Machka was busy training for a 300 km ride.


Gave the 20 km thing a glance and set off for my training ride.


I have enough rides on my schedule with my own club that I don't need any extra, but once in a while I look at what other clubs/organisations have on their schedules to see if there's anything interesting coming up.


My "concern" wasn't so much with the fact that this was just a 20 km ride ... it is more about the idea that that's all we women can do. It's kind of hard to explain, but it is something I've noticed in this area ... these sorts of rides come up periodically and I almost get the feeling that someone thinks that's all we're capable of ... or that they're just throwing some crumbs in the direction of "getting more women into cycling" without taking it seriously. I could be mistaken, but it really seems to me that this particular ride used to be longer or have a longer option, it seems to me I was actually toying with the idea of using a longer option on this particular ride as a training ride a couple years ago. But it seems like they've shortened it right down which, again, might be OK, but there doesn't appear to be any follow-up to gradually take the women who have successfully ridden 20 km and ease them into longer distances or other types of cycling.

This particular organisation knows, or should know, what's going on in cycling in this area ... they are the, or one of the, over-arching cycling organisations in this area. They are well aware of the club I'm involved in, and also all/most of the other clubs here. It shouldn't be a problem to produce a list of clubs and rides as a follow-up to the introductory 20 km ride ... although that does seem to be difficult for them to do for some reason.


And yet, I've recently started dabbling in running, and it would appear that running clubs are more than happy to take people from wherever they are all the way to running marathons and longer. But for some reason, there doesn't seem to be the same sort of thing in the cycling world.