I stopped group cycling about 10 years ago because of the MUDGUARD thing, I was fed up of eating cow shit washed down with road salt & having grit embedded in my eye balls.
I rarely bother with the club runs in the winter for this reason. I must be the odd one out because people seem to be overwhelmingly OK about returning from a 3hr ride looking like they have competed in a particularly grueling running of a Belgian classic.
No, they like that look because if makes them look 'Rapha-hard'. Just add a b/w filter and you have instant attitude.
I remember a Shark (which is very clubby) and a group turning up at first control looking very Belgian and coated in Rapha and Assos and expensive carbon dust, and no doubt loving the taste of agriculutal road shit in their mouths. Two minutes later Tomsk walks in off his 70s tourer, shorts and sandals, dry as a bone, smiling, looking like he'd just popped down to the shops. Now I love that people from clubs do Audax's and I am no mudguard pedant, but there's a lesson then, or something, and what a great excuse for a.n.other bike