VELO
FILLE
By Lauren Murphy
Racing with smiles on faces are Lou Clark, Rachel Kimber and Adele Whelan (L-R)
If you are ever in Warragul early enough to see the sun rise you may see flashes of colour of a different kind. Whizzing around the outskirts of town are members of Velo Fille, a women's cycling group that started seven years ago. Being out on a bike lets women take a break from their other roles. Members speak of the physical, social and emotional benefits, and how these feed back into the other parts of their lives. Invariably they pay tribute to Kaylene Chaproniere, one of Velo Fille’s founders. For Kaylene herself, cycling brings a sense of self and independence like no other sport. Cycling is a chance to be free from any other roles and expectations in life, she says. "You have this sense of freedom, the wind is in your hair and you are just you." Like most kids growing up in Australia, Kaylene knew how to ride a bicycle, but it wasn't until she moved to Darwin in her mid-20s that she ditched her car for a bike to commute to work with an international recruiting company. On a trip to South America, she took on mountain biking. It was to change her life in ways she never expected. Back in Australia, the bike needed
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some attention so, during a visit back home to see her parents, she took it into a cycling shop in Warragul. That was when she met her future husband, Shaun, an avid cyclist who had just left the air force. They ended up opening their own cycling shop (Chilli Cycles) not long after they were married. She wasn't a strong cyclist then. She recalls doing her first 'longer' ride in Warragul before getting in the car to measure how far it was. She called Shaun excitedly to say she had done a 17km loop. She has since done 210km rides but of course it is all relative. She continued to ride recreationally and attempt that bit further each ride, but found excuses not to join in on a Saturday group ride. The problem was nerves, she says. "It took me about six weeks to go for that first group ride but then I never looked back."
After one of the group rides, some of the women started talking about doing their own ride. They casually mentioned it to a few others. That first Wednesday, 16 women turned up at 6am for their first group ride. That was December 2009 and it was the start of Velo Fille. They had 40 different women come on a ride that first season. Some of the women they knew, others not. The ages ranged from 14 to early 60s. On one ride three generations of women rode from Warragul to Drouin as part of the 'ride like a girl' event. “It was a bit of an eclectic mix," Kaylene says. “People who were not keen to go on mixed rides felt it was a more welcoming ride.” The group grew quite organically, taking on recreation rides around Victoria. The Baw Baw Challenge was the first ride together, with members taking on the 70 or 110km ride. That May Kaylene drove a bus and trailer to another series at Whittlesea.