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Icebreaker 1 track meet

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On Sunday I traveled to Newport to ride in the first of the Icebreaker series at the Velodrome.

At the start I was feeling quite nervous, I think from the fact that I hadn’t ridden an Icebreaker before, even though I knew that it would be a bit like a track league or Youth Omnium.

Laura had already raced before my event got underway and she had done well, so that made me feel better, and once I was on the bike and warming up I started to feel more at ease and ready for the racing.

First up was the scratch race. I was a strong field of 24 riders it was fast, but I settled into it and was riding well and starting to feel comfortable. Unfortunately half way through the race another rider came down on me hitting in to my bars and front wheel, almost causing a crash. I managed to keep the bike upright and keep going, but my confidence and composure had taken a bit of a knock which effected the rest of my race. By the end of the Scratch I was too far back, as I had expected it to go off earlier, so I finished just outside of the top 12. This was disappointing, but my main issue was getting my focus back for the next event.

Next up was the Points race and I knew what I needed to do to get to the final, as after missing out on the scratch final, I didn’t want to miss out again. I let the first sprint go, the idea being that the riders who scored in the first sprint would be the strong sprint riders, and then as it was only a heat they wouldn’t go for others. I then tried to put myself near the front and ride an attacking race, trying to get in the breaks to get some points. After missing out on the next two sprints in terms of points – being 6th and 5th in the sprints respectively, I tried to position myself well for the final sprint, in order to place as highly as possibly. I ended up 5th on the line, which unfortunately wasn’t quite enough to get to the final, a shame as I gave it my all, but made a few tactical mistakes that didn’t help me.

The final event of the meet was the Elimination, and this is usually a race I enjoy, but I got it badly wrong, finding myself last out of the pen and on to the boards, and so at the back at the start of the race. I had to sprint to catch on and I managed to do enough to survive the first elimination, but feeling tired my observation wasn’t good enough, and whilst I thought that I was safe I wasn’t, with another rider sprinting over the top. As a result I came out very early, and was extremely disappointed in myself. I should have made a bigger effort early on to get to the front end of the race, and then I would have been in for much longer – but it had been a big learning experience and that is as important as anything at this stage.

By the end of the racing I was feeling tired both physically and mentally, I was disappointed at how the day had gone in terms of results, but was also aware that it gave me some important lessons and how to deal with problems whilst on the track.

I am now looking forward to my next Icebreaker, when I will have the chance to put the lessons that I learnt today into practice and that should improve the results and give me a more positive outcome.

Big thanks to my coach, Peter Georgi of Epic Coaching, for his support on the day, especially given I was feeling a bit out of sorts.

BCDS SQT and New Kit

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morgan-sqtA very early morning today, up at 5 and off to the Velodrome for an SQT session with BCDS.

It was good to meet up with Dan and the other riders, and get in some good track time.

During the track session we did a warm up with ‘taking lap efforts’, Russian steps, a points race exercise, and finally an elimination practice and race.

Following on from the track session we had some time with WattBikes, before getting together to pick up some new kit and talk about the year to come.

A good day, if a long one, and after a nice roast chicken dinner I am looking forward to bed

Newport Velodrome Winter Track League C Winner

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A very unexpected trophy this evening, I picked up the overall winner of the Newport Velodrome Winter Track League C.

I had been winning 3 events on most evenings that I attended, but I didn’t realise I had been often enough to have put together the points to take the win.

I was surprised when my name was called out, as was Dad, but delighted all the same.

I am now looking forward to moving up to the B league, and putting in to practice the things I have learnt over the last couple of months.

Winter Track League

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I’ve been racing in the Newport Velodrome Winter Track league this year, and I am doing a lot of learning!

Peter, my coach, has been really helpful in guiding me how to approach the races, and whilst I have plenty to learn I am starting to get success.

The evenings generally consist of a Scratch race, the Hare and Hounds, a 4 lap (1km) Dash, Elimination race, and then my favourite, the Points race.

I have generally been able to win 3 of the events most evenings, and I enjoy attacking in the final part of the points race and trying to stay away until the end.

Hopefully this experience will help me in the Youth Omniums next season.

Track Accreditation

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[vc_row type=”in_container” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ width=”1/1″][image_with_animation image_url=”40″ alignment=”” animation=”Fade In”][vc_column_text]On Tuesday 1st September I headed back to Newport Velodrome to do my track accreditation, so that over the winter I could race in the winter league at Newport. As Newport is an inside velodrome you have to pass a test to make sure that you are capable of racing safely, by doing drills and exercises safely. For the test you have to do everything properly and make signals obvious, a bit like a driving test, so the examiner knows what you are doing. You get 3 chances, so forget to look over your shoulder when changing 3 times and you fail.

For the test we had to do a warm up. This consisted of riding around on the black line with changes every lap, and then moved on to riding on the stayers line (blue) with changes every half lap.This was very easy for me as I have been doing it at the track recently.

We then had to space ourselves out by 2-3 bike lengths and the back rider would weave their way through going over and under until they got to the front. This was also a fairly straight forward and simple exercise, with the only problem being some riders not maintaining distance and sitting on the wheel in front – thus not leaving a gap to weave through. If this happened we were told to move on to the next one, I did this a couple of times when I was weaving through.

The final thing to do was stacking riders and rotating in the stack. We were put in to groups of four, with one rider on the black line, one on the sprinters line (red), one between the sprinters and stayers lines and the last rider on the stayers line (blue). To change the back rider would slow down, the others would drop when it was clear and then the rider would come up to the top of the stack. The hardest thing about this exercise was that all of the front wheels had to be aligned all of the way around, apart from in the changes. The rider on the black set the speed and the others had to maintain the front wheel alignment. This meant going quicker at the start of the banking and then slower coming out of it, if you were higher up.

That was all of the drills and exercises we had to perform as the hour session soon passed. After we had gone back in a group of seven of us were called over and told that we had passed, with the other 5 who took the test failing. So a first time pass… bring on the Winter Track League Series![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]