Spurred on by our guest speaker Becky James I'm up at 5:30 ready for a trip to the Velodrome after a couple of months hiatus. The Wednesday Early Bird sessions start at 7am and finishes at 9 which just about works for me as I can get into work by 9:30 if I leave ten minutes early. I'll be regularly attending these throughout the winter so if anyone wishes to join me they are more than welcome. There are beginner sessions which happen in the evening, I'm happy to attend one of these with anyone who fancies a go. Basically it's a good time of year to get started as there are more opportunities to get your track accreditation (licence) this time of year which will give you confidence to attend any of the sessions available throughout the week, saying that as long as your a competent enough rider you can attend most sessions without a licence so don't be put off!
Good to see a load of the regular faces this morning, luckily for me none of the fast guys were in attendance! Started off with a good warm up which must have been about 32 laps. After a short break we were up on the blue line ready to do our flying 500m sprint, peeling off the front to ride at the very top of the track, then sprinting down the bank to do two laps as fast as you can on the black line. I think I heard 35.4 shouted at me for that which is pretty slow. This being my first ride for a while I did have visions of myself forgetting to pedal and falling off so I wasn't that upset by the result!
Another quick break after that in which we all sang happy birthday to the coach that was taking us, as he was 75 we all decided to a 75 lap TT instead of the usual 64. This was quite tough managed to do a couple of laps each time I was on the front. Had to overtake to fill some gaps caused by newer riders who were struggling a bit. The last 4 laps fell apart as riders at the front dropped back and others felt obliged to overtake and fill up the gaps, I found myself moving from third up to the front with 2 laps to go, only to be overtaken on the final straight. The 11 laps were taken as a warm up, I think we did 10 miles around 22 minute mark.
After that we took a couple of laps, sprinting off the front on the whistle working in pairs riding around the track until we caught up with the tail of the group. Lots of room for improvement, which will hopefully come in the couple of months over the winter.
Ta
P
