Shabana

On Sunday 9th June, the roads of Birmingham were closed to traffic for a free annual cycling festival, Let’s Ride Birmingham.

Shabana is engaged in supporting women to become more active and try new activities.

I lead the Women Wellbeing Hub for Sparkbrook. We do quite a lot of sports activities for local women. This is one of our partners. So we coordinate some of the activities and this is the main hub.

We feel a lot more comfortable in a bigger group. There’s a lot of peer support within the group so the more experienced cyclists always make the others feel more confident and keep an eye on them so no one ever feels left out. Even if somebody does have a bit of a stumble it’s not really a big issue because there’s always someone there to assist that person and to have a little meet up point slightly ahead. Everybody looks after each other’s needs. So even if you’re at variant levels everybody is accommodated and it’s a really nice social group.

Also people know other people’s areas of development. So if they know a rider is quite slow they will accommodate that. Or if they’re quite new so they don’t feel as comfortable speeding down the road. So everyone learns about each rider as they’re developing themselves, which is a really good skill and builds confidence. Sometimes people naturally go into a leader role.