And what a year it has been.
First things first, we welcomed our 100th member, Gordon, a few weeks ago! Go us! A big welcome to all our new members that have joined over the past year, it’s great to have you on board and part of the Forge family. We’re really excited to see our member numbers increase across all ride categories and it’s been great to see so many members (both new and old) achieving their cycling goals over the past year!
So, a few little highlights….
Ride Safety
With the increased number of members and groups heading out, the committee introduced Ride Captains to support each group ride. This was implemented to help us maintain a level of safety and to offer guidance on each ride. We want to ensure that we continue to ride safely together as our numbers grow.
Read more about ride groups and safety on our Riding With Us page.
Trips
We continued with the success of our annual Forge trips – both overseas and on home soil. The club events team spear-headed by Anna superbly organized a trip to Girona in May, and we also headed over to the Isle of Wight in July. Both were hugely successful excursions that captured the beauty of exploring new roads and taking in the amazing sights.
Sportives
We had a fantastic show at the Dragon Ride in South Wales and the Ride 100 London-Essex. Plus, a classics trip to Belgium to tackle Gent-Wevelgem where some of our members took on the cobbled classic. Write ups from all these events can be found under the News section on our website.
The club have many trips, overseas and UK based, pencilled in the diary for 2023. Check out our events channel on Slack or the Events page to see what we have planned for the year ahead. Exciting times!
Racing
Three of our riders qualified for the UCI Granfondo World Championships in Trento, after securing their spots at the Tour of Cambridgeshire. Huge congratulations to Lewis, Bryon, and Gareth on their amazing achievement. We also had new Forge faces on the crit racing scene, with Tobo earning enough ranking points to move into the next racing category and Ruben smashing the Iron Man in Poland! Big kudos all round. We love seeing our members achieving some of their cycling goals with the support of our club.
Read more about their achievements on the News page.
Rides
We continue to host rides leaving Kingston Market on both a Saturday and Sunday, as well as Thursday night training rides out to Windsor in the summer and in Richmond Park through the Winter months. We also saw a Tuesday evening social ride out to Box Hill become very popular throughout the summer months.
Information on our rides, including group categories, routes and ride safety can be accessed online on the Riding with us page.
Kit
We are really proud of our club kit and the importance of offering this to all our members. This year we proudly opened our club shop to allow members to purchase items outside of the club kit order window. Our kit is custom designed by LeCol and is the bees’ knees (if we do say so ourselves). The members’ club kit shop can be accessed through the Slack channel.
We’re also delighted to have started a new partnership with High5 sports nutrition as one of their featured clubs.
Socials
We’re not all about cycling though… The social side of our club continues to thrive, whether that’s over the all important coffee and cake on the weekend rides or in one of our favourite Kingston pubs. Over the Summer we hosted a Summer Party at The Spring Grove and in a few weeks The Norbiton will be our venue of choice for the annual Christmas Party, complete with pizzas, quizzes, games, no doubt lengthy speeches from the Chairman and Club Captain, and the highly anticipated Forge Awards. Watch this space for all the highlights of the evening!
You can keep up to date with all our latest rides, activities, and news through our Instagram. Give us a follow if you’ve not done so already!
So here’s to another successful year of riding as we enter into our 3rd year as an established cycling club. Thank you to everyone for continuing to support our Forge cycling community!
