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Questions for y'all

YamanashiLiving123

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Dec 9, 2015
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Hi TCCers,

I'm new to the club and also have been away from cycling for a long time. Used to race cat 1 and 2 in the US back in the day.

I've been commuting to my university jobs for a while now 30km round trip twice a week, but since then the road has been calling. So now getting back into cycling. Mainly for training and to enjoy the back roads of Japan and the comradarie.

Ok, long winded I know. Questions are

1. How do you get to your meeting destinations? I see many say they jump on the train. How do you get your bikes on the local trains like the Chuo line?

2. Where do you usually meet and how many times a week? I'm off from teaching all of february and March so lots of time.

3. Are there weekly training rides in the winter?

Ok that's it for now. Looking forward to hearing from and hopefully meeting some of you.

Allen
 
This place is a lot less "organised" than cycle clubs with a central body and members with designated roles bringing regular training rides and structured race seasons. We get by on a "do what you want when you want" kind of basis. Some hook up on here and then take it off book never to post again, while others regularly post rides inviting all and sundry to join the fun.
There's usually something going on, and if not, feel free to instigate it.
 
Thanks for posts so far. I'll start poking around here to get a feel. Look forward to getting on the road again. The calling is LOUD!
 
Welcome @TokyoLiving! If you are anywhere near the Arakawa river then you're more than welcome to come out for dawn patrol any day of the week. As @D'Pioneer says, check the Rides thread - I'm out most mornings before 6am so drop me a PM if you want to hook up.
 
Great it all sounds good! I'm winding down my classes and getting my bike and winter kit together. End of December early January I'll be ready to hit the road and contact you. In the meantime, I'll get familiar with the site and threads.
 
That is not true. @GrantT started the Tuesday Morning Tama Training session, and @Mlac Peek rides every day on the Arakawa Saiko. Both of these have stickied threads.

while others regularly post rides inviting all and sundry to join the fun.

He's right but that's how I see them, an individual thing not a "club" thing. They'd be there even if no one joined them.

Sounds like you have some time on your hands @TokyoLiving so you'll be able to sample a little of everything in the coming months. Possibly see you somewhere out there.
 
I agree with @Musashi13, rather than a cycling club in a traditional sense it's more of a cycling community, which is a good thing in my opinion.
 
Tokyo Cycling community does not have the same ring to it. But I get what you mean. And I agree a good thing. Less formal more organic

By the way Musashi13, yes lots of time on my hands. As a university teacher we have 4 two months off in the winter and two off in the summer. And the killer deal is, it's all paid for.
 
I agree with @Musashi13, rather than a cycling club in a traditional sense it's more of a cycling community, which is a good thing in my opinion.

Here's my presidential speech...

Cycling clubs are usually full of riders/racers who are pitted against each other (in club races) and race together (in teams races etc.) because of their locale.
The riders often don't mesh well together because they have no personality/relationship connection whatsoever.
My personal experience of cycling clubs is that there's a lot of back stabbing, hatred, me Vs you, my kid Vs your kid, fighting, and general disintegration between various, 'clans' of the club.
In my teens, every week we'd drive 50km from home to race in a club that had a great community spirit, purely because our local club had shit fights going on constantly. Not nice! We had quit that pathetic club and never went back.

Because our club was, 'tight' we won every state teams time trial possible, track and road, and we set state records aplomb.
We had team spirit and we wanted to ride with each other.

So, what we have here is something better than a club in my opinion. We have a community of people who like to ride/race bicycles.
Yeah, sure we may not all get on like a house on fire, but we do all have common ground...we like to ride. Fast or slow, it doesn't matter, we like to ride.
That is a great thing.
 
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Out of interest, what would a "club" ride look like
Well I was a bit shocked the other day when I checked out a couple of UK clubs in areas I might one day move to (don't worry not leaving Tokyo for a few years yet - just sold my house in the UK and need to buy a new one to keep "in the market" - want to make sure it is in a cycling area or ...at least a cycling area where you don't get held up at knife point for your bike). Conclusions were -
  • Quite a number of the clubs refused to display their club rides unless you had signed up and paid club fees (which makes it hard to asses just how active they really are or the reality of their level)
  • Even those that did display rides often required people to go on a trial run before joining - usually led by the old codger of the club
  • One notable difference I saw was that the rides were planned by committee and posted out months in advance (again I see this a negative rather than a positive - seems to destroy any flexibility around weather... although it is the UK so perhaps all rides are planned on the basis of cloudy skies with 2 hours of rain at some point in the day)
  • You are fitted into rides rather than choosing them in some clubs. There seemed to be no consideration of potentially cycling slower and longer or shorter and faster - you either cycled fast and long or short and slow
ughhh...
 
I agree, like most people on here, that this place is more of a cycling community than a cycling club and is all the better for it. A club sounds too formal and if what @macrophotofly says it true for most clubs, I wouldn't really like to be a part of that. I like the format of TCC.
 
What @macrophotofly has posted is in line with what I've found to be true.
Some of the more "popular" clubs have hundreds of members and it is a real full time job for those in charge to keep them running smoothly.
I know people in a couple of the bigger London ones and one in Sydney. They don't really seem to get as much out of their clubs as I do out of this "community". Maybe that's just them but from what I've heard I prefer what we have.

Some of the kits are shocking, too!
 
So, it seems the name change is in the wind already... Tokyo Cycling Better-than-a-Club
 
So, it seems the name change is in the wind already... Tokyo Cycling Better-than-a-Club
* Tokyo Typing-about-cycling Club

(Just kidding. I'm not ungrateful. Don't get your assos in a twist @D'Pioneer. This is excellent catharsis for my occasional need to rant about all the clueless buggers on the road/psyclepath.)
 
A Kyushu resident myself, so haven't joined any of the TCC rides, but this site strikes me as a unique resource for foreign cyclists all over Japan. BTW, not all cycling clubs in the UK have questionable attitudes. My local one organises 10 mile TTs every week between April and September with around 50 riders taking part each week, and anyone can join. I have joined their weekend group rides as a non-member also.
 
...

There are not that many foreigners living in Japan full stop, and of those, hardly any do any kind of exercise / sport from what I have seen in The Hub on the weekends, ...

Excuse my 田舎ness, what is this 'Hub' that you're talking about? (I thought it was in Osaka.)
 
True not a lot of foreigners into exercise or sports. You should see the teaching world here, they are few and far between. Exercise and teaching go hand in hand for maintaining sustained genkiness.
 
You should see the teaching world here, they are few and far between

10% are elite and are caning it.
The rest just seem to be rolling through the motions from what I've seen. You know, here for a holiday and all that, or Jp. teachers and just don't care because it's their job and they do the bare minimum.
I prefer to see things done properly myself.
 
not all cycling clubs in the UK have questionable attitudes. My local one organises 10 mile TTs every week .... I have joined their weekend group rides as a non-member also.

May I ask which area of the UK? And which club? Any nice houses for sale near there that are commutable to London? ;)
 
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