Cycling Organizations Editing and Proofreading Services

The ride is advertised as intermediate. Eleven people turn up: three who ride sixteen miles an hour, four who ride twelve, and four who have never ridden in a group. By mile nine the group is in three pieces on a main road, the leader is with the front, and somebody is alone at the back deciding never to come again.

We edit what cycling clubs, advocacy groups and event organisers produce — ride descriptions and grading systems, group riding guidance and etiquette, ride leader briefings and risk assessments, membership and joining information, event and sportive documentation, advocacy submissions and consultation responses, incident reporting, and the communications that manage a club of mixed abilities. Our editors work on descriptions that decide who turns up.

The ride grading is the document that determines whether a club ride works, and its failure is an adjective where four numbers belong. Intermediate means something different to every rider who reads it. We work through these so each ride states its average moving speed, its distance, its total climbing and its expected duration including stops, since these four numbers together describe a ride and no adjective describes any of them; so the speed is given as an average on the flat with an explanation that hills change it, because riders judge themselves by a number they can check on their own computer; so the no-drop position is stated explicitly and honestly — whether the group waits, where it regroups, and what happens if somebody genuinely cannot hold the pace — given that "no-drop" used loosely is the promise most often broken; so the terrain is described with the surface and the worst climb rather than an average gradient; so the group riding expectations are set out for people who have never done it, as the skills that keep a group safe are invisible until somebody does not have them; so the ride leader's authority to split or turn the group is stated in advance; so the cafe stop, its cost and its timing are given, since this is what half the group is actually there for; and so a rider is told plainly which ride to choose. Descriptions written this way keep new riders past week three.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including club documents, incident reports and member information. We are editors rather than coaches or ride leaders, and we offer no view on grading, safety or group riding. What we can do is replace the adjective with numbers a rider can check against themselves.