least a year the idea kept niggling away that maybe there were people out there who got as excited about riding as I did, but so many things held me back from joining a club.
Firstly, there was so much I didn't understand - even down to reading about the Vikings Novice program - Novice sounded to me like some sort of grade I thought I might not be ready for. I didnt know what a criterium was, although I certainly saw a few, one of my regular weekend routes took me to stop for coffee at Mt Stromlo and I would see all the roadies but felt too shy to say hello.
I was convinced I was wearing the wrong gear, looked too unfit and that people would sense I didn't know what I was doing.
Finally though, my cycling started to peter out, and I found myself losing motivation. I would spend hours riding up to 200km on the weekends alone, I wasn't getting any faster and I wasn't hanging out with friends so much...None of my friends rode bikes despite my efforts to convince them to and they continued to suggest to me that I try and find "my people".
So I bit the bullet and signed up for the Vikings Novice program - not in 2009 when I had been riding for nearly 12 months, but in 2010. I waited an entire extra year - convinced I wouldnt be good enough.
The Novice program was amazing. Suddenly, there were all these people who were just as excited as I was, and instantly my riding improved. I still spent about 90% of the time convinced I was not good, fit, fast or trendy enough, but I loved it!
Unfortunately work got in the way and only four weeks into the program, a combination of public holidays and early starts at work meant that I couldn't get to any more sessions.
I also didnt turn up to a single Novice ride at the ANU because I just thought I would be too slow and that people might laugh at me when I dropped off the back of the bunch.
Determined not to give up though, when an email arrived in early January inviting previous Novices to join the V-Mobile Development Squad I was thrilled!
I sent about 50 emails to Bean, who was organising things telling him how excited I was. I didn't know what a squad was, I was sure I wasn't really good enough but dammit, they said one of the main criteria to join was enthusiasm and I was sure I could do that.
My first training session, in February 2011 I got the time wrong and turned up half an hour late, missing the session entirely - I remember I went and rode aroune the lake on the bike paths because I didn't even know if they trained on the road or not, my second training session - unused to training early in the morning I turned up to a ride, in full winter thermals and it was 16 degrees.
(I'm pretty sure they must have thought I looked pretty silly).
My first session was incredibly difficult. I didnt know anyone, nearly cried when the coach started yelling at me, and got dropped so far and so fast off the back of the bunch when we hit hills that by the time the hour long session had finished I had made up my mind that I wasn't good enough, and wasn't coming back.
But, somehow the promise that the Wednesday session would be a little different made me reconsider, and it was a whole new world, with less hills doing something called TTT - which I had no idea stood for Team Time Trials, but it was fun and I wasn't so bad.
It turns out that my hundreds of solo kms - being unsure of routes to take - I had basically managed to completely avoid hills for two years.
Initially, the encouragement from other blokes in the Squad, and just the regular training of turning up was exactly what I needed. But after some time, I began to feel like it would be nice if there was just one or two more girls at my level.
I still had questions, and no matter how encouraging the blokes were, when we got to a race I was still riding a fair chunk of it alone.
Steve, the Race Secretary suggested I might be interested in promoting some women's activities for the Vikings and, keen as mustard I set about developing a plan.
Initially, it was never my intention to set up a womens squad. Riders get better training and improve faster if they are riding with people faster than them, and it seemed counter productive to lose the support from the blokes.
But then a wonderful thing happened, I created this dodgy survey on Survey Monkey to try and find out what other women thought - and the response was incredible!
They all said the same thing as me. They felt like they weren't good enough, they weren't sure how it all worked and they just wanted someone to say 'hey, come talk to me, ill help you work it out'.
The more I've asked women what they want to encourage them in cycling, the clearer its been that an open door is all it takes.
So thats how it happened. One day im struggling at the back of the V-Mobile Squad, then next thing I say - hey lets have a womens squad and we have 13 members.
Whats amazing is that every email I get from a new woman, interested in joining says the same thing:
I'm sure I'm not good enough/fit enough/fast enough - to which I reply:
Keep up the amazing work, Rach :)
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