Ride Entry – 17th November 2009
by admin on Nov.17, 2009, under Uncategorized
Bike: Van Tuyl
Distance:25 miles
At first I didn’t want to go. Very tired from little sleep, felt a bit sick, just wanted to go home and get into bed for a couple of hours. But I did in the end. I’m glad I did. It was a good session. Fast at times, recovery pace with the A session tends to be a bit faster than normal and when we do sprints and the like, these boys really move. That said, the amount of tactical manouvering that goes on is ridiculous, it’s a training session! Yes, there’s some races but they’re not *proper* races.
You wouldn’t know it though. The instant the coach tells us what we’re doing you can see them positioning themselves so they have to do the minimum amount of work before the actual race begins. And then they’ll not work hard in interval training to save themslves for the sprint. The sprinters will beat people but *only* just beat them, and then drop out of the exercise.
(I refer to ‘they’ and ‘them’. It’s a select group of guys who turn up and treat the SQT as an excuse to show everyone how good they are.)
They’re not so quick though. I’m a 40 odd year old ex smoker with only a few months proper track experience and when they go for a sprint, they’re not getting too far ahead of me. I never was a sprinter though, never will be. Always been an endurance guy and today’s end game was great for me. The coach told us to just ride and change every half lap so immediately the pace shot through the roof and we were thundering round dropping people left right and centre. The sprinters all fell off pretty quick leaving a hardcore group of about ten. As the pace rose, and the lap count rapidly increased, more and more dropped out until just five of us were caning it round like a train. Fantastic! More stuff like that please. Really enjoyed that last event.
Cutting the velodrome visits down to one a week though. The cost in petrol and track charges (not to mention time) are a little too expensive I’m afraid. In the new year I’ll hopefully be joining the track league and trying my hand at some races.
November 18th, 2009 on 9:11 am
Looking forward to you stepping it up to racing. A real opportunity for you to get some red mist on!
November 19th, 2009 on 12:26 pm
“A real opportunity for you to get some red mist on!”
Yeah working out your anger on some opposition would be quite therapeutic I reckon.
Always fancied a go at track, hammering along in a train sounds pretty cool. Not sure I can be arsed tho, new bike, new technique, lessons, booking sessions etc. Plus I don’t like crashing which sounds like a given when your learning track riding.
November 19th, 2009 on 2:24 pm
They say everyone has a big crash, *everyone*.
Mine was a real lesson learned, hopefully never make that misatke again. It is a lot of money investment but I really enjoy it and it is quite nice being able to ride a proper bike in the warm and dry. There’s a beauty to track riding, I believe I’ll be writing something about it for some magazine or other shortly.
November 20th, 2009 on 8:31 am
I was thinking more along the lines of “everyone crashes 1st time they use spds”. BIG crash? Def not trying track then!
“I’ll be writing something about it for some magazine” Wahey!
November 20th, 2009 on 12:43 pm
If there was one close to me I’d hit that baby up. POWER!
I bet you get some right ol’ gurns on.