CRW Elections for three Board Members are coming up in October!

CRW Directors set the strategic agenda for our club.   The Board sets policy for club finances, rides and grants. It appoints volunteers to fill important club officer positions and directs our activities with advocacy groups. The Board also helps to build connections with other clubs, bike shops and community groups. A great Director is someone who has been actively involved with the club and understands not only our history and traditions but has a vision for the future and is willing to help advocate and implement the changes necessary to move us forward.

There are 9 Directors on the CRW Board and the Past President serves in an ex officio role for one year after his or her term.  Each year, CRW members elect 3 directors for a 3 year term.  A director is allowed to serve no more than two consecutive 3 year terms.

Board of Directors meetings are held every two months in odd-numbered months.  One of those meetings is anticipated to be an all-day planning meeting.

In this election, there are three Director seats to be filled.  The newly elected Directors will serve from January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2023.  All three incumbent Directors whose terms are expiring are eligible to run again, but they have not yet formally declared their intention to seek re-election.

This is the process for Election of the Board based on CRW’s bylaws:

• Any member may submit his / her own name as a candidate for the current Board vacancies, no later than September 20th.  Each candidate may submit a statement of 250 words or less, to be disseminated to the membership and included in the ballot.  A candidate may include a photograph.
  • Submit your nomination and statement to president [at] crw.org
  • The statements will appear in the October WheelPeople which will be released prior to October 1st. 

• The Election of Directors shall be by electronic ballot transmitted to all members.  Votes of all members shall be confidential.  Voting shall be allowed October 1 to October 15.  The Secretary shall verify and publish the results no later than October 30th.   The names of the newly elected Directors will appear in the November WheelPeople. 

• The new Board members will attend the November CRW Board Meeting.  At this meeting, all Directors who will serve during 2021 will elect the CRW President who will serve in 2021.

By Coach John Hughes

We are proud to offer an article by the highly regarded Coach John Hughes, who has written extensively about bicycle training including nutrition, conditioning, slowing the aging process and otherwise keeping fit. Among his personal accomplishments in endurance racing, John set the course records for the Furnace Creek 508 in 1989 and Boston-Montreal-Boston in 1992. He has been a USA Cycling certified coach since ’96, and has lectured on endurance at numerous events. John has coached CRW members and has earned high praise for increasing their fitness in preparing for ultra-endurance cycling events and facilitating recovery after major surgery.

You enjoy cycling and know it’s good for your physical and mental health.  Like me you may not be able to spend as much time riding as usual. Here are summaries of three articles I’ve written about cycling and the coronavirus

1. How Much and How Hard Should You Exercise?
2. How to Slow the Loss of Fitness and How to Regain Fitness
3. How to Get and Stay Motivated

How Much and How Hard Should You Exercise?

In an article in Bicycling Dr. David Nieman advises, “I would caution cyclists to avoid long, intense rides or workouts right now until we get through all this and just to kind of keep things under control,” Nieman says. “Don’t overdo it. Be worried more about health than fitness.” (Nieman is a health professor at Appalachian State University and director of the Human Performance Lab at the North Carolina Research Campus.) 

After a hard ride your immune system does not function as well. If later you are exposed to someone who is sick with the coronavirus, your body’s defenses are down. Remember someone may have COVID 19 and not yet developed symptoms – one of the primary reasons for social distancing.

In general:

1. Exercise for health, not fitness.
2. Exercise for maintenance, not improvement.
3. Total exercise time should be less than usual.
4. Total time doing intensity should be less than usual.
5. Don't exercise to exhaustion.

Here’s the original article I wrote at the beginning of April.  The recommendations still apply.

How many years you’ve been riding is the biggest factor in how slowly you lose fitness and how rapidly you can recover the lost fitness. This relates to my concept of athletic maturity. This column explains how you can assess your athletic maturity and the following column explains how to improve your athletic maturity.

If you cut back on exercise you lose fitness differentially:

• Power and capacity to ride hard and climb well starts to decrease first.
• Endurance doesn’t decrease as fast.
• Muscle strength decreases slowly.
• Skills don’t decrease!

1. Progressively do more of the kinds of endurance rides you enjoy: longer rides or more riding in general.
2. Progressively mix in intensity starting with short workouts. As you increase the intensity reduce your total riding. As you increase your endurance riding then cut back (but don’t stop) your harder workouts.
3. Recover more and better.
4. Build back up slowly to reduce the risk of injury and overtraining.
5. Pay attention to negative changes in your performance and mood — you might be doing too much.

Here’s the original article I wrote in May.  The recommendations still apply.

How to get and stay motivated

1. Overall good health to enjoy life and do things with your family
2. Longevity to enjoy your grandkids
3. Personal fitness
4. Endorphins
5. Achieve personal goals
6. Fun
7. Group activities
8. Compete
9. Your doctor told you that you should
10. Your significant other wants you to
11. Losing weight so you’re look better
12. Other goals

Which of these are your goals? What kinds of riding and other activities help you with the above?

Structure

• Set goals. Now that you know why you exercise setting reasonable achievable goals is the next step. What are your goals? Write them down.
• Accountability. Much of what I do as a coach is to make a client accountable to follow the training program. Share your goal(s) and plan(s) with your significant other or a riding buddy. Then meet their expectations.
• Make a simple schedule. You’re more likely to meet your goal(s) if you make specific daily and weekly plans. Write down your schedule(s).
• Plan with others. Decide to do club rides and arrange rides with friends.
• Keep a simple log. Note on your schedule what you actually did. 

This doesn’t need to be complicated. Keep it simple, e.g.,

Joe’s Goal's: Ride at least four days this week totaling at least 65 miles following this schedule:

• Monday: Ride one hour for 15 miles.
  
  • Actual: Rode the hilly 13-mile three bumps loop in an hour.
• Wednesday: Ride one hour for 15 miles with Bill and Liz.
  
  • Actual: Fun 20-mile (1:15) ride with Bill and Liz.
• Friday: Ride 30-minutes on the trainer. (Count trainer miles based on your outdoor riding speed so a 30-minute ride would be 7.5 miles.)
  
  • Actual: Thursday rode to coffee shop, coffee with Sam, rode home. 5 miles total in 30 minutes. Took Friday off.
• Saturday: Go on the CRW 35-mile ride.
  
  • Actual: Great to be out with people! 35 miles in 2:15

For the week Joe rode 75 miles in five hours. Joe was flexible with his riding rather than slavishly following the schedule but he still met his goals.

Here’s the original article.

My website www.coach-hughes.com has many articles on cycling and the pandemic.

Stay safe and have fun!

Coach Hughes has written over 40 eBooks for RoadBikeRider.

Ladies North Shore Tricycle Tour, 1885, at Salem Common

Some of the women’s husbands, fathers, and brothers would not let them out unchaperoned, so a few male relatives accompanied them and are pictured with them posed at Salem Common. By the 1890s and the advent of the safety bicycle, with smaller wheels, chains, and brakes, more women joined in. Two women’s clubs formed: the Bostonian Cycle Club in the South End of Boston and the Woodbridge Cycle Club in North Cambridge. The Massachusetts division of the LAW soon had the largest (but still small) percentage of women members in the country.

The Massachusetts Bicycle Club, one of the region’s earliest, having fallen on hard times, began to admit women in the early 1890s. They redecorated the clubhouse (decoration was considered the woman’s sphere), and the club regained financial health. But then a majority of the members, nostalgic for the male camaraderie of the 1880s, voted the women out. The club split, and the women and their male allies formed the Commonwealth Bicycle Club.

Many writers claim that the bicycle liberated women in the 1890s, and in many ways it did. Sarah Hallenbeck, a communications scholar, focuses on the ways in which women argued for a place in cycling and for changes in technology to help them straddle the counter- claims of the New Woman and the traditional woman, especially when the safety bicycle appeared on the scene and women riders rapidly multiplied. Hallenbeck focuses on the bicycle adaptations for women, for example, the shape of handlebars (drop bars reversed to discourage “scorching”), methods of protection from the sun and rain (handlebar mounted umbrellas), and the shape of the bicycle frame. Women had to choose between a heavier drop- frame woman’s bicycle, where they could wear a long skirt (protected by a chain guard) or ride the diamond frame man’s bike, which was lighter, faster, and more suitable for long distances and hilly routes. For the diamond frame bike, women wore bloomers or knickerbockers and endured the condemnation of the traditionalists. Photo:Traditionalist Woman at Norumbega Park circa 1898

Photo: Boston’s Kittie Knox, League of American Wheelmen Meet, Asbury Park NJ, 1895

Young women cyclists get ready to ride (bottom) October 6, 1935.

Ben Olken (top, on tandem), founder, Bicycle Exchange, and ride organizer along with Boston and Maine Railroad of the first Bike-Train: North Station to Fabyan, Hampshire.

Throughout the fall members traded arguments and insults. One serious rider, CRW member and sculptor Melanie Zibit, pressed for change: “The word ‘man’ down through the ages has noted the male gender: when ‘man’ was used for the totality of the human race (as in mankind), it was no less a denigration of the female sex then, as it is today. Whether we as a club choose to ignore this subtle slur or not, it does exist in the name ‘Wheelmen.’”

Some of CRW’s older (and male) members weren’t happy with a name change. Long- distance rider Howard Moore, who began his cycling career in the 1920s, remembered, “The Boston Wheelmen of forty years ago had several girl members, and not one of them ever objected to the club name. One of its successor clubs, the Cambridge Cycle and Sports Club, (which lasted for a dozen years) had many girl members, but I have no reason to believe that that was because the syllable ‘men’ did not occur in the club title.” Cutler West thought that “the proposed name- change, which at first might be perceived as a simple and trivial one to satisfy an unknown number of CRW member- malcontents, is in fact a complex and drastic change for the worse of the club.” CRW cofounder, Ralph Galen, was particularly upset: “It is unfortunate that superficial forces of the feminist movement find it necessary to challenge our vocabulary to the extent that the name of our bicycle club, the Charles River Wheelmen, is considered offensive.”

 In the mid- 1970s Debra Glassman became the CRW “Social Director,” dedicated to creating greater connectedness among club members and ride participants. She soon became the Vice President for Rides and a member of the CRW board. In that position, she transformed the character of the rides. Before her time, typically, a group of speedy men showed up, took a cue sheet, and rode off. Glassman insisted that ride leaders “arrow” the routes and create two or more loops. The goal was for all riders, fast or slow, to gather for a picnic or cookout and socialization. Participation in the rides increased. Then she promoted the name change. None of her club efforts protected her from a few angry phone calls and letters. John Vanderpoel, never one to mince words, wrote, “The talk of changing the name of the Charles River Wheelmen really bores me. I’ll support the change from the day that Debra Glassman officially petitions the courts of Massachusetts to change her name to Debra Glasser.” This drew a rebuke from the newsletter editor not to single out “an individual with whom you disagree.”

CRW was not alone in periodically confronting the “name” question. In 1974, LAW discussed a name change and received a barrage of letters in opposition. One CRW/LAW member, Chick Mead, attacked those who would change the name as “saboteurs” and suggested that they be “‘blackballed’ so to speak, for their careless, unwise, destructive, malicious thinking!” Nevertheless, twenty years later, in 1994, LAW started doing business as the League of American Bicyclists. Twenty- three years after that, following periodic struggles about its name, CRW voted to do business as the Charles River Wheelers.

October 1991 Wheelpeople Logo            November 1991 Wheelpeople Logo

Safety Corner --The Double Yellow, and Cognitive Dissonance

A motorist is approaching a bicyclist from behind on a road with a double yellow centerline. The law says “don’t cross the double yellow.” But the motorist could pass safely only by putting at least part of the car on the left side of the double yellow.

What should they do? Should the bicyclist squeeze right as much as possible so the motorist can brush by with inches to spare, and not cross the centerline? Should the motorist brush by?

Well, one thing I can say in favor of common traffic engineering practice with centerlines is that it teaches people to think for themselves.  Almost every Massachusetts motorist has learned to take this law with a grain of salt, and cross the double yellow when necessary to pass a bicyclist safely.

Traffic engineering practice is based on the assumption that the vehicle being passed is going at nearly the posted speed limit. That requires long passing zones. If the vehicle being passed is a bicycle, or farm tractor, or Amish buggy, the passing distance is much shorter and the double yellow line leads to cognitive dissonance.

Given the law as is, what should we do?

As motorists? Well, crossing the centerline is the usual and generally accepted practice – but there is some small chance that it could get you in trouble. The likelihood of getting a traffic ticket and having to pay a fine is minuscule, because police also understand the problem with this law. But – be cautious, because it might be used against you if you do have a crash.

As bicyclists? This is one of the situations where it is most important to communicate with drivers, using lane position and hand signals. Indicate clearly when it is unsafe to pass, with your lane position and when necessary, an outstretched arm, palm of the hand facing the rear to communicate “Don’t!” But move right to facilitate passing when it is safe – the “control and release” technique. The driver behind you will be much more likely to cooperate if your actions make it clear that you are keeping that driver’s interests in mind.

This doesn’t only apply on roads with a double yellow line. Most lightly-traveled rural roads – the kind we most like because they are scenic, and quiet – have no centerline at all. And on blind right-hand curves, being farther to the left not only lets an approaching motorist behind me see me sooner, it lets me see farther ahead and move aside sooner. The motorist could appreciate this!

Several states including nearby Maine have amended their traffic laws to allow passing bicyclists when safe. The issue has been raised in Massachusetts, and CRW should support MassBike in its efforts to change the passing law.

For more background, you might go to https://iamtraffic.org/engineering/crossing-double-yellow-line/

Last month we reported on the club's 20th Anniversary ride and identified many of the riders from 35 years ago. This month we have a more recent event portrayed; the 30th Anniversary ride. We believe it was a great success as reported by the September 1996 issue of WheelPeole. This month we are not identifying riders, and it will be more of a do-it-yourself exercise. If you see yourself in the photo, please use the "comment" feature to indicate your position. Many of the riders are still riding with the club so don't be shy and let us know who you are. Larger Image