Wednesday Night Ride

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Flying along trails, lights flashing everywhere, brushing up against trees, bushes and balancing along the edge of the Yarra River, dodging speeding wombats; meanwhile, you’d be lucky to see 10 meters in front of you. This is what a group of Melbourne mountain bike riders do every Wednesday night. Not only to get the thrill of mountain biking a few kilometers from the CBD but to help keep physically and mentally fit.

Lights are essential for the ride as most of the rides continue well past sundown.

The ride leaves every Wednesday night at 6:30pm with lights from the ride cycles bike shop in Kew. The group heads either out-bound along twisty single-track trails up towards Templestowe; or in-bound towards Richmond along the Yarra and goat tracks behind Carlton United Buries.

Lights are essential for the ride as most of the rides continue well past sundown.

The weekly ride has been running for over 35 years originally starting at Kew East cycles. Back in its hay day there used to be 50-60 riders that turned up for the ride each week and it used to be so competitive that you’d be lucky to make it back to the shop unscathed.

As new bike shops moved in to the shopping strip and old ones out the ride continued to be run until today. Aaron Lemin the current owner of “The Ride Cycles” continued running the ride once he moved in with his bike shop in 2013. When speaking to Aaron he talked about how the ride has evolved from what it used to be 30 years ago. As the sport has progressed Aaron has tried to progress the ride opening it up too many disciplines and welcoming everyone to join the ride.

Aaron, the shop owner, taking one of the new and popular E-bikes out onto the trails for the night.

The group has a range of riders from 15-year-old rockets, national series racers, Social riding dads to 60+ year-old veterans who’ve been riding the trails since the ’90s. Aaron has already made the ride much more sociable with tonnes of group Banta between all the riders and creating a sense of community. He’s also put a lot of emphasis on the fact that the ride is a no-drop ride meaning that the ride is at the pace of the slowest rider. This helps make the ride more enjoyable for everyone and help the less experienced riders learn more from the more experienced.

Aaron hopes that in the future he’ll be able to run two groups a night with 15-20 riders each group. With even more beginner riders and hopefully a women’s group as well. After being in the mountain bike scene for so long and having his own kids, Aaron’s passion for welcoming people to the sport and creating an environment where people feel comfortable to push themselves and discover what mountain bike riding is about is so much stronger.

Lewis Kerr, a mechanic at The Ride Cycles freshly back from Europe after wrenching on world champs’ bikes, always provides a bit of banta.

For some, the ride is part of a fitness regime with it being at the same time every week making it easy to train and keep fit. For others it’s the social aspect that brings them to the rides, welcoming new people to the group and sport in general and having a good time with mates. With mechanics on the ride as well you learn so much about your bike and how to maintain and look after it properly. The night riding aspect also adds another level to the riding making it more technical.

As night falls the lights turn on and the ride turns into a rave on wheels.

With its location and set off time, it’s the best there is so close to the city. Its large and diverse group makes anyone feel welcome and there’s a bright future for it with shop owner Aaron catering to any skill level.

One of the several stop-points on the ride were riders can catch their breath and talk some smack.