2017… A HUGE YEAR FOR LDTR.
Unfortunately we’re a little too time short to make a video outlining everything the club has achieved in 2017, so we’ve added the main talking points in dot points below, as well as some things that we're planning for in 2018. A massive thanks to EVERYONE who has contributed in one way or another to helping the club get to where it has this year. For a club that is solely volunteer run, there is an under-estimated and under-recognised amount of effort that is put into creating the mountain bike trails and mountain bike offerings available to Lysterfield Park.
🎆IN HOUSE🎆
🚵 The club has grown from approximately 262 members to approximately 350 members!
🚵 A big thank you to Shaun, Alf and Derek for their years helping the committee, and a big welcome to Wayne and Andy for joining the committee.
🎆TRAIL BUILDING🎆
🚵 1103 Total Volunteer Hours.
🚵 100 Individual Volunteers.
🚵 11 Official Group/Community Trail Build Days.
🚵 23 Days visited to the Park (excluding official Trail Builds) to complete maintenance.
🚵 31 Volunteers who attended 3 or more builds for the year.
🚵 Maintenance to 17 out of the 19 trails within the park (with some trails being maintained two or three times).
🚵 Aiming to make use of an $11,000 grant between February and 30 June 2018, secured to help complete issues raised in the 2015 Trail Audit.
🚵 Worked with Trailscapes (professional trail building company) to provide mountain bike track maintenance techniques on a trail build and also to educate our head trail builders on specific machinery techniques.
🚵 Out of the 132 issues identified on the 2015 Trail Audit, LDTR have a remaining 24 issues to tackle. These have been strategically categorised for the 2018 trail builds.
🚵 LDTR are in the early planning stages to rebuild the Skills Park/ Pump Track/ Dirt Jump area, with hopes of this being started in 2018 after we complete the other remaining trail audit issues.
🎆ADVOCACY AND Parks Victoria RELATIONSHIP🎆
🚵 $11,000 Grant secured to help complete the rest of the issues in the 2015 Trail Audit.
🚵 LDTR has started the formal communication and documentation for the application of new trails with Parks Victoria, with a day spent to physically visit potential trail opportunities with Parks Victoria.
🚵 Worked with Parks Victoria to create a Volunteer Action Plan document which strategizes and helps the club outline future planned trail works.
🚵 Provided Parks Victoria with a 32 page document which outlined 16 proposed trail build works for review, which included costs, time, GPS plotting and photos of each issue covered in each activity.
🚵 Re-ignited the LDTR and Parks Victoria Working Groups by meeting with Parks Victoria as two committed organisations, 3 times, while also locking in future Working Group dates.
🚵 Fluently and proactively worked alongside 3 different Head Rangers to help manage the park, without getting “lost in translation” throughout this period.
🚵 Spent two full days with Parks Victoria to update mountain bike signage around the whole park.
🚵 Increased presence and support from Parks Victoria at trail builds, races and also assistance with organising materials for trail builds.
🚵 Created a club survey to help LDTR gauage the riding community and understand what the community wants, where we can improve and how we can aim to better satisfy the Lysterfield Park community in conjunction with our club goals.
🎆RACING🎆
🚵Golden Goat Victorian Endurance Series Race involving 9 sponsors and over 300 participants ran by the club in May.
🚵 7 Friday Fun and Lazy Loop Races for social, low key, all ages and fun racing, with one race reaching over 100 participants.
🚵 Support from Life of Bikes and Ben The Bike Tech bike stores.
🚵 Support from the Narre Warren Scouts, Narre Warren North Scouts and StopnGo Coffee at each race.
🎆SOCIAL RIDES🎆
🚵 9 Women’s only social rides for both Intermediates and Beginners involving cupcakes and coffee. A massive thanks to Helen, Zoe, Julie, Jennifer and Laura for getting these running and working smoothly!
🚵 Women’s rides allowing for women to connect and network with other riders from Red Hill Riders and Dirt Riders mountain bike clubs.
🚵 3 General official social rides to other mountain bike parks, allowing the mountain biking community to get together and discover other trails.
🎆SKILLS CLINICS🎆
🚵 18 group sessions offered for beginners and more advanced riders, including sessions specifically for Women only, as well as private one on one sessions.
🚵 A great success which has helped improve the riding community at Lysterfield Park and allowed for the LDTR presence at the park to be seen and relied on.
🎆JUNIOR RIDES AND FAMILY/BEGINNER RIDES🎆
🚵 4 Beginner/Family Rides to allow families/kids/parents ride together on the fire roads and enjoy the park at a family pace.
🚵 3 Junior Social Rides, introduced this year to help those entering their teen years or who are teenagers; to meet other riders their age and to ride without their Mum and Dad.
🎆COMMUNITY🎆
🚵 A bike maintenance session at Life of Bikes for Women Only
🚵 Unofficial Tuesday Night rides happening weekly.
🚵 Supported two bike demo days at the park.
🎆 This doesn't include everything the club has done or is planning... there is a lot of behind the scenes work the committee is working hard to achieve. We hope this provides a decent overview of what the club does, how motivated we are and where the mountain biking community and recreational aspect of Lysterfield Park is moving towards.
From everyone at LDTR,
Happy 2018!