With the first Monument out of the way, we are starting to see the weather change, with shorter days and the end of the criterium season. Congratulations to the 83 riders who contested the Club criterium championships, including 17 of our 27 strong female membership with whom we all celebrated and acknowledged on International Women’s Day 2024. Thank you to all of the volunteers who came forward to help out with the Club champs. I want to recognise ex-President Kim Malcolm who was and is working behind the scenes organising and coordinating medals and trophies.
It was disappointing to see that we didn’t get the minimum numbers required to run the Dairy Flat Rd criterium in a race-committee selected teams format, and we had to cancel this event. We haven’t seen this format run for a while for criteriums, but a similar format is deployed every week at the track and is known as the Italian pursuit, and is a lot of fun.
As with autumnal change, the winds will be swirling at the next committee meeting on Mon 25 March. High on the agenda, is the sustainability of running club events with so few volunteers that have come forward. If you click here https://rms.crmcc.org.au/calendar and look at the calendar, you will see that we are living from week to week to staff the events, and it is the same people who are stepping up so that others can race.
When I first joined the club in 2017, filling the calendar with volunteer roles was done 6 months in advance.
Please, if you can help and commit to one of these roles on one of these dates, contact race.committee@crmcc.org.au.
As a community, my expectation is that we should be operating more equitably and transparently when it comes to volunteering. I also acknowledge that members can contribute in different ways, and we all need to balance our personal lives with cycling pursuits. The committee will be discussing mechanisms by which we can entice volunteers to come forward, including mandating it but we will need to step through a few things first. If you are uncertain as to when you last volunteered, you can look up your own event history and see for yourself by going to Results https://rms.crmcc.org.au/index and looking up your name or race number.
Conan
CRMCC President
