Hi everyone
One of the key activities of the club is the training we carry out to enable our Associates to put into practice a range of advanced riding skills and become ‘thinking riders’; truly Advanced Riders in every sense of that phrase. And to carry out that task we need Observers. TVAM has developed a comprehensive and structured programme to enable Advanced Riders to become the best Observers within IAM RoadSmart. With support from a mentor and the Training Team, the training programme builds observing and coaching skills to enable those with the commitment and drive to become TVAM Observers.
We keep our Observers up to date with specific sessions on riding skills, knowledge and coaching skills, through activities such as the Aardvark riding programme with Rapid Training, the Observer Day and the Observer Weekend.
If you’ve passed your Advanced Test and you’re interested in becoming an Observer then please come along to one of the talks with a member of the Training team at 8.45am in the library at St Crispin’s, or drop an email to observerinterest@tvam.org.
We are always looking for ways to make our training more effective and you will recall that I mentioned some potential weekend sessions for Associates in a previous ‘from the saddle’ article. These sessions will be slightly more ‘intensive’ than normal and are likely to comprise observed runs in the morning and afternoon of both days of a weekend. I’m pleased to be able to tell you that the first trial of these weekend sessions is planned for the 12th and 13th October. We are working on a suitable venue and we will be discussing with the Observers how we will resource the sessions. I hope to have some more information on this very soon.
I’d like to remind run leaders to submit social run report forms for all TVAM (and local team) runs. The social run reports provide an important measure of engagement for TVAM, as well as an indication of the activity levels of run leaders and back markers.
Look forward to catching up with you all on a social run or trip somewhere soon.
Chris Brownlee
Chief Observer
