After a hectic evening driving(!) to Mornington & back (Father's day, dinner with Dad) I missed the Kew ITT.  I felt bad about it, although I can't ITT to save my life, I think it's important to support the event and someone has to come last ... I managed to get to DISC though.  John Lewis had a family thing to sort out so I was the coach in charge for Sunday's DISC session.

I got there early, had plenty of time to swap bits around on the T1 after Tuesday's outdoor session at Blackburn, and met up with Lisa Hocking.  We had a good talk about her riding, had a look at lines around the track to use to climb the bank without wasting energy and then we did a practice flying 200 to reinforce the theory.  I reckon Lisa has the potential to be a track sprinter.

Then it was time to run the masters session - we had the usual suspects show up, except I was the only aboc'er (everyone else is sick, injured or off doing family stuff).  Stu Vaughan was as always very helpful, Lawrence Maskill helped me out and we had a former 3 times Australian sprint champion along, Sandy (I didn't catch his sirname).  Our focus was on sprints for the day, so we did some flying 200's in low gears, then some slow laps practicing watching eachother and then a couple of baby sprint derbies.  During this time two other riders were using DISC and I confess to not really knowing what they were doing or if they were fitting in with us or not.  They were doing sprint efforts every 20 mins or so and mostly kept out of our way, but during one drill when Lawrence was controlling us as we did half lap chase efforts they did get a bit mixed up with one of our riders.  I don't know exactly who has authority at that session but those two should have co-ordinated with us at the very least.

Anyway, we'll sort that out soon.  We finished the session off with a 50 lap 'take a lap' grand prix, and I set myself a target of 6 laps, and got them.  On top of Saturday's flogfest down Beach rd, that hurt.  I had no strength during the session and my sprints were particularly feeble but I could do some submaximal efforts and the 'take a lap' is a good place for that sort of thing. 

We had to finish off pretty-much spot on 2pm as the Womens' Come and Try day was on straight after us. I'd like to pass on publically my congrats to the organisers of that event, Lawrence Maskill, Luke Mason and all the people who showed up to help.  It looked very well run and everything I've heard about it since has been very positive. It was great to see Andrew Cullen and his family, and his younger sister was having a go (keep pedaling!), which was great.

One thing that was missing was Blackburn people to promote the Blackburn track races.  These kinds of events are a goldmine for clubs, especially ones that want to grow and promote their track racing.  Blackburn runs a summer track racing program that is perfect for beginners - it's a lot less intimidating than DISC and is deeply graded and has small fields so everyone gets a chance to be competitive and the races are safer than at DISC. We have cheap hire bikes and a very welcoming culture.  I did bring it up at the last (or second last?) BBN meeting and also I'm told that all the clubs were sent information about it.  It's a little disapointing that no-one from the club could make it along to spruik the summer season. I understand that everyone's busy etc, but those sorts of events are great for getting more people involved in the sport and it's a bit of a lost opportunity.  I'm informed that Brunswick got involved and as such I suspect that they'll pick up new members and more people racing their track season, it's unfortunate that Blackburn couldn't do the same.  Blackburn and Hawthorn were running the ITT in the morning, so that maybe makes a difference, but perhaps as a club Blackburn should look at doing some sort of a flyer about the summer races to have as a handout at least.  It's easy to do and cheap if it's kept simple (no, Nick, it doesn't need a graphics artist and a funky logo, it just needs to exist!).  I might knock one up this week and see if the club will endorse it.

A good thing to happen today is that Lawrence Maskill, who's now on the CSV board, is interested in having the CA Ride It licence be made upgradable - so that those of you who have Ride It licences can get $45 off the cost of your full racing licence, unlike at the moment where you have to pay twice if you have a Ride It and then decide you want to race.  This is a Good Thing and will lower the barrier to racing.

I've ordered a sample of the sunhats for the Trek Summer Sprint Series.  Got to have them all sorted by the end of September! We've also got to do a practice race day so we can sort out the officials and roles and scoring system etc.  Busy times!

UPDATE : Thankyou Lawrence, it turns out that a Ride It licence can be upgraded to a full racing licence.  We just learnt something very valuable!