Welcome to New Members: Gavin Wright who  rode the March Sportive with his son

CLUB ACTIVITY: We continue to develop our impromtu rides but we could do with more members taking the initiative to lead these. In this connection Sunday 22 April was promising as in the absence of Bob Duckworth, the leader for the day. Phil Collins, Nigel Hood and Terry Finnegan were happy to look after novice cyclist Clare Skinner. Here’s hoping we see more of Clare in the future. Nigel had invited members to accompany him on a longer ride but no one responded to his invitation. Ideally we would have had two rides on the day.

New member Gavin Wright is into Mountain -Biking and recently rode the Whinlatter Challenge. Lake district courses are very demanding and in this one entrants had the option of 1, 2 or 3 laps of the course.  Nigel did the 3 lap event and finished 44^th and 14^th in his age group.

On Saturday 26^th April,we ran our first ever criterum at Salt Ayre in Lancaster. Lovely weather helped swell the entries to 77, 41 in the 2/3/4 cats race which was raced at nearly 27mph. Second claim member Martin Usher was the best placed Bury rider in 9^th. Jon Longworth and Chris Taylor finished in the bunch in the 4^th cats race.

NEXT CLUB MEETING: Wednesday  29^th May. I will circulate the agenda nearer the time. These days we manage to deal with club business expeditiously which leaves time for socialising and the ambience of the Liberal Club is excellent for this kind of thing.

RACING: We have had some highly competitive club championships over the last eight years with Andy Horner being the main contender. In 2005 he was in competition with Philip Albiez, in 2006 and for a number of years with RikWarrington and latterly Nick Hall. During the eight year period he has won every club championship except Trackman of The Year. These championships are Tens, 25,50, 100  miles Handicap and hill climb. The Tens championship relates to the fastest three tens in the Southport CC Thursday evening events (already started); the 50 and 100 are based on the fastest ride of the year (the 100 has only been competed for once in recent years). Every racing member has a chance of winning the Handicap championship. This will be a Southport CC 10 – the date yet to be decided. The hill climb is on 18^th June and the 25 will be with the NLTTA on 29 September. In addition there is the Best All Rounder of all Club Champioships based on a Points System. Besides our club championships it is hoped we will feature in the National Clarion Championships – both Andy and Nick have won the Points Competition and there is always the possibility of us winning the team Points Championship. Nick will be running the National Clarion Track Championships this year at the Velodrome on 6 July from 1pm to 5pm.

Our honorary members Adam and Simon Yates’s season is well under way with major successes already registered. You will probably all know that Simon is World Points Champion.