We have sent the below message to all current PPYCC members through the British Cycling membership system so it should be in your inboxes. If you did not receive the email then your membership may have expired or your renewal could still be being processed, in this case please drop a line to membership@ppycc.org.uk to confirm.
Hi everyone,
I’m pleased to say that we are still looking good for a return to the track on Saturday 4th July.
The guidance from British Cycling is for a maximum of 5 riders per coach in order that activities can be run safely, as opposed to 15 riders per coach in ‘normal’ circumstances. This means we will need all riders to pre-register so that we can manage numbers effectively and won’t have to turn anyone away at the track once the coaching limit is reached. We are using Eventbrite for session pre-registration, it is really easy to use and has been used successfully by many other youth cycling clubs for exactly this purpose.
Starting this weekend, every Sunday night there will be a website post announcing that pre-registration is open for the next weekend’s session, at which point you can follow a link to Eventbrite and pre-register for the upcoming session. If you’re not using it already, you can get alerts by using the ‘Subscribe to new posts’ feature on the PPYCC website homepage to ensure you receive announcements to your inbox. All website posts are automatically posted to our Twitter and Facebook accounts too, so you can also set alerts for those if you don’t want to miss it.
We are not allowing pre-registration for multiple weeks in advance, in the interests of fairness and to avoid block booking. There will be a waitlist if the current session is full and those on the waitlist will get an early booking opportunity for the following week’s registration.
We are keen that our volunteers are not handling any cash on Saturday mornings. We did consider taking payment at the point of booking but this creates a lot of admin if bad weather forces a session cancellation, plus the booking fees take quite a chunk out of our £4 session fee. So we will take payment at the track. Preferred payment will be cashless using our new card reader, however we can take cash if you bring the CORRECT change to drop into the tin.
Obviously rider and parent safety have been at the forefront of our minds. The coaching and safeguarding team met again last week to go through plans in detail for how we will run the sessions at the track and what additional protective and cleaning equipment is required, which has now been sourced. Early next week we will send round a detailed document containing guidance around sign-on procedure, one-way entrance and exit routes, social distancing, hygiene considerations and more. It is really important that not only parents read this, but that all riders do too. So parents of younger riders, please ensure they have read and understood the guidance in full.
A key thing to know now is that there will be strictly no equipment sharing. So the club toolkit and pumps will be locked away and there will be no access to road or track bikes from the containers. This means you must make sure your bikes are well prepared and tyres pumped up, and that Outer Ring will be road bikes only for the foreseeable future. So maybe a job for this weekend is to give your road bikes a good clean, check them over thoroughly and pump those tyres up!
As before, if you have any specific questions or concerns please email me at chair@ppycc.co.uk. Otherwise look out for the pre-registration link on Sunday night and we look forward to seeing you soon!
Many thanks,
Mark