Training the Next Set of Ride Leaders in Colorado Springs
On May 29 and 30th, three volunteers with Bike Colorado Springs led 15 cyclists in a ride leader training class at the Sustainacenter (Thank you Allen & TOSC!). These trainings help facilitate a community-wide understanding of cycling etiquette and group ride management across the different kinds of group rides we have in Colorado Springs. The training isn’t just for formally organized group rides. If you regularly ride with others, you can benefit from this training as well. The goal of these training sessions is to help make sure local cyclists understand group ride etiquette, laws regarding cycling, and how to ride safely in groups.
As it’s been a while since I’ve led an organized group ride, but I do join in on them frequently, I thought it would be helpful for me to join the class. Here is a short recap of the experience….
Pre-class Preparation
Before the in-person sessions, we had to take the free online “Smart Cycling – Everyday Riding Skills” class through the League of American Bicyclists. This class had 15 modules, each with its own quiz. They were relatively short videos (1 to 3 minutes in duration) and if you have experience riding, they are an easy refresher. If you are new to cycling, I think you’ll appreciate the short but comprehensive overview. After you complete all the modules, you take a comprehensive quiz. I completed this over a few days, doing a few videos at a time.
Classroom Session
The in-person training started with a two-and-a-half hour classroom session on Friday evening. When I walked into the conference room at the Sustainacenter, I was happily surprised to see it filled. I thought there might be five or six of us – not sixteen! The volunteers, Sara Hill, Joan Stang, and Karl Stang, all League Cycling Instructors (LCIs), led us through the session. And shout out to Torie of the Buffalo Lodge who dropped by to give us pizza. (If I’d known I wouldn’t have inhaled dinner before heading to class!)
Participants were from a variety of groups – PikeRide, Buffalo Lodge Bike Tribe, the Wednesday Ride, Colorado Springs Cycling, SOCO Velo, and myself with Bike Colorado Springs. The instructors first established some fundamentals – why we ride bikes and why we might ride in groups. We moved on to how to prepare for a ride, what we should do and say at the start of a ride. Then we discussed rules and laws of the road and some of the more frequent crash locations and situations (e.g., intersections and the right hook). I think most people in the class knew at least one other person in the group, making it a friendly environment, and the instructors facilitated good discussions.
We received several helpful resources, including a Colorado Bicycling Manual created by CDOT which contains all the rules and laws for cycling, in both lay language and as the Colorado Revised Statutes. We also got a copy of the Smart Cycling guide – a small book with much of the content from the online Smart Cycling Class, as well as an explanation of the “Colorado Safety Stop.”
On-Bike Session
It’s one thing to talk about how to ride, give proper signals, and coordinate a group on a road, but doing it is another. The on-bike session helped us practice some of the skills we discussed the night before. We met at 9am, again at the Sustainacenter, but this time with our bicycles and ready to ride. We talked through what a pre-ride briefing could look like and then went through the briefing for our ride.
Sara had planned a route for us, and we each would take turns up front directing the group. The route explored different types of bicycle infrastructure and levels of traffic stress. We were a diverse enough group with different riding abilities and bike types, making for several teachable moments. I was the third person to go out of the eleven who were able to make it today (the others have a make-up session planned). It definitely brought back pre-covid memories of leading Friday Evening Rides from Cafe Velo (and later ProCycling).
We practiced giving clear hand and verbal directions, and experienced situations where as a leader we might need to make on-the-fly decisions. If your group gets split at a red light, do you just keep going and ride a little slower assuming they will catch up or do you find a place to stop to regroup? What happens if one rider is a lot slower than the others on hilly terrain. What is the job of the sweep? How is the group handling stop signs, given the Colorado Safety Stop law?
I think everyone walked away with new and/or refreshed knowledge of riding safely and riding with others. Any day on a bike is a good day, but it didn’t hurt that the weather was perfect.
Interested in participating in a future ride leader’s class? Tell Us!
We are also working on hosting a ride skills class in the near future, which is a prerequisite for anyone interested in becoming a League Cycling Instructor. Thanks to the initiative of PikeRide, a local LCI Seminar is in the works, too!
Want to learn more? Check out our Resources and take a look at the online learning from the League.
