Monday 26 April 2010

Florida Masters Cycling


While we were in Florida during the winter I was involved with the forming of a cycling club for us older guys. It is called “Florida Masters Cycling”. The aims of the club are “To support, enhance, and promote the performance, fitness and safety of men and women Masters level cyclists in Florida”. At the moment there are very few senior category races in Florida above the 55 plus age group. The idea is to encourage promoters to include the higher age groups by guaranteeing them an entry in a given category to make it worth their while.
There were seventeen of us involved in the inaugural meeting counting as founder members. The jersey design is typical American and depicts a snake in the shape of a bicycle with rider. This I resisted but was outvoted as they insisted that it was an indigenous species of Florida. The original seventeen of us have “Founding Member 2010” on the front of the jersey which is nice. I felt that this should read Founder Member but had to bow to our Canadian President and close friend who is an ex English language teacher. We have a total of eight fully paid up sponsors so far all depicted on the jersey.
There is quite a good web site and if you go to www.flmasters.com you can view membership information, photos, member’s biographies etc. Also if you go to http://floridamasters.blogspot.com you can read about the club’s current racing results together with corresponding pictures.
I hope this may be of interest to some of you particularly if you are considering visiting Florida at anytime.

BryanS

2 comments:

  1. Good stuff Bryan - will be great if you can get some races in whilst you're over there.
    I also agree with you - should be a Founder member. Think those pesky Americans are getting confused with the Founding Fathers and all that George Washington nonsense ha ha!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Trevor but regret I gave up racing when I turned seventy some five years ago now. If you go to the Florida Masters web site you will see that I am the oldest member and all the young bucks in the club are winning for me. Our friend Dave Vinney the Canadian did 51mins 26secs for a 40k out and back TT last year at the age of 59 and he has been North American RR Champion for his age group on more than one occasion. We currently have five state champions of one sort or another in the club. I was coerced into doing a 10 mile time trial (not my scene at all) back in March 04 which was quite an experience. The road was completely blocked at start and turn with police cars and coppers with guns, nothing moved other than the competitors. We were all fitted with transponders for the timing. Entry was only done on line or as entry on the line. No start or result sheets as it was all on line. The event started at 8.30am with the cat 5's (no elites out there only cats 1-5). Everyone started at half minute intervals with short breaks between categories. The oldest age category was 55 plus. I was off just after 1pm with about twenty riders after me. Amazed at the number of children competing in the ten to fifteen age groups. Dave did a ridiculous 21mins something so I will keep quite as to what I recorded!
    Bryan

    ReplyDelete