I started a local bike club this year. We already had a very large club, the Charles River Wheelmen, in our area. Their rides are show and go rides. You get your cue sheet and do the route. If you can't keep up, you get left behind.

My goal was to build a club with as many members as possible. Our goals are both riding and advocacy. And, like any club, we immediately ran into the skills level problem. The approach we used was to emphasize growth over all other factors. A few of our riders regularly ride fifty miles or more in the 16 to 20 mph range. This is a miniscule subset of our community. If our rides traveled at those speeds and distances, we were not going to grow at the rates we sought. Our "marketing" became that we ride at the speed of our slowest riders and we try to keep the group together. We filtered out the really inexperienced riders by setting minimum distances of between 10 and 15 miles.

We usually offer two different rides that start together. The "short" ride is usually between 10 and 15 miles; the "long" ride is usually around 25 to 30 miles. If members are looking for something longer, there's another club they can ride with or they can ride on their own. We always build in an ice cream stop or a stop at some scenic location where someone brings snacks for the group. This "socializing" has become every bit as important as the riding. Sometimes, we spend more time yakking at the "rest" stops than we do riding. We are a "social club". As people got to know each other better, they started riding with the club far more frequently.

During the last couple of months, we started incorporating a local bike path into our routes every other week. Some of our members who aren't comfortable riding on the roads and aren't able to make it up some of the local hills meet us at the parking lot at the head of the bike path. Our "long" rides ride to the bike path, then ride the bike path with our bike-path-only riders (about 12 miles round trip) and then we continue on our route. The bike-path-only rides have brought in many new members and some of them have progressed to riding with the club on the roads.

So, to conclude, if club growth is your goal, emphasize the social aspect of the club. Implement a no-drop policy. Cater to the rookies over the pros. Growth, at least until your club gets larger, should opt for "slow" over "fast". There's a sub-culture that's pushing for "slow riding" that emphasizes socializing, scenery and slow. There are plenty of opportunities to ride faster and longer but they aren't the best way to grow a new club.

We figure that when we have 30 riders or more joining our rides we might divide into different ability groups... or not. The feedback we've received for our "inclusive style" has been overwhelmingly positive.