Hi all,

Glad you all enjoyed the workshop! Thanks for coming along - it was good fun and I enjoyed putting you through your paces, altho I regret to say I'm pretty sunburned in some places after clearly neglecting full sunscreen coverage! Thanks to Andy DS for being an excellent "textbook" model to demonstrate my rundown of the drills. A brief rundown of the day:

There were nine of us altogether, including four complete newbies to the track (David S., Jeff, David Y., and Edwin. I think). I gave everyone an enthralling lecture on track safety and how to ride the track. We then did practice just learning to ride in a line and then moved on to learning to take turns making the pace and using the banking to move to the back of a line. It brought a small tear to my eye to see nine people in Kissena kit all riding round the track in a line.

Then, with everyone split into two groups on opposite sides of the track, I then put my latest coaching accessory (a whistle) to good use and had everyone else practice jumping from one group to the other. Everyone agreed it was harder than it looks!

Next followed more talks on track racing and track sprinting, suitably followed by some practice flying 200m, which everyone seemed to enjoy! David Yang won the prize for the best "home straight sprinting face", while we also learned an important distinction between sprinting on the road and on the track - on the latter, following your initial acceleration out of the saddle, you stay in the seat the whole way to the line. It's all about getting everything out of your initial o/o/s acceleration, then it's down to seated leg speed. Next, we did some standing starts, and then, to finish off, a mock keirin between Josh, David Y, Andy and me, featuring Jeff as the "moto" lead out on his road bike. Good fun!

If I didn't say this at the time, I'd encourage everyone who went to try out track racing (if you hadn't thought about it already). The state champs are less than a month away. It features Cat 5 races, which are actually ideal to try out. We can sort you out a loaner bike if you need it.

The post-track tacos looked great. Next time people, next time. Btw, photos? Video? I know both were taken in the course of the day...

^feel the passion^

^ *overcome with emotion*

I cackled sumpin' FIERCE at Yang's standing start photo. Everything about his posture, war face, flexed arms, etc, gave the impression he was traveling at a furious rate of speed. Except, that is, Keiran standing delicately behind him looking as if he has his hands under the airport bathroom's hand dryer.

^PERFECT timing on that one, Kayt.

@Sharma - My body was sore Monday and my legs didn't respond even a little bit this morning. Neither did Kayt's apparently. I think our little day at the track took its toll.

Dear jeebus, @kayt, that is too perfect. I barely functioned yesterday and barely got to the park this morning (forgot my water bottle and heart rate monitor). I'm officially obsessed with track...

Haha, I'm glad to hear you were all trying hard on Sunday! Track...it's like road, only faster and harder ;-)

David - top marks for that standing start face and glad to hear you've caught the track bug Get yourself down to the track again as soon as you can. Personally planning to be there on Sat afternoon and Sun morning if you're free...

And as for crashes, check out this idiot...

kieranleahy said:

Haha, I'm glad to hear you were all trying hard on Sunday! Track...it's like road, only faster and harder ;-)

David - top marks for that standing start face and glad to hear you've caught the track bug Get yourself down to the track again as soon as you can. Personally planning to be there on Sat afternoon and Sun morning if you're free...

Unfortunately this week/weekend is packed, but hoping to get out there on a more regular basis starting next week.  How early on Sunday morn?  I'm leading out the "fat out ride" around 9:30a from Park Slope...

hollly shit is that you kieran?

^ yikes!!  I presume you were ok???  jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezus.

OUCH

David Yang said:

Unfortunately this week/weekend is packed, but hoping to get out there on a more regular basis starting next week.  How early on Sunday morn?  I'm leading out the "fat out ride" around 9:30a from Park Slope...

Planning to get there for 9.30 on Sunday with Andy DS - there's a women's clinic on at 12 I think so we'll be kicked off before then. Btw @Kayt Mathers you should go along to the latter if you can!

If my ride doesn't pan out (right now it's just me and @stearnsy, but he's throwing a shindig the night before...meaning, hangover city?...) I'm going to make the effort to be out there.

I like it, Aaron and David! Hope to see you both there.

Thanks for the tip, @Kieran-- I would have jumped on the clinic, but the beach beckons... 

Hey, I managed to get the video footage from the track workshop put together...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1xFLrPuPq0

I would pay heaps of money to see that live.

to be fair, that monkey in the yellow held the outside waaaaay better than any of us newbies for the flying 200s.

That's what I like to hear, Aaron! You should get all the track time you can in between now and the State champs.

Btw, I see you took six seconds off your kilo time on Wed compared to the one you did in May - good job!

Shit, sorry, I just doubled checked (page 4 here: http://www.kissenavelodrome.info/results/2013/Kissena13SpringClassic.pdf) and it was Wilson's time from May that I was thinking of!

You actually went 0.03 of a second quicker...still, er, better than nothing, eh?

Sorry!