Splendor: how the open cycling club in St. Petersburg works

Guest

Useful from the issue

1. Camp with tents is not cheaper

   Delivering tents, finding a place, organizing firewood and food without ready-made service is more difficult and more expensive than putting people in a hotel.

2. Check the route before the ride

   A sudden repair of the road for a car is a five—minute detour, and for a pack — extra kilometers. The route for the group should be completed in advance.

3. Discipline in a large group

   The more people on the open ride, the more important the rules are: in Splendor, a participant was hit by a car when he ran a red light at the tail of the group.

4. Beginners — morning rides

   A quiet ride through the empty center is a convenient way to understand what riding in a pack is like before driving a country ride at 30 km/h.

5. You can pay, but for something

   According to Vitya, a paid ride is honest when there is an understandable value for money: coffee, an escort car, an excursion or accommodation.

6. Karelia is closer than it seems

   You can get from St. Petersburg to Karelian asphalt without cars by train, so the bike camp fits there on weekends.

Where did Splendor come from

Vitya switched to gravel from MTB and got to the club ride for the first time when the Moscow service came to St. Petersburg once a month. He realized that the club is a way to get to know people on normal bicycles, who are almost invisible on the streets. When Muscovites stopped coming, according to him, there was almost nothing left in the city, and he began to pack up his trips. From rides with friends to the club they talk about, it's been about three years.

The name was suggested by artificial intelligence: Vitya was looking for a word related to the palaces and luxury of St. Petersburg, and chose Splendor - splendor. Ilya and Vitya go through other St. Petersburg clubs and rides: coffee rides on weekdays, closed author trips for 20 people, gravel parties. Vitya rides with everyone in order to understand how others work and what to avoid at home.

Three formats and speed 'confident average'

The club has three formats. Evening coffee rides on Wednesdays - 50-60 km after work: from city to city and back. Country rides on weekends — about 100 km, but without 160-200, so that everyone feels good. And the morning rides around the empty center are a demo version for beginners, where you can get to know and understand what it's like to ride in a pack and sit on a wheel.

Vitya calls the speed a confident average: 30-32 km / h, this is not a race or a walk. The participant is expected to be already confident in the group. There is a separate point in the rules about triathletes: do not arrange your training, falling off from the group — it appeared from experience when people came on sun beds.

When a pack of 50 people

The rides are free and open, so there are a lot of people, and this is the main difficulty: a large crowd is difficult to control. This season, a participant was hit by a car when he ran a red light at the tail of the group; now he is recovering and wants to return. Hence the constant talk about discipline. The second lesson is to check the route in advance: road repairs, which the car bypasses in five minutes, can turn into an extra ten kilometers for a pack.

Vitya does not condemn paid coffee rides if a person understands what he is paying for: for coffee at the start, an escort car or an excursion. He considers it wrong to sell just the opportunity to ride with you. The escort car on long trips, Ilya agrees, makes the ride calmer.

Where to go from St. Petersburg

The nearby classics are Peterhof, Pushkin with Pavlovsk, and the Primorsky Highway; in Peterhof and Pushkin, it's worth riding not on the track but through the parks and streets. Further on, there's Sosnovy Bor with a view of the nuclear power plant, Zelenogorsk, and Vyborg, where even Muscovites come to ride: there are routes of various lengths, and from Vyborg, you can reach almost the border with Finland, where the nature becomes Karelian. Abandoned buildings and kirchis Vitya categorizes as gravel theme — asphalt doesn't lead there.

Ilya in response offers a coffee ride along the Tour de Selishchi route: on the "Swallow" almost to the start, a lap on good Novgorod asphalt and, possibly, an overnight stay in Novgorod. Vitya has been to the Tour de Selishchi with an escort and remembers the beautiful views.

Camps in Karelia, Sochi, and Korea

The main direction of the club is weekend camps, which do not need to take a vacation. The nearest point is Karelia: you take the train to Lodeynoye Pole — and you're already riding. There are about 250 km of fresh asphalt with no pits and almost no cars, forest and lakes. One trip was made with tents on the sandy shore of Ladoga near Vidlitsa, the second, autumn, was already with a hotel. Last year was Pskov, at the end of April — Sochi, where Petersburgers will learn for the first time what real mountains are. Everything is done on a turnkey basis: tickets, accommodation, routes and schedules of each day.

Vitya himself goes to other people's camps to be a participant and take good things for himself — including Ilya's camp, where he remembered the village house and the trip to Borovichi. Recently, he and another organizer drove 633 km through South Korea almost entirely along bike paths and was amazed by the infrastructure: bike paths are everywhere, it's easy to buy equipment from any brand, and the new Canyon was delivered to him directly from Germany.

Cyclist on the road and club plans

One of the rules of the club is to drive along the road in a pack, and not to huddle to the curb: so the group shows that cyclists are full—fledged participants in the movement. Vitya says that many drivers do not know that cyclists can be overtaken by the rules through a solid one, so they drive from behind and honk. The club's escort car is also equipped so that it can be overtaken.

For the next season, Sochi plans from April 26 to May 3, one or two trips to Karelia, regular Wednesdays and more predictable country rides with an announcement at least a week in advance. The club needs ride leaders and people in the organizing team. Five years later, Vitya sees Splendor with foreign camps, and his personal goal is to organize a legal road race. The club also makes merch and thinks about convenient things for cyclists like hoodies and T-shirts with pockets at the back. Ilya shares his plans: to hold a Tsar Grader, develop the rating of the Russian gravel series and invite everyone to cyclocross again.

Timestamps

1. 00:00Acquaintance and Tsar Grader from the escort car
2. 03:59Where does the name Splendor come from
3. 04:48Why create your own club
4. 07:17What clubs are there in St. Petersburg
5. 09:41Rules and problems of large rides
6. 12:53Paid coffee rides
7. 16:06Speed and formats of rides
8. 19:20Are you tired of organizing
9. 20:09The best routes of the Leningrad region
10. 23:24FATRACING Camp and camps in Russia
11. 25:50Karelia with tents
12. 28:13Sochi and turnkey tours
13. 33:05Bike Paths of South Korea
14. 37:08What the camp with tents showed
15. 40:21Plans for the season and in five years

Mentioned in this episode

Splendor · Tsar Grader · Tour de Selishchi · Karelia · Sochi · South Korea · Vyborg · Canyon · Russian Gravel Series