17/03/2019
We had another session with PB Cycle Coaching today. In the wind and the hail! A good time was had by all- honest!
Day 2 of our Staycation Training Camp and we’ve been training with Paul Butler, he wrote some words about us in 2017 Training Camp;
“When you think of a cyclist you might think of Investment Bankers who have given up golf and are now riding three abreast on a Sunday morning blocking your road as you drive to your golf club.
Or do you imagine skinny men in lycra with tanned shaven legs or worse still with stomachs trying to escape from said lycra with white hairy legs?!
Or bearded Rapha clad fixed-wheel types with tattooed calves and sporting what looks like a tiny wooden spear through their eyebrow/nose/lip?!
Whatever you imagine, it is unlikely to be a group of 10 mothers-of-two in their late forties, all kitted out in bright pink, riding in the tightest most organised groups for miles around, communicating superbly with each other and the traffic whilst stylishly combining Giordana’s custom team kit with every pink Rapha accessory available.
Meet the Kent Velo Girls.
To save you time deciphering the cryptic origin of the club’s name, suffice to say, a girl, from Kent, rode a bike. Before founding this fabulous 200-strong ladies-only cycle club, she knew she was a girl because every time she rode with men she was overpowered by the stench of testosterone before she’d even started the ride.
She wanted to ride her bike with other girls, like her, from Kent.
So that it was she did.
Kent hasn’t been the same since.
Yet only last year many of them would have rather been chatting about which Fired Earth bathroom to have installed or the latest Amtico flooring pattern but now their conversations have changed, probably forever, to which Cervelo to get next and whether you’ve seen Rapha’s latest overshoe (in pink of course).
And don’t even let them get started on carbon wheels…….
Long gone are family beach holidays. Unless it’s Mallorca 312.
Cars are now only cars if at least 2 bikes fit in the boot or a bike rack can be installed easily and quickly.
Houses must have a garage, but not for a car of course, unless the bike is still ‘new enough’ to ‘live in the house’.
Children, it turns out, will clean your bike for £5.
They even have their own language: I have heard Steve Cummings be referred to as a ‘CILF’ whatever that is?!
So what do *HABS of KVGs do whilst their better halves are out gaining PRs on Strava, practicing their cornering, trying their first time-trial or road race, smashing it in sportives all over the world or secretly upgrading their chainsets on Wiggle via their i-phone at the school gate? Other equally sexist suggestions for locations for Wiggle shopping on I-phones are available.
They set up The Kent Velo Boys of course!
If you can’t beat them (up a hill – a power to weight issue – client-lunch-induced weight) then join them.
The clue is, once again in the title, although, having had the pleasure of meeting many members of these two wonderfully-well-drilled clubs, I fear that the use of the word ‘boys’ is as optimistic in its use as the word ‘girls’ is.
I was doing so well.
What I love the most about the creation of these two clubs is the unlikeliness of it all, especially a few years ago when they began.
But, isn’t that the point: Triple chainrings, spacers in your handlebar stems, cycling kit for all weathers, wider tyres, 25-mile sportives and peaks/visors on your helmet are all advancements that, whilst laughed at by the ‘hardcore’ have made cycling accessible to all. One thing was still missing until a few years ago though, at least in north Kent anyway.
Until the Kent Velo Girls came along.
Welcome to a new way of life.
Welcome to The Kent Velo Girls.
Welcome to cycling.”
PB http://www.pbcyclecoaching.co.uk/
*(husbands and boyfriends)
