This guide is for marshals on our regular Saturday and Sunday rides.
The regular Saturday park ride marshal issues The Safety Briefing at the start, ensures the club ride takes place with appropriately sized groups and that those groups depart at appropriate intervals.
London Dynamo have been granted by The Royal Parks the only licence available to organise a group ride in Richmond Park. We are obliged to abide by fixed protocols enshrined in the licence which are summarised below.
Marshals may either read this out verbatim or deliver a stylised version in their own words so long as they cover all the salient points.
The marshal calls forward groups of 6 to 8 in descending order of pace. The park-agreed maximum number of riders is 8.
Group 1 should have no more than 6 riders. Subsequent groups should have 6 to 8 riders. We recommend groups of 6 for all groups for ease of communication and overtaking traffic. Accordingly, if a group of 6 comes forward it should be sent on its way (rather than wait for 2 more riders). However, if a group of 7 or 8 naturally forms this will be allowed. No group larger than 8 should be allowed to set off.
Groups should be sent off approximately 1 minute apart.
The Newcomers Ride is the single entry point to joining London Dynamo (unless a rider has a British Cycling Cat 3 licence or higher in which case they need to contact the Membership secretary to get an independent briefing on joining).
The purposes of the Newcomers ride are threefold:
1. To assess prospective members on safety, attitude and competence with group riding and in particular with through and off.
2. To allow prospective members to assess London Dynamo. In your role as marshal, you are an ambassador for the club.
3. To inform prospective members about the club.
If you are marshalling the newcomers ride, please arrive in good time (about 15 minutes before the start of the ride)
The Membership team will circulate a list of prospective members ahead of the ride and if possible some idea of their pace to allow the marshals to divide up into groups.
The marshals should explain:
a) About the club: a bit about its history, about the ride offering, the regular event rides, the sportives and, importantly, the Helping Out Programme.
b) The purpose of the Newcomers Ride.
c) What ‘through and off is’ and how to do it well.
Note that the Newcomers Ride runs in tandem with the Park Ride and one of the marshals needs to do the main safety briefing. The other marshals should also get everyone to listen to the main safety briefing being delivered to the whole club.
The Newcomers ride is over 3 laps of the park in groups of no more than 6 to allow prospective members plenty of practice at through and off.
You may want to pause at Sheen Cross at the end of the first lap if you feel like you need to further explain or reiterate finer points of through and off or group riding in general.
At the end of the ride you need to say to individual riders whether they have passed the entry requirements and if so explain the next steps.
You are not under obligation to ‘pass’ any prospective rider. If you feel that a rider is unsafe or lacks the basic skills or ability to do the Saturday park ride, you should not be afraid to say so and you should politely suggest they try again another day to get some more practice. The next step is to refer the names of those that have passed to the Membership secretary who will contact those riders to see if they would like to progress their membership.
If during the ride you find that a rider cannot hold the pace equal the very slowest of London Dynamo’s Park Ride groups, do not simply drop them. Instead, get the rest of the group to slow down while you politely suggest to them that they drop back and meet back at the café. There you should let them know they are currently off the pace of the slower end of the club and if they still want to join, and you have judged them to ride carefully you may still recommend them to the Membership Secretary.
At the end of the three laps, please offer prospective members a hot drink. You can get reimbursed by sending a screenshot of a receipt to the Treasurer of the club. Please stick around to talk more about the club and answer any questions.
The Sunday rides are more informal but if you are a Marshal/Ride Leader for either the Windsor & Thames Valley Ride or the Explorer Ride you are asked to do the following: