Newsletter

As you may know, I will no longer be producing the Newsletters that many of you used to receive. This is due to time constraints and the fact that the relaunched club website contains all the latest news. However, I know that some of you don’t have regular internet access so I will be producing these single-page efforts to keep you up to date with TRC activity….

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

This years’ AGM took place in the Shepherd & Crook on 24 October. 15 attended. A Copy of the full minutes are available on request. The main points arising were:

The 2 membership categories (Racing and Non-Racing) will be re-categorised as Social Member and Active Member (An Active Member is anyone who attends Sunday club Runs and/or takes part in Time Trials, Sportives, Racing, etc.) Fees are slightly increased to £6 and £12 respectively for 2010. This year a whopping 51 of you paid club subscriptions. Thank you for your continued support.

To support club interaction at all levels of ability we will be adjusting the time and location of the Sunday Club run. From the end of November (exact date to be confirmed) the club run will start at the Railway Café in Hythe at 9.00am for the ‘Fast’ group and Graeme’s ‘Intermediate’ group. Gordon’s steadier paced group will leave the café at 10.00am. The aim will be for all 3 groups to complete their rides at the café for 11.00am.

Thank you to Richard Foster for administering this years’ BARMY Award. Richard has now relinquished this role and I have agreed to take over. To make this job more manageable, if you wish to be involved in the race for next years’ BARMY award you need to forward me details of all your club activities at the end of each month. Colintuckwell@ntlworld.com.

AWARDS NIGHT

This years’ Awards Night will take place on Saturday 28 November, 7.30pm at the Railway Café function room, Hythe. Cost £7.50. Hopefully turnout will be excellent like last year. 2010 Club Diaries should also be available to purchase on the night, costing just £3.00.

CHRISTMAS LUNCH

A TRC lunch has been arranged and will take place on Sunday 20 December at 1pm in the Shepherd and Crook. Please let Gordon or Toni Spain (new social secretary) know if you would like to attend.

KENTISH KILLER SPORTIVE – 17 January 2010 – Badgers Mount, Nr. Orpington

In addition to the Hell of the Ashdown Sportive many of you are doing, there is another one in January which you might like the look of. It is being organised by our old friend Adie Crothall’s club, GS Avanti. Full details can be found at www.riderhq.com/kentishkillersportive/

Best wishes, Colin Tuckwell

AGM APPROVES A UNIVERSAL SUNDAY-RIDE VENUE AND A HIKE IN TRC SUBSCRIPTIONS

From late November 2009 the two principal Sunday club-ride groups, i.e. the fast group that starts at Botolph’s Bridge Inn car park at 9:00 am, and the intermediate group that starts at the Light Railway Café in Hythe at 9:30 am, will both assemble at the Hythe café at 9:00 am before commencing their respective two-hour runs. The club’s third group, the leisurely-casual group that normally rides for about an hour, will continue to assemble at the Hythe café at 10:00 am. All three groups will subsequently end their runs at the Hythe café at between 11:00 and 11:30 am. Members attending the annual general meeting unanimously accepted the reasons for the venue and start-time changes, namely: that the prevalence of three separate groups meant there was little or no interaction between them; there were no obvious means of graduation from predominantly leisurely to purposefully energetic riding; and there was an incipient mood of faction rather than fusion within the club. A conjoint venue and a universal start time for the principal groups, the meeting believed, would address these issues.

Preceding the matter of a common venue and start time, the meeting was urged to consider the ravages of past and promised inflation on the club’s finances. In doing so, the secretary/treasurer hoped that the meeting would acknowledge the need for a 20% increase in membership subscriptions for 2010. He rapidly discovered that he was pushing at an open door. Members present not only endorsed the proposed increase but went on to change the categories of riders to whom the subscriptions would apply. Up to 2009, there were ‘racing’ and ‘non-racing’ member categories, where the former paid twice the subscription rate of the latter. From 2010, members will be re-categorised as ‘active’ or ‘social’. Active members would include those who rode regularly with the club, on Sunday runs, or time trials, or ‘sportives’, or in road and track races, or other club-designated rides. In contrast, social members would include those who rarely, if ever, rode with the club but maintained their membership for historical or companionability reasons. The new subscription rates would be £12 for active members and £6 for social members, with a 25% discount for families who had two or more club members. Percipient readers will note that the newsletter-only membership category will disappear because of the cessation of publication of the newsletter.

Other business of the meeting encompassed the routine appointment, or re-appointment, of officers, and the endorsement by the meeting of a proposal made by Malcolm Strickland to set up a massed-start club-sponsored race to be held on the Bettshanger cycle track in June 2010.

Anyone wanting to know more about the ruminations of this well-attended AGM should contact Gordon Davis.

Eric Bates

Hell Of The Ashdown

With the season ending and winter approaching, it will be good to get another good Thornton turn out this time for the Hell of the Ashdown. I have done the event for the last two years and it is a good event. The distance is only 60 miles and the climbs are no worse than the Kent Sportive and there is nothing like that final climb!

Entries fill up quickly, within a week! as it is a good event and therefore very popular. Entries open on midnight 31st October 2009 via:

http://www.HELL.gb.com/

You have to select a time lets all go for around 9:00am, it will be great to have a good turnout again. The event is not as fast as the jet sportive due to the undulating route as is basically an early season endurance ride; hope to see you al there?

Danny Frost

AGM

Get your diaries out... Here are some important dates for all Thornton RC members:

AGM - Saturday 24 November at Shepherd and Crook - 7pm

AWARDS NIGHT - 28 November, Railway Cafe, Hythe, Function Room around the back - 7.30pm

CHRISTMAS CLUB RUN - 20 December. 11.30am ride starts at Botolphs Bridge. followed by Xmas Lunch at Shepherd and Crook at 1pm. If you don't fancy the ride first just make your way to the S & C for 1pm.

Downland Autumn Sportive

Here are the details for the sportive if anyone would like to enter. Organised by Downland Cycles in Canterbury. If the last one they did is anything to go by then it should be quite a challenge.

Sunday 8th November 2009

100 miles with 5000ft of climbing or

110 kms with 3500ft of climbing.

830 AM start in Canterbury, £22 entry fee.

More details can be found here:

http://www.downlandcycles.co.uk/autumnSportive.htm

Report From Circuit of Kent

A report from Kevin Mitchell

Circuit Of Kent Sportive - Sevenoaks, 13^th September 2009.

I awoke prior to my 6am alarm call and the nerves began to jangle. I contemplated my first Sportive which at 140kms would be the furthest I’d ever ridden in one ride.

With two routes to choose from, a challenging 140 kms, or a slightly less arduous 80 kms there seemed to be a good mix of riders preparing themselves in the event car park at Sevenoaks Prep School.

However, I did notice quite a number of rather serious looking road bikes, attended to by Lyrca clad whippets. I had to remind myself it was a challenge and not a race!

Once I had collected my timing chip from the registration tent and completed the last minute ‘fiddling’ with my bike I waited for the start with the other 14 Thronton riders.

Just after 9am we were off, hurtling down Carters Hill, only 140 kms to go. However, what goes down must go up, and inevitably the road began to climb, sharply at times for what seemed to be quite a distance. I really regretting the can of Red Bull I’d had before the start; the gas made me feel like I was about to burst. I slowly began to lose contact with the Thornton riders. By the time we reached Teston the Red made an unwelcome second appearance! I slowed up completely and lost contact with all of the Thornton riders except for Matthew Morris, who fortunately paced me up Teston Hill and on to the first feed station.

After the feed stop, I had recovered and started to really enjoy the fantastic ride through the rolling Kent countryside. It was a perfect day for riding, dry, warm and only a light breeze. We passed quite a few riders and eventually found ourselves on fairly open roads travelling at a good pace.

The roads were relatively car free; apart from the occasional motoring moron who presumably couldn’t see the roads were full of cyclists! Maybe it was TV chef and all round tosser James Martin?... Read Here

We mainly rode with other smaller groups of riders who were cheerful and happy for us to ride with them as long as we did a bit of the work. After the second food stop we fell in with a couple of guys from Ashford Wheelers and another from Medway Velo who we rode with at a decent pace until the finish.

Reasonably flat and fast, the second half of the route went more quickly than I expected. Before long the 5 kilometers to go sign appeared, and I began to think of the final climb just before the finish.

It was even nastier than most people had described with a cheeky flat section midway up which fools you into thinking it’s over long before it actually is. Sadly I had to stop briefly, before making it over the top and down hill to the finish line.

The post event spread of soup, rolls and cakes was superb as was the rest of the event organisation. I thoughly enjoyed (most) of my first sportive as did the rest of the Thornton riders.

Looking forward to doing it all again next year.

Kevin Mitchell

Times

Thornton RC Results
140 kms		Time
Eric	Bates	05:01:47
Stephen	Bunn	04:05:48
Richard	Foster	04:21:44
Danny	Frost	04:03:54
Don	Houghton	05:08:26
Kevin	Mitchell	04:21:36
Matthew	Morris	04:18:00
Michael	Pumphrey	04:03:51
Jim	Reeves	04:09:43
Lee	Smith	04:21:19
Bob	Saunders	04:04:09
Roy	White	06:31:40
Jane	White	06:34:41
80 kms
Luke	Klugman	03:02:20