South Carolina 2013 Feeler post

Rides
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Over spring break (first full week of March) the team is planning to have it’s traditional week long training camp in South Carolina. This is a fantastic experience where you’re able to ride on some incredible terrain, get a big fitness boost for the following racing season, and get to know your teamates ALOT better as we get all share a house, meals and rides for an extended period of time. IT IS AWESOME. By far the best time I’ve had with MCT in my time here.

A few preliminary details about the camp:

Leaving Friday evening/afternoon, March 1st (Drive through the night)
Returning to Montreal Sunday morning, March 10th

6 FULL days of riding, potentially 2 half days

TEAM MEMBERS ONLY. If you’re a club member, you must upgrade to team status in order to attend the camp

ALL LEVELS WELCOMED. This year we’re going to do a better job of incorporating all levels of riders. There have traditionally been at least two riding groups, but it is all dependent on sign ups. It would be nice to have three groups, we’ll see what we can do.

MTBing available. This is a road dominated camp, but the MTBing in the area is fantastic. The past couple of years there’s been 3-6 mountain bikers, and a mountain bike ride just about every day.

COST: ~$400, subject to change. This includes travel, lodging, and meals once we arrive at our SC destination. The diet has traditionally been vegetarian for the week to save money. This will most definitely continue this year.

Sign up so we can start getting a sense of numbers! This is a BIG planning project for myself, Ben Blake, and the rest of the exec so give us a hand and let us know if you’re interested, for sure going, or any other possible circumstances as soon as possible.

@Exec: If I’ve omitted any other important details, feel free to add them on
@Everyone: feel free to ask questions.

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ohhhhhhhhhhhh baby!

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If I can get a week off work. Unlikely though :frowning:

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I’m interested in joining the group for a couple of days so would need to clear up a couple of questions first. Will send you a DM with the details to see if we can work something out.

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i’m more in the 95% range… just gotta swing this one past the boss.

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More responses sooner will help us get a sense of the group size so we can book a place early while things are available. If you’re considering this trip, choose a sign up!

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Please listen to Dennis! We need more people in the 100% sign-up. It’s not looking good for me right now xD

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depends on whether or not i have to bunk w/ dhruv

also, also this is also awesome

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Even when you name yourself after peanut butter? It’d be a perfect match!

(to non-Strava users that made no sense)

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To this strava user, I don’t want to make sense of that.

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the joke is that my username on strava is “peanut butter powered by jelly”

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I also enjoyed “I steal Oakleys p/b Unicorns”

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To any new members----
Make sure you’ve actually ridden a road bike before going on this trip!!

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At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, I strongly agree with Dhruv. If it’s your first time riding and you’re, let’s say not the most coordinated or conscious of your surroundings you do pose a risk to yourself and others. Crashing and taking out a bunch of people is a good way to be instantly disliked by the group. In most cases however you’ll just end up punishing yourself as these incidents usually just lead to expensive repairs.

That being said, anyone that hasn’t ridden a road bike before, but still wants to come should consider doing a fair bit of training on rollers. Basically if you can ride your rollers with no hands, you’ll be fine on the road

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Is there anyone this year who CAN’T ride a bike except for me? [But then again, I think I can ride as I did win a TPR mid-sprint this year (OH YEAH 1 PT IN TPR)]

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See here Justin, the sad part is that last year on this trip I did something that (ever since a previous KOM this year) is referred to as a Phillipe. Thanks to Sycamore Cycles, stacks of cash and Adam I was back on my bike within a day.

Rest assured, you are fine Tommy.

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I think that it’s really important to consider the safety, and well being of others on the trip. If you can’t ride a bike, south carolina (despite the lack of cars) isn’t exactly the place to do it. The terrain is more difficult, the groups are bigger, and we ride extensively on secondary highways.

Part of it depends on the group going down, as I look at the group of names, many of them are pretty experienced, which, although they know what they’re doing, also means that they’re fast- riding in a comparable group is a huge thing for SC where you’re on your bike for 4+ hours for a week.

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I feel a little bad having to bring this up again, and maybe the decision has already been made, but I would like to respectfully disagree with drew et al. on this and say that south carolina is maybe the PERFECT place to learn how to ride a road bike. Dhruv is probably a great example of this, going into south carolina as a plyometrics enthusiast and competitive spinner, and coming out a road rider. Granted, his experience in SC was less than ideal, but if the trip leaders this year decide to make beginners a priority, and have specific beginner rides with focused coaching on group riding safety/etiquette and descending techniques, then the whole base (aka the future leaders) of the McGill Cycling Team will be brought up several notches in just one week. And from Dennis’s original post, it sounds like this year the SC trip will aim to be MORE inclusive, not less.

South Carolina is perfect for learning how to road ride because:
-The roads are smooth and for the most part free of holes
-The roads are twisty and fun, giving riders a feeling for the best aspects of road biking as well as offering a perfect playground for learning how to descend with proper technique
-The roads are not heavily trafficked, and the traffic that does frequent them is extremely tolerant of cyclists
-There are enough advanced riders on the trip that every day one or (ideally) two of them can volunteer to lead a beginners group ride and provide the focused coaching necessary
-A focused beginners training camp gives the McGill team a jump on all the other schools’ Intro/D/C squads who are maybe group riding for the first time at the Rutgers season opener. (AKA Ben Adler, circa spring 2006, who narrowly avoided taking out the entire pack on the first lap only by the grace of Lob above)
-The only major road impediments in SC are loose dogs, and gun-toting, Obama-hating, upside-down flag-waving Tea Party activists. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/us/politics/upside-down-flags-mark-conservative-anger-on-obama.html?ref=us )

I think it would undermine the inclusive nature of McGill Cycling to take the flagship event of the year and make it open only to intermediate/advanced riders.

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Yes as the post says, ALL LEVELS WELCOMED

So long as a beginner has a positive attitude and has shown an interest in the sport, there is no problem getting them riding and enjoying the incredible SC riding! No one should miss out on South Carolina because they’re worried they don’t fit into the groups talent level. Last year I was one of the better riders and still did a bunch of riding on my own because riding in SC is just that much fun.

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I think the main thing to consider with bringing in newcomers to road riding really is safety. I think that so far, we’ve been pretty lucky that no one has been seriously injured (other than Soloway and shenanigans). Ben does have some good insight in that it is a good place to learn how to ride, but that really depends on wether or not some one is actually dedicated to teach them how to ride. Some of the windy decants can be fun to learn how to corner but there are A LOT of blind corners and it’s pretty easy to misjudge speed and to wander over the yellow line. Most of the time there aren’t cars coming your way but it only takes one to change your life.

I think that one of the more experienced members should take on the group and run them through ALL BASIC SKILLS required for riding including: how to position yourself on the bars, how to shift gears PROFERLY AND EFFECTIVELY, hand gestures, how to corner, descend, what you should be paying attention to etc. In other words it should really be run like a driver’s ed course where at the end of the day you can work on riding together in a pace line. After that, you can be placed into one of the regular groups where someone should be in charge of keeping an eye on them to give them feedback during the ride.