Judith Worrall is one half of the dynamic duo that founded the Yorkshire Lass Cycling Club, an all women's cycling club based in North Yorkshire. Along with Kate Horsfall, she formed the club in 2015 and have inspired hundreds of women in Yorkshire to get out and ride, particularly at their cyclosportive that takes place in the North York Moors in early August.
Through bike riding Yorkshire Lass CC have also managed to raise tens of thousands of pounds for Women V Cancer, as well as other local charities.
I met Judith and the Yorkshire Lasses last year when I wrote a feature about them for
Cycling Weekly magazine. They were a very cheery and slightly boisterous bunch, and I could see why anyone who cycles with this group of ladies is likely to get the bug for cycling pretty quickly. Judith's and Kate's enthusiasm is infectious.
Judith Worrall, aged 53
From: Bradford
Lives: Thirsk
Occupation: Facilities Manager at Carlton Lodge Outdoor Centre
As a youngster I didn’t ride bikes, but I used to ride horses.
I got into cycling in 2011 when I was trying to lose weight. I started with
Slimming World, and my husband said to me to do cycling as part of it.
On my
first ride I did 5 miles and thought I was absolutely gonna die. Then I signed
up to do my first challenge, in India in 2012, so then I was committed so I had
to carry on cycling!
My husband was very supportive, but I did get a bit of
negativity from people. Fortunately it wasn’t a lot, and I would just smile and
ignore them.
I really caught the cycling bug and have since gone all over
the world doing bike rides in India, Cuba, Tanzania, Vietnam, Cambodia, and
Brazil, raising money for Women V Cancer, and meeting lots of different people.
I do love cycling in Yorkshire though. The countryside is
beautiful, and the scenery is amazing once you’ve climbed the hills. My favourite
place is the Thirsk area near where I live, as well as Brazil.
Fund-raising through cycling is very important to me. Me and
my clubmates do a lot of fund-raising for Women V Cancer. Three of us from the club did a ride around Brazil with nearly 100 ladies last year. We also did London to Paris, and Ride the Night,
in London, for Women V Cancer. So we’ve always been fund-raising. Through my
challenge rides I’ve met a lot of women who have been affected by cancer –
either directly or indirectly. My mum
was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year and passed away.
I met Kate, the co-founder of Yorkshire Lass Cycling Club
(YLCC), through our husbands, who are both very keen cyclists and they used to
both work together. They would have a Christmas do at the Lakes, so we would
see each other then. My husband’s retired now but we thought we would carry on
doing the weekend in the Lakes, just the four of us, and we took our bikes.
When we started cycling together the conversation came up
about starting a club. We’d both been members of other clubs, done a lot of
things and seen how other people organise clubs, and thought, actually we can
do this. We can organise a ladies only club. So Kate came up with the idea of
doing it, and asked if I fancied giving her a hand. I said, yeah all right then
and the YLCC was formed.
It was Tony Booth from All Terrain Cycles who Kate approached
and asked if he could help us. He paid for the British Cycling membership for
the first year and he also supplied the shop for us, to use as our base.
Kate and I put a message on Facebook inviting women to come on a
ride, and our first club run was on March 13th 2015. We were
panicking thinking, what happens if we don’t have anyone turn up? So I enrolled
my friends, saying they had to turn up even if nobody else came.
We
must have had 30 people turn up, which was great. The club grew, and now we
have over 100 members. We meet at Wetherby for our rides, though we’ve got members
from all over Yorkshire.
I’m about a half-hour drive away, but we’ve also got
people from the Yorkshire Wolds in East Yorkshire, and from near Leeds. So our
rides go to various parts of Yorkshire. Someone puts a message on the facebook
group about ideas for sportives and rides and a lot of people will just reply
and join in.
I think the thing that attracts a lot of people to YLCC is
the fact it’s ladies only. A lot of ladies don’t always like riding with men –
just because they’re physically stronger than us, and it’s nice to have a good
old natter. We have some good old random conversations about all sorts of
things. So it’s just nice as ladies to go out on a bike ride with other
like-minded people without trying to break a Strava record, and maybe get away
from everyday stuff at home, or work.
It’s not being sexist, it’s just a lot of women don’t have a
lot of confidence in themselves and their riding. We’ve got different groups –
a steady, a moderate, and leisurely group, and also a “twixt” ride which is in
between a steady and a moderate. We’ve found a lot of members on the steady
rides are getting faster and stronger, but not quite ready for the moderate
ride. So what we’ve done is just put another group in between.
On the moderate
ride you’ve got to be pretty self-sufficient, know the route, and be able to
ride at a certain pace.
But with the “twixt” group we always make sure people
wait at the top of hills and nobody gets dropped – not that anyone gets dropped
on any ride, but the “twixt” group makes it a bit more of a confidence builder
for the ladies wanting to go that bit faster.
In Yorkshire there’s our club, and also the Queensbury Queens ladies only club. I don’t think we have too many ladies-only clubs at
the moment, as I think we need to be encouraging ladies to get out on their
bikes more. These clubs and the Breeze rides are very helpful as there can be
too much testosterone in mixed clubs, and it can put novice riders off.
I also think more could be done for women over 40. For
instance in clothing we could do with bigger sizes and a bit of a slacker cut
on ladies’ tops for those who have a more ample size.
At our charity sportive we had over 500 ladies take part,
and between this year’s and last year’s event we have raised over £50,000 for
Women V Cancer, Yorkshire Ambulance, Carlton Lodge Bursary Fund, and PSPA (a
charity that supports people living with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy and
Cortico Basal Degeneration).
It’s the third year we were doing this, and we had support
from All Terrain Bikes and Carlton Lodge Activity Centre. There was a choice of
3 routes – the “Ow do”, 30 miles; “Enjoy thissen”, 60 miles; and “Flippin
‘eck”, 103 miles. The routes went through the North York Moors, with the long
route having quite a few more challenging climbs than previous years.
We had lots of ladies signing up for the 100 as their first
100-miler. And then also on the 30-miler we had lots of ladies turning
up on normal bikes so it wasn’t all about road bikes, it was about getting
ladies on bikes.
We had a lot of positive feedback, from women who had done
the sportive saying that it was their first one and that they’d really enjoyed
it. And the encouragement they got was absolutely brilliant.
As ever, we are immensely
grateful to all our sponsors and supporters especially All Terrain Cycles who
have supported us again this year. We also had sponsorship from Mountain Fuel,
Cycle Retreats, OTE, and Big Bobble hats.
The event simply wouldn’t be
possible without the help of the hundred plus lasses, the Yorkshire Lads
Carl and Ian, who are the brains behind the route management, and who are
mine and Kate’s husbands. Thanks go too to the YLCC club members and
their families and friends who came along to marshal and run the feed stations.
Cycling plays a massive part in my life. I ride my bike when
I can, and when I’m not riding I’m busy organising the sportive. When I ride I
never go out without a bottle of juice, bar and phone. But I do go out without
my knickers and with padded shorts!
What I like about cycling is the way you get out and meet
nice people. I like the freedom that it gives you. Not that I’m the bravest
going downhill, but when I’m going downhill it’s like being a child again.
It takes you away from work things, and everything else
you’ve been doing. I don’t always like going up hills, but there’s something to
be said about when you get to the top of a hill and you’ve managed to do it. We
did the Maserati ride as part of the Tour de Yorkshire and that was like hill
after hill after hill all day. It was hard, but once we’d done it it was
absolutely fantastic.
