2018… AN INCREDIBLE YEAR FOR THE CLUB. It’s that time of the year again, and we’re unfortunately a little too busy to make a video outlining everything the club has achieved in 12 months. It’s been a huge year, with a lot of behind the scenes progress being made. A huge 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 350 members to approximately 380 members! Kudos to Mike for sending out a membership letterS and stickers every time an awesome member joins up! 🚵 A big thank you to Andrew, Wayne, Mick and Jake for their huge efforts in being involved in the committee over the many years, and for helping support the club to where it is today. 🚵 Thank you to Ben for his contribution of being club president over the past 6 years and thanks for stepping into the Advocacy manager role. 🚵 Nate stepped down as head trail builder, he has done a massive amount of work finishing off the 2015 trail audit and deserves to ride his bike more! 🚵 We've had an awesome start to the financial year with Tim stepping up to the presidency role and taking it on like a legend! 🚵 Welcome and thanks to the 11 new committee members who have helped the past few months! 🚵 We were successful in early December to receive $855 from a Training and Equipment grant to train up a few more ride leaders and committee members with MTBA Level 0 Instructor Coach training and 3 First aid training participants. Thank you to Maria for organising and setting this up.
🎆TRAIL BUILDING🎆 🚵 837.5 Total Volunteer Hours. 🚵 73 Individual Volunteers. 🚵 14 Official Group/Community Trail Build Days. 🚵 5 Days visited to the Park (excluding official Trail Builds) to complete maintenance. 🚵Multiple weekends where we built both on Saturday and Sunday (sometimes 16-hour days) and also prepped the build sites prior. 🚵 Two trail alignments (Redgum trail and Lower Blair Witch) 🚵Worked in conjunction with Coates Hire to have support for machinery for each weekend (thanks Nick)! 🚵 Maintenance to 18 out of the 19 trails within the park (with some trails being maintained two or three times). 🚵 Four new head trail builders have stepped up and massively improved the trail build days and quality of work, as well as improving the paper work and spreading the load across four people (legends). 🚵 We made use of an $11,000 grant between February and 30 June 2018, secured to help complete issues raised in the 2015 Trail Audit. 🚵 We have purchased fresh trail building tools (Rake N Bakes from Trailscapes) to make our builds more efficient and have quality tools for our builders to make quality features and carry out maintenance. 🚵 Out of the 132 issues identified on the 2015 Trail Audit, LDTR completed the remaining 24 tasks that the club was required to do. 🚵 We are still in the early planning stages to rebuild the Skills Park/ Pump Track/ Dirt Jump area, with hopes of this being started in 2019 after we finalise communication with PV and the designs and budgets which are currently being worked on.
🎆ADVOCACY & Parks Victoria RELATIONSHIP🎆 🚵 Renae from Parks Victoria joined the Lysterfield Park ranger team, whose primary role is to manage the MTB trails and work with key stakeholders. We’d like to thank Renae for the huge amount of time and effort that she has so far spent with the club and for her time spent out improving the trails. 🚵 Welcome to Nick as our new Area Chief Ranger who is proactively working with all stakeholder groups for Lysterfield Park and is initiating a lot of support for MTB specific chill zones, signage upgrades and fluidity between the club and Parks Victoria. 🚵 We worked in conjunction with Parks Victoria to make use of the $11,000 Grant secured to help complete the rest of the issues in the 2015 Trail Audit. With before and after reports submitted. 🚵 Parks Vic installed our first community workstation, funded by LDTR and installed by PV and the woody weeders. 🚵 Parks Victoria improved the access gates to Mahogany car park and at the start of the Lake track to ensure more efficient access to the trails. 🚵 We held a Cultural Heritage and Interpretations session at the start of the year while awaiting approval to start building again.This was a great information session which involved learning about the cultural heritage of the park/area, how this is managed and the significance of working cohesively with all stakeholders in the park. 🚵 LDTR is still in the formal communication and documentation for the application of new trails with Parks Victoria, with a few days spent physically out in the park and trails submitted. Initial reviews have been carried out with negotiation currently occurring. 🚵 We are currently working with Parks Victoria on a Trail Adoption Program (more info to come very soon!!) 🚵 Worked with Parks Victoria to create a Volunteer Action Plan document which helps strategise the club's outline future planned trail works for the 2018/19 financial year. 🚵 We continued the LDTR and Parks Victoria Working Groups by meeting with Parks Victoria as two committed organisations, multiple times throughout the year. 🚵 Worked with Parks Victoria on signage updates and safety signage upgrades throughout the park. 🚵 Increased presence and support from Parks Victoria at trail builds, races and assistance with organising materials for trail builds. With Renae attending our VES race and multiple builds throughout the year. Renae also helped create the tree log podiums for the races.
🎆RACING🎆 🚵 The Golden Goat Victorian Endurance Series Race involved 7 sponsors and over 320 participants ran by the club in May. This required over 23 LDTR volunteers to run. 🚵 Managed the Victorian MTB Championships race which attracted over 150 participants. 🚵 5 Friday Fun and Lazy Loop Races for social, low key, all ages and fun racing, with one race reaching over 100 participants and having us run out of race plates! 🚵 Support from Life of Bikes for providing prizes through the whole race season. 🚵 Support from the Narre Warren Scouts, the Willara Venturers and StopnGo Coffee at each race. 🚵 We introduced an e-bike category for the first time ever at Lysterfield Park and had a great turnout on the night. 🚵 A lady’s specific race was held, with one of our largest turnouts for female participation ever!
🎆SOCIAL RIDES🎆 🚵 11 Women’s only social rides for both Intermediates and Beginners involving cupcakes and coffee. A massive thanks to all the ladies involved in making these happen and for creating such an amazing atmosphere and experience for all those who attend. 🚵 4 General official social rides to other mountain bike parks, allowing the mountain biking community to get together and discover other trails (Harcourt, Yarra Trails, Buxton and You Yangs) 🚵 We had a massive LDTR presence at the Ignition MTB Festival at Falls Creek. Plenty of LDTR shirts and jerseys could be seen and it was awesome to have such a great vibe from the club at the event, riding all weekend.
🎆SKILLS CLINICS🎆 🚵 Approximately 20 group sessions offered for beginners and more advanced riders, including sessions specifically for Women only, as well as private one on one sessions. 🚵 Becoming incredibly popular, these skills clinics are giving back to the trails, with all sessions being run by volunteers. A big thanks to the skills clinic leaders from our committee who have run these throughout the year. 🚵 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 & FAMILY RIDES 🎆 🚵 1 Junior Social Rides created this year, with it being extremely popular and having over 20 participants! 🚵 We are looking at still improving this space and have a couple of members keen to assist (Keep your eyes peeled). 🚵 We will be back up and running hopefully with the Family rides in 2019, as our main ride leaders for 2018 were kept quite busy with other events and commitments in the club.
🎆COMMUNITY🎆 🚵 A bike maintenance session from Life of Bikes for Women Only at the community centre prior to a Women’s Social ride. 🚵 Unofficial Tuesday Night rides happening weekly - except for the nights with which have expected hail storms.
🎆 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, thanks for riding with us in 2018 – we can’t wait to see what 2019 brings!