ANNOUNCEMENT - MARCH 2025

Mike Stretch

The club’s ‘Meet the Member’ feature presents a series of questions to the interviewee, intended to provide an insight into their cycling personality, achievements, and connection with the club. Our late friend and fellow clubman, Mike Stretch, was never featured in Meet the Member, but in many ways he needed no introduction. Following his passing in March 2025, we remember one of our most prominent and characterful members who gave so much to the club in so many ways.

I first met Mike on one of the club’s training rides in 2009. Little did I know this was the beginning of a friendship that would result in thousands of miles cycled together and an equal measure of laughs. For those not fortunate enough to have met Mike, and for those looking back with fond memories, here is my attempt at completing his Meet the Member, posthumously. He wouldn’t have liked the thought of me writing his obituary, so that it is not.

The first question the member is usually asked is ‘When did you get into cycling and when did you join the club?’ A proud Lancashireman from Carnforth, Mike moved to Bollington in 2009 having begun riding as a junior member of Kent Valley Road Club. A clubman through and through, on arrival to Cheshire, he soon joined the Wheelers and was a regular on the faster club rides and Thursday night chain gangs.

I can’t answer what Mike’s most memorable ride was, but it’s fair to say that most rides with him were memorable for some reason or other, including unrepeatable jokes, mechanical calamities and ‘the world’s shittest crash’, to name a few. He particularly liked the fast summer chain gangs and meeting up in the Ship Inn after a winter club run, where we all enjoyed the blazing coal fires, good banter and cheap beer.

His training rides were ultra hilly because, unbeknown to us at the time, he’d set a goal of achieving a given amount of ascent per hour, hour after hour. Often, we’d be heading back to base on the final descent for him to announce he was going to ‘stick an extra loop on’, and you could join if you wanted. Quite often you didn’t want. On the occasions when you’d return to the King’s Head after a long club run in the Peaks, confident that you’d ended the ride on similar stats, he’d announce he would head home ‘up Coalpit’ (Lane) and in doing so outdo you on miles and elevation.

Mike put his competitiveness to good use, racing the club road races, hill climbs and open 10, 25 and 50 mile time trials. His most memorable race was probably winning the club’s Parkinson Memorial road race in 2014. Apparently, he took great pleasure in telling ex-pro Steve Cummings during a chance encounter in a holiday resort that they both had their names engraved on the race trophy. Mike recalled that Steve didn’t quite share the same enthusiasm for that common ground, or words to that effect.

Some interviewed members are asked ‘Do you have any top tips for other cyclists?’. Speaking with his experience as a racer, event organiser, social cyclist and family man, Mike would have advocated the need to keep it fun and in context. The context being that you should ‘pin a number on’ but with his brutal honesty that ‘you’re just a bang average rider at the end of the day’. He was a massive advocate of cycling clubs and would often say ‘join a team with a place name on the jersey’. He was true to his word.

Off the bike, Mike invested an enormous amount of time in the club, especially in his role as club kit coordinator with the support of his wife, Emma. He was accommodating to the point of selfless and would think nothing of delivering kit to your door or having meals interrupted so a clubmate could collect a jersey. Whether it be as marshal, lead-driver, timekeeper or event organiser, he did it, and with great enthusiasm. He was also my ever-reliable DJ and PA at the Supacross. The 2024 event set list was exceptional, although the speed at which he announced the kids podiums probably left some with mild whiplash in receiving their medals. But that was Mike: flat out, all of the time. When discussing the prospect of sharing a tent on a cycling trip, I asked ‘Do you snore?’. His answer: ‘Snore? I don’t even f****** sleep!’.

How lucky we were that Mike moved to Macclesfield and took to our club and town just as we took to him. But be warned, if he snores as loud as he spoke, let’s hope he’s sleeping on his side.

Matt Lawton