Spring up-date

The five months since taking the position as chair of the Association has been challenging with both highs and lows. The highs has been the support, as reflected by our growing ranks of you the membership which has nearly doubled from 34 to the now dizzy heights of 64, from my fellow committee members who have all knuckled down for the long haul of rebuilding the Association into the member focused, activity based association you deserve, and most of all to my family who have put up with me as I battle to drive the Association forward. The low points are the resignation of Steve Hodges from the committee, who held our off-road remit, and the sheer level of work that is required to put into place all the building blocks required to take the Association forward. I would like to send out a special thanks to both Andy Chamings and Andy Clanahan who are building the web-site with long hours of hard work, into what I feel is a fair substitute for our suspended magazine ChainDrive. The web-site needs a constant supply of articles , photographs and video clips to keep it fresh and interesting. So please submit anything you feel will be of interest, no matter how trivial you think it is, because it will be of interest to fellow handcyclists and it is for handcyclists to share experiences and information. Please email contributions to contributions@handcycling.org.uk . A current interesting article is Marc Poolmans report on the Lanzarote race and days of build-up to the race. The speeds they attain hurling themselves down the hills, on a highly aerodynamic racing bike is seriously scary. Another interesting article is Andy Chamings 90 mile winter jaunt through the Yorkshire Dales and into Cumbria and back, where endurance is certainly required but shows that such rides are attainable with the right preparation. A second special thanks I would like to offer is to Paul Smith, our Treasurer, who, while being ably supported by Marc Poolman, has been leading our support into Battle Back the MODs service personnel rehabilitation programme. The highlight here is the Race Across America 2012 where a team of injured service personnel, four on cycles and four on handcycles, are racing a similar US team on a 3000 mile race in under 9 days race across the width of the US. A third special thanks goes to Steve Gill who has kindly donated nearly 500 to the Association with the aim of developing handcycling for our younger members. We recently had our first taster handcycling weekend at Stoke Mandeville, where on the Saturday we had four new to handcycling people who came and tried our meagre range of handcycles, whilst on the Sunday ride we had eight, including Dan McIntyre who was one of the Saturday new to handcycling people, on his first longer ride: see the weekend report by Matt Lindley and Andy Clanahan on our web-site. Our next big event is our fund raising ride, as part of the MIX 96 Tour-de-Vale on Sunday 10 th June which is organised by our umbrella organisation Wheelpower. The idea is that for as many of us as possible to enter, as directed by the Wheelpower web-site. Select enter by post and download their leaflet. Choose the distance you would like to ride (15, 35, 55 miles), tick the box for using a Handcycle for a free entry and post to the address on the form . If you would then be so kind and obtain sponsorship, using the HCAUK sponsorship form, sending the money you raise to HCAUK using the address on the form, I would be very grateful. It has always

surprised me that a large number of handcyclists raise money for other deserving causes by riding in charity events, when our own Association was scrabbling around trying to obtain funding from other such charitable organisations. Combining the two appears to me to be consistent with our aim to be self sufficient in how the Association is run, and only approaching these charitable organisation when we have a specific project to provide a step change in our capabilities. We have pre-booked a number of rooms in the Olympic lodge for the Saturday night with the intention of meeting up for a Saturday afternoon leisurely ride. Please contact me, via the contact page on our web-site, if you are interested in riding and/or staying over the Saturday night. Before the Tour, we are intending to muster as many of our present and budding racers to the first of the BHPC races that we are supporting this year, which is the Castle Coombe race on 29th April, starting at 11:00 and is a 2 hour race around the reasonably flat race circuit. This is a chance for riders on lie flat race bikes to slaughter us roadies on our sit-up and beg bikes. I know this is not much of a challenge but please give us roadies some dignity. Going forward over the second half of this year, we are looking to find a replacement for Steve Hodges on the committee to lead our efforts in developing the off-road side of the Association. Steve hasnt totally deserted us, and he is more than happy to give the new person any help he can. If you are interested in this post please contact me via the web-site for more details. I would like to extend my thanks to Steve for all his efforts. A well run Association needs its share of volunteers to support the committee in delivering our activities. To provide this, we need to expand our team and there currently exists two opportunities to volunteer. The first is for someone who, preferably lives reasonably local to Stoke Mandeville, has a mechanical interest, who is able to help Mark our bike mechanic with the maintenance and the set up of the bikes at events. The second opportunity would be as a trainer/coach to assist Matt, our head coach, in running the taster handcycling weekends, and expanding our training capabilities. If you or someone you know are interested in either of these two posts, please let me know. Dont worry if you need training, we will do all we can to arrange this. The third area we want to expand is our road riding activity where we require additional Ride Leaders and Route Risk Assessors. Again if you are interested in any of these posts please contact me via the web-site for more details. Finally we hope to arrange a taster handcycling weekend, either in July at Stoke Mandeville or August in Cardiff. This is dependent on whether we can arrange the required support for the event. If you are interested please keep an eye on the web-site for more details. Geoff Marshall HCAUK Chair