A BRIEF HISTORY OF BRISTOL’S RADDEST CYCLING CLUB
You may have heard of Das Rad Klub, you may have ridden with Das Rad Klub, you may have bought a piece of merch from Das Rad Klub, but many people actually don’t know what it was, so here is a brief history of the club that was never meant to be a club, that later became a club, a race team, a brand, an events company, you name it. 10 years of having fun on bikes in & around Bristol, and something I’m incredibly proud of bringing to life.
Visit a year
2013
"It all started with a sticker"
The first physical ‘thing’ with Das Rad Klub printed on was a sticker, these gained traction worldwide & I posted a lot of these out to a lot of people to stick where they saw fit!
On 1st April 2013 I launched the ‘brand’ with a t-shirt & bottle release, followed by the first jersey - something subtle and understated, compared to cycling club jerseys on the market at the time. I wanted to create a bond between those Bristol cyclists who didn’t feel they fitted into the traditional cycling club mould. And that’s where it all began…
Followed by a ridiculously colourful in comparison kit option - the first addition of pink & blue, a colourway synonymous with the ‘klub' for years to come.
Both casual clothes & kits were well received, and sold out quickly, not just locally but across the globe, which was totally mind blowing! That gave a reason to produce many more t-shirts, bottles, caps & kits, now owned by hundreds of cyclists across the world.
2013 events included - the first ever DRK ride - ‘Bank Holiday Tonday’, a 100 mile fixed gear ride; Das Rad Kat - An alleycat in the city centre; and the first Full Moon Bike Ride in Bristol, an evening social falling on the full moon.
We also put a little crew together for Bristol’s biggest alleycat - Queen Of Tarts. Watch the video below. The fixed gear scene in Bristol was huge at the time, with plenty of alleycat & other fun races going on throughout the year, Das Rad Klub was born out of like minded riders taking part in these events together.
The first DRK kit out in the wild, a dream come true!
3 of us (working as couriers at the time) had been filming all kinds of bike riding throughout the previous year, and pieced together a short film names YOBS (a year of BS), which we showed at a local bike shop, and is still a great watch to this day. The absolute golden years of Bristol fixed gear!
2014
We continued to enter events, and host even more, including - The Alu Cat (alleycat), The Drag Race (a cross dressing out & back fixed gear race), and the infamous Tunnel Sprints (head to head fixed gear sprints in a railway tunnel).
Our core crew of riders took part in Bristol Bikefest (a 12 hour MTB race), London Nocturne (a fixed gear criterium), and the second Queen Of Tarts Alleycat, amongst others!
We hosted a pop up shop in a derelict WHSmith store in Clifton, with rides, treasure hunts & a bunch of new merch was produced to sell.
The Alu Cat video
The Drag Race video
2015
2015 saw ‘klub’ riders taking part in a number of racing disciplines, branching out from fixed gear bikes, and taking on the likes of cyclocross, and criterium races, as well as keeping the core social fixed gear rides & races alive in the city centre for the bustling Bristol scene - adopting Hacksaws Challenge (am out and back from Bristol to Bath at Halloween) & The Hell Climb (a fixed gear hillclimb over Dundry) from their original organisers.
2016
2016 was a BIG year for the motley crew of pink & blue wearing Bristolians. It saw the launch of DRK Racing - A group of some of the fastest riders in the west, who would go on to compete in a huge number of crit races, cyclocross, road races, and culminating in taking a number of riders to the National Hillclimb Championship in Matlock. The season kicked off at the Bristol South CC road race, with an outstanding win on debut by Stefan Barnett - a sign of things to come for the season?!
One absolute highlight of the year for all of us was the Bristol GP - a city centre crit in our hometown, something we thought would never happen, but it did, and we had 2 riders on the podium in front of a home crowd who left it all on the road, literally.
This was also the year that we began to put on group rides, after previously putting on ‘Steady Sunday’ rides in 2012/2013, I decided to start leading group rides, the first of these being Tuesday Klub - setting off at 7am for pre ride miles & smiles finishing at our favourite spot for many years - Full Court Press, an integral part of our fuelling strategy for many years!
Forever Pedalling also opened it’s doors in the summer of 2016, after spending my spare time organising rides, and creating merch, I decided to give it my all as my full time job, and put on another weekly ride - Saturday Klub, a saturday moning group finishing at FCP once again.
Our race season spawned some incredible results in all types of races in the south west, and saw a number of our team riders qualifying for the National Hillclimb Championship in Matlock. Cue road trip & a weekend spent recce-ing, and racing on Bank Road in front of a mega crowd.
2017
2017 was the year klub rides gained momentum - twice weekly rides gaining as many as 20 riders on. a Tuesday morning for a pre ride spin! We introduced an actual membership scheme, and a refreshed jersey for klub members, taking hints of pink & blue from the race kit, in an updated version of the original kit, this time manufactured by Milltag just like the race kit. Klub members were free to take part in races too, whilst the Race team continued to dominate across many disciplines, with the addition of some fresh faces too.
2018
in 2018 klub memberships went from strength to strength, and whilst we closed down one division - DRK Racing (with some riders continuing to ride under the klub name, and others joining the Forever Pedalling race team) , we turned our attention to putting on mass start rides. After the popularity of a 100km audax road ride put on in 2017, which was followed by an off road ride of similar length, in 2018 we put on another edition of Dirty Sunday.
The appetite for all terrain rides was obvious in Bristol, and with nothing of the sort starting from the city centre, we took it upon ourselves to organise these fun 100km off road days out. As well as this, we offered an ad-hoc off road alternative to Saturday Klub - Dirt Klub, which started & ended at the klub’s new home - Business As Usual; workshop / cafe / custom paint studio.
The local racing scene saw a flurry of pink & blue as klub riders tried their hand at crit racing, cross racing & everything in between. Once again a highlight had to be our hometown race of Bristol GP - this time an elite race, but with klub riders coming in top 10s in the support race once again!
Dirty Sunday Start & finish
Bristol GP 2018
2019
In 2019 we turned our attention to the mass start rides, after their popularity over the past 2 years. This time around we hosted 4 rides, 2 on the road - Spring Break & Schools Out, as well as the now legendary 2 Dirty Sunday rides.
One klub member made a long time goal come true - we hosted our first, and only British Cycling cyclocross race, named Dad Rad Kross, it took part as a round of the Western Summer Cyclocross league, and had a huge attendance, and a super fun course in Netham Park. What a day! Thanks Sam for all your hard work!
2020
The year it all stopped, quite literally, for many months… due to the pandemic we sadly stopped klub rides, and had to cancel out events for the year. We did encourage riders to take part in virtual versions of our rides, and by September, we put on a Dirty Sunday ride again, with a distance difference - riders rode together, and converged outdoors afterwards, just as government rules dictated! It was a success with over 50 riders taking part throughout the day!
2021
2021 continued to be a slow, unpredictable year, not just for the klub, but the world. As things came back to normal, the pro racing calendar shifted, and a rescheduled Classics calendar fell in autumn for the first time - sparking the idea of our very own Hell Of The South West. Others have tried, but nothing as hellish as this. Thank the weather gods for bringing the authentic classics weather to the south west for the day. Hats off to the 25 riders tht took to the start line, and even more so to those who got round, finishing at Berthas for a well deserved pizza. Thanks to Wayne Reid for documenting the day perfectly.
2022
For 2022, we teamed up with local cycling gang - Araf - advocates of ‘slow is ok’, and social, chilled rides to add a shorter route to our 4 annual rides. This was super fun to do, opening our rides to a wider audience, and bringing bigger groups than ever together to ride these popular on, and off road events. Wayne Reid was once again on hand to capture the days perfectly, and we’re so grateful for his commitment to capturing the rides.
Thanks Chris from Araf for coming on board, and creating rad graphics for all of the rides too.
There are too many people to thank as Das Rad Klub comes to a close, too many words to explain what this chapter of life meant to me, Coming from an idea in my head to connect Bristol cyclists, to 10 years later still having people ask if they can join the club, people who probably have no idea what it was just a few years ago is an amazing feeling.
From alleycats to national hill climbs, selling merch from Bedminster to Brisbane, seeing the club colours take part in rides and races across the country, countless number of times seeing complete strangers rocking kit or t-shirts out in the wild, being sent photos from across the world of people who were fans, it all got a lot bigger than I could ever have imagined.
What started as an idea of bringing those who didn’t feel like they fitted in a traditonal cycling club (circa 2013) together, to selling hundreds of bottles, t-shirts, jerseys & caps to cyclists across the globe, and then hearing the stories of those who connected over those purchases, or made friendships, or more. I know there are many, many people who were brought together through rides or events that I created, and it means to the actual world to see.
Nothing lasts forever, but my gratitude to every person who was involved in this chapter of life will never end, and I’ve met some of the most amazing people through this thing I started from the sofa of a flat in Southville. I can truly say I’ve loved every aspect of this journey, and I encourage you to do something you dream of, no matter how silly it may sound to others, because there will always be somebody out there who feels the same, and wants to be a part of it, and join you on a wet Tuesday morning at 7am to do the thing you love.
Thanks again to every last one of you that joined this ride, it would have been nothing without you.
🤙🏽