The women's cycling community tends to be small. Even more so in the off-road community. For the few of us who race we see each other on the course, ride together, do clinics together, and even partake in apres-bike shenanigans. Of course we ride with men, too, but there is something about being with other women that helps build confidence and camaraderie. We have long thought about how to further develop women's cycling in our little area. There are races. There are race clinics. There are skills clinics. But, those tend to be "one and done." Sometimes people connect long-term, but it can be sporadic since riders are often focusing on the lessons being presented and not necessarily the connections.
Well, what if we simply made it about women riding together? It is easy on the schedules, easy on the coordination, and easy on the commitment. We decided to team up with CNY Dirt - a local organization dedicated to the protection, building, and maintenance of local mountain biking trails - to offer a test concept: "Ladies Night Out." The idea was to offer women of all skill levels and abilities an opportunity to get together and simply ride. So, we created a Facebook event for a week out, shared it to a few local cycling pages, and thought that we would consider it a total success if we had more than five women show up.
As we closed in on the day, it seemed like we were going to have a LOT more than five women. And boy, did we ever! Twenty-two women ended up showing up to ride that evening, with perhaps a dozen more who could not make it, but asked for a repeat ASAP. This might be the largest group of women riding mountain bikes we have seen in the area! To make the total number of riders a bit more manageable, we split the attendees into three separate groups: "less confident," "working on skill building," and "advancing skills quickly." While the goal of the ride was not to provide instruction, it was a positive environment that allowed everyone to work on expanding their riding. There is no one size fits all approach to organizing a ride like this, but this seemed to work exceptionally well for the people who attended.
Of course, it also helped that we were able to secure some awesome donations to make the event even more successful. Thanks to Syracuse Bicycle, Captivate Wellness, Tim O'Shea via the Dirt Disco, and the Rabin Law Firm for the raffle prizes!
We hope to make rides like this a regular occurance. Many women approached us after the ride about being able to connect with other lady shredders, so we formed a Facebook community called "Ladies Night Out - CNY Women's Mountain Bike Collective." We hope it becomes a great way for female off-road cyclists to connect with one another.
Can we make it thirty next time?
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