I'm pretty pleased.  Apart from a positive trend in my peak power output (up, not as much as I'd like, but still consistently going up is good, after a bit of a slump for a few months) I got offered a paid position with the NTID on Tuesday night when I was up at the AIS at the NTID coaching conference.  I didn't want to write about it here until I'd had a chance to talk to a few friends about it.  It's a very part-time position working as an assistant to Hilton Clarke with the Victorian NTID sprint squad.  This is basically what I've been doing for the last few months and it's been recognised by the guys at the NTID and they've committed to paying me to continue to do it.

As you can imagine, I'm very happy about this.  Paid coaching positions are few and far between and this is a great opportunity to develop further as a sprint coach and learn so much more, with a little bit of financial help.  I've done a lot of hours (I guess at roughly 250 hours since February, ~20 weeks, ~13 hours a week, give or take) helping that squad so far for 'free' (really, it's like being at school, I don't expect to get paid when I'm learning and aren't really a lot of use) as well as a bit of paid work while Hilton's been having his knee replaced, which will soon be over. Hilts will be back on deck and I'm sure the guys in the squad will be glad to have him back. 

I've done my best but I'm far from perfect when it comes to running some of the drills, in particular some of the motorpacing stuff is quite tricky to get right and I have a lot of practice and instruction to receive before I'm competent.  Getting the pacing right is critical in drills like motorbike entries, each rider needs a different entry speed, different rate of acceleration and so on, and some need me to go very fast indeed (getting close to 80km/h) which I'm still not comfortable doing.  I hit 80km/h on Saturday pacing one of them, and that's scary-fast on the velodrome on a motorbike.  In some ways it'll be frustrating to have to go back to being the assistant at the training sessions when I've been running the show for about a month, but I'll suck it up and it'll be a good, humbling experience when it happens.

Martin Barras (former Australian Sprint coach) is going to be at DISC on Thursday as part of the level 2 coaching course that's running there at the moment and I'm going to sit in on his session (and not ask any questions, ok!  Yes I will behave, Brendan!) and see what interesting things he has to say.  At the level 2 course I did back in November last year in Adelaide, Craig Colduck was one of the presenters.  Craig was Martin's strength coach and we got the chance to see a lot of the nuts and bolts of his programming style, getting a chance to see how Martin did it directly from him will be great.

We had a good turnout at our DISC session tonight too, I'm pleased to see growth in our little sprint group, I'm gradually handing over the reins to Nathan for the enduro programming and session running, having two of us means I can concentrate on my sprinters while Nath looks after the enduros, so far it's working well and I think everyone who attends is benefitting from having the two of us working together.

We're running an invitational sprint round at DISC on the 9th of July too, which I need a few more riders to attend, if you're interested you can read about it (and the invitational criteria!) here.

And ... I'm going to the AIS/NTID sprint camp in Adelaide in mid July to help out, I'll miss one of our DISC sessions, but Nathan's ok to run it on his own and the sprinters will have plenty of stuff to do without me.

Finally, I've got more track powertaps to play with, I think we've got, between myself, Hilton, the VIS and NTID six of them.  I swapped over the axles in two of the VIS ones today to use studs (conventional track nuts) from the rather fiddly bolts they originally came with.  Darryl Perkins is building the most recent pair of hubs into two more wheels which we should have in a week or two.

It's all go ....

I had to leave the NTID conference early on Wednesday, missing a few interesting talks, hopefully there'll be a DVD or at least a booklet summarising the ones I missed, which looked pretty worthwhile.  I came home in a little (80 seater) turboprop plane chock-full of families with babies (why?!)  but survived the ordeal of daddy encouraging little Johnny kicking the chair in front of him without having to channel Hilton on daddy .. Just ..

We had a solid night in at DISC with the NTID squad, it was bloody cold, started at about 12 or so degrees and warmed up(!) to about 14 by the late afternoon.  This meant that times would be a bit slower, but everyone rode well and it was a good session.

Thank you to Stewart Lucy for running the spin session for me on Tuesday, and to Dino for heating the bolla to feed the troops.

I'll get the next track and spin session programs up soon, and am looking forward to a good flaying on Sunday at DISC with the aboc Sprint Squad!

While the NTID isn't paying me, I am getting a few perks.  I'm off to Canberra (sitting at Tulla at the moment in the departure lounge) for a two day conference on talent ID at the AIS.  Some interesting speakers, on I'm looking forward to is a bloke from the air force who's going to talk on the things they look for in fighter pilots.  If it's as interesting as the talk at the NTID Cycling conference in Adelaide in May by the police psychologist it'll be excellent.  I have to leave early (on a little Dash-8!) to get back in time to be Hilton-Virtual at the NTID training session at DISC on Wednesday, but will still get the keynote speakers.

This does mean I miss Spin tonight, but that's ok, I did the ergo session yesterday on my recovery day so my sprinters, I have hurt like you will and it is good!

See you when I get back ....

So anyway .. on Monday, Luke Mason from CSV and I took the DISC motorcycle in to Gassit Motorcycles to get fixed up, it had a list of issues that need resolving.  The most critical being the starter motor being flakey.  There was four things in total that needed fixing :

1. Starter motor/battery (make it start reliably)

2. Fix the gearbox/clutch so it will select neutral when hot

3. Fix the cruise control

4. Service & fix oil leak

I picked it up on Wednesday during the NTID sprint training session.  They hadn't fixed the cruise control so I hung around for 30 mins or so while they tried to, then gave up.  (3) not fixed. 

Rode it back to DISC - the trip is about 2.5km, checked the log, 5km since I logged it out on Monday.  Uhuh .. It hasn't been testridden.  And .. IT WON'T GO INTO NEUTRAL!

Right. 

They did change the oil, clean up the engine casing (presumably they fixed the oil leak) and replaced the starter motor.  It cost around $1,100 I think, but it's NOT FIXED!

I've sent Rhys at CSV an email suggesting he tear the guys at Gassit a new one and I'm mightily annoyed, I've spent about half a day of very precious time riding it back and forth from DISC to Gassit etc, and the bloody job is not done.

Well, there's no men from Snowy River here, no dueling banjos either, but I've been out to Bonnie Doon with Lucie for my last weekend away for a while, where we went kayaking on the Goulburn and then just chilled out for a day.  Nathan ran the DISC session for me on Sunday.

Coming up very soon Hilton Clarke has a knee operation that will have him out of action for a month or more and I have to fill his shoes with the NTID and VIS guys.  This means every Wednesday from roughly 2pm 'til 10-ish and Saturdays from midday 'til around 5:30 I'll be at DISC, either on the motorbike or on foot, shouting at people to ride faster, keep going etc.  It's going to be pretty challenging and exciting and I'm looking forward to it.

Combine that with our Sunday DISC sessions and Spin on Tuesdays, and a bunch of people training in the 'haus and there's not much time for anything else except a bit of IT work to pay the bills and sleep. If this keeps up soon I'll be a full time coach.  Nifty ...

Today I spent some time faffing around at DISC while we sorted out some issues with the DISC motorcycle.  Over the last couple of weeks it's become unreliable; the starter doesn't work all the time (which is how I came to have a burn on my calf, pushstarting it), there's an oil leak, the chain is worn out, the cruise control is broken and it won't go into neutral when hot a lot of the time.  It's in at Gassit Motorcycles now getting repaired, I hope.  We also had a good turnout at the DUCC's session, where the squad learned about laying off and attacking into a gap and did some more group tactical skills stuff.  They're a great bunch and are keen and motivated to learn, which makes them a pleasure to coach.

In a few moments some sprinters will be here to do some lifting in the 'haus with me, I'd better get some motivation, it's time to do some heavy lifting!

I spent the weekend in at DISC helping some of the lads as aboc, and as 'virtual Hilton', coach.  Dino rode a 12.021s flying 200 which was a huge PB for him, Chris Ray rode a 1:09 kilo (also a big PB), Cam Woolcock rode the toughest points race I've ever seen and for some reason was heavily marked (did they all know he was the sprinter in the pack?) and survived it.  As "VH" I looked after Lou Pascuzzi and The V-Train on Sunday at the sprints, Lou getting a bronze and Stew a gold and the champion of champions after some carefully considered tactical riding in the sprint finals.

I missed out on going for an MTB ride with Emily, but I'm sure we'll be able to do some more of that soon.  I was pretty cranky about missing that, but it is what it is and there'll be more chances for rides, especially after Dino splashes for some ay-ups and we can go at night.

This week, I'm coaching and hopefully lifting in the 'haus tonight, coaching in the 'Haus tomorrow morning, running Spin tomorrow night with Nathan then I'm off to Adelaide for the NTID sprint conference for two days, back late on Thursday, Friday I intend to take easy and spend some QT with Lucie before Saturday I'm in at DISC again with Hilton and the NTID/VIS/CCCC guys and then Sunday is the first of our winter DISC sessions!  Gulp .. that's a big week!

Sunday saw the last round of the SSS for 2009-2010, the weather was iffy and heavy rain in the morning cast doubts on if we'd be able to race but with the help of a great team we dried the track and raced and the outcome couldn't have been better if it was scripted.  Claire Campbell won the Trevor Watson Trophy and the Roselli wheels by winning her final and Chris Ray had to settle for second place again, but it went down to the last lot of finals.  Alex Vaughan's consistency was rewarded by his third place in the aggregate, Dino Apolito, who set a PB in every round, by ~0.1s each time was awarded Most Consistent and Penny Robinson Most Improved.

For my part I finally managed to ride a half-decent flying 200, a 13.376 which was almost a PB, my last best time at Blackburn was a 13.3-something (hand timed) so it's probably an equal to my PB, which I have to be happy with, especially given that I'd spent the previous day on my feet all day yapping at the Victorian Omnium Championships, hardly the best leadup to a day of sprinting! I wanted to get a 13.2 this season but it wasn't to be.  Next summer ...  I didn't manage any wins in the rounds but I gave Ed Osbourne a decent race at least, neither of us could split it but the judges saw it was Ed's at the throw :

A pretty good race.  Ed snuck under me at the jump and I moved up once I noticed he had his wheel under me, I thought I had him with 20m to go but he found a little more, my line was bad out of the final bend and he got me by a whisker at the end in the throw. In my other two races I was soundly thrashed so I won't show you them!

The series is done now and it's time for a bit of a rest (as if ...) and then start training again for 2010-2011.   We had (again!) a fantastic team of people that ran the series, in particular Sue Dundas and Ann Apolito, and Jodie Dundas on the video camera and John "inventor of everything worthwhile in the last 1,000 years" Lewis running the electronic timing.  The timing was a big hit, next summer I think we'll try for a finish-line camera so we can really get fancy when it comes to close finishes.  We get a lot of them and judging is very hard, if we can use modern technology to help, that's got to be an improvement.

I had the DUCC squad at Blackburn this morning doing their first skills session of the season, we had four riders show up which was a bit disappointing, I'd like to see a few more, but hopefully momentum will build and we'll get more showing up as the sessions continue.

Tomorrow, Spin starts up and then we start DISC sessions on the 25th, mix that in with the NTID/VIS/CCCC squad work on Wednesday nights and coaching in the 'Haus and I don't know when I'll get to sit down and rest!  Heh ...

In the UK, at the Manchester velodrome, they have rules about what tyres you may use on the track :

• Use Continental, Schwalbe, Tufo or Vittoria clinchers or tubulars (black tread only), 21 mm wide or better.

  Recommended clinchers and tubulars
  Make	Model	Width	Make	Model	Width
  Conti	Tempo	22mm	Tufo	S3 Pro	22mm
  Conti	Sonderklasse 165/175	22mm	Tufo	S3 Lite 135	21mm
  Schwalbe	Durano T	22 and 25mm	Tufo	Elite 120	21mm
  Schwalbe	Ultremo R1	22 and 25mm	Vittoria	Pista EVO CS	22mm
  			Vittoria	Pista EVO CL	22mm

• Tyres must be inflated to 8 bar (119psi), and the pressures, and tyre condition checked regularly. Do not use Michelin tyres or any dual compound tyres or tyres with coloured treads. Other tyres and tubulars may in future be recommended after analysis. Do not use tub tape to fix tubulars to sprint rims – use proprietary rim cement.
• Do not use brand new tyres on the track without first preparing them thus; rub the surface with alcohol or white vinegar or other degreaser before use. Ride the first three laps on the Cote d’Azure or bottom of track.

(which we use), but as a general principle, I think it's a good one.  There's far too many low speed crashes on the boards at DISC and I strongly suspect that poor tyre choice is a significant contributor to this.  I was watching one of the NTID lads trackstanding on the bend last night doing skills work, on a Diamonte Pro Light.  Try that on one of those crappy Michellin Pro3's ... Manchester bans them! :

·         Only use Schwalbe or Continental clinchers or tubulars (black tread only), 23 mm wide. Do not use Michelin tyres. ·         Do not use brand new tyres on the track; rub the surface with alcohol or white vinegar or other degreaser before use. Ride the first three laps on the Cote d’Azure or bottom of track.

heh!

You can see the full Manchester recommendations here.  Worth a read.

And I didn't bugger it up too badly ...

Hilton called me on Tuesday morning, he had some family stuff to do on Wednesday night and as I'd been assisting him for the past month or so, he asked me to run the session.  Hilton has a program not dis-similar to our DISC sessions, but more densely packed, much longer (it works out to about 7 and a half hours now, from 2:30ish 'til 10pm) and with more different groups to take care of.  He'd be there 'til about 5:30pm then had to go.  I got in to DISC at about 2:30pm to get an overview of the night's plan (ours is online, his is on a bit of paper) and we went over the various things everyone had to do.  The U17 sprinters had some specific drills, the CCCC enduros were pretty simple, they had take a lap in pairs efforts and then some handicap 500m efforts for a couple of blocks, the pursuiters had scheduled cadence drills and so on. 

So it was a chocka-block program, as usual for those nights.  I would get help from Daryl Perkins at about 7pm but otherwise it was all parents etc to help out where possible.  I had Emily there doing some specifics at about 4pm while Hilton worked with Madison Hammond, she and he were done by 5:30 when the main group of sprinters arrived.  The enduros all get there to start at 7pm which was when it was going to get interesting.  The sprint stuff I mostly have a handle on, and the bulk of the enduro work is variations on a theme (stop them getting bored while doing E3 and over threshold efforts, essentially).  The pursuiters have particular needs as they prepare for the Aussie titles in a week and a bit.

At the end of the night we managed to slot in some madison practice for some of the sprinters and enduros and no-one crashed and as far as I know at least, everyone left satisfied with the session.  It wasn't perfect, the pursuiter's warmup was botched a little due to a misunderstanding of the written drill for them during the warm up, but it worked out ok.

At 10:20pm, when we walked out, I was knackered but reasonably happy with how it went.  There's things I need to do better, I need to go faster on the motorbike for some of the sprinters who are really quick, and I need to get a better handle on how Hilton works with the pursuit squad, but that will come with time and I'm pleased with the night.  They're a good squad of motivated people and a delight to work with.

Yesterday I spent at DISC, I was there at 9am working with Liz Randall as she gets ready for her hour record (1st March), then I hung around and waited for John Beasley, to assist him with the Malaysian squad, but I got it wrong!  They weren't in on Wednesday!  Doh!  So I ducked home for a couple of hours, and went back in to get there at 4pm to work with Hilton.

Welcome to the madhouse.

I had been to watch a few Wednesday night sessions over the years as a casual observer, but this time I was in the thick of it.  It starts for the coaching team at about 4, Hilton and Daryl Perkins (from now on, Perko ...) were sorting out stuff in the NTID/VIS/CCCC cage, I helped a bit, carried some stuff, then we had a look at the program for the night.

Many of you reading this have been to our sessions, and will know that we publish the plans ahead of time and have done so for a couple of years now.  So we're no strangers to planned sessions, but this is a whole new scale and intensity ... The session starts at 6:30pm sharp, with warmups for the sprinters and then the enduros (30 mins sprinters, 40 mins enduros), then they had 3 groups - Sprint, NTID/Pursuit and Enduro.  

I did the enduro warmup on the motorbike, Hilton did the sprinters.  The original request was 20 laps at 35, 15 laps at 40, 10 laps at 45, 15 laps ramping up to 58km/h.  When I took it up to around 55km/h with about 7 laps to go, Perko waved me to slow, the bunch was HUGE - there was maybe 35 enduros chasing the motorbike and with the bunch that big it was too fast, so we dropped back to 50km/h for the last 5 laps.

Then the carnival began.  The groups were NTID sprint (mostly, a couple of non-NTID riders were in the squad) doing MACCs, pursuit (NTID) doing pursuit cadence drills, and general enduro training.  For 3 hours it was hectic, a contingent of CCCC guys and Perko helped, with getting the various groups ready to go and misc helping out.  I timed the MACC efforts for the first 2 (of 4) 300m MACCs, and Hilton got me to ride the motorbike for the third set of efforts - I hadn't done it with his guys before and was a bit conservative with the speed I took them to, but that'll be better next time.  Hilton did the last effort for them while I timed again.

I also did the pacing for half of the pursuit training stuff, the first time I walked the line for them I got it wrong and went the wrong way!  Sorry guys!  We fixed it from then on.  Mea Culpa!

Overall, it was a mind-bending experience.  A lot of stress, a lot of people with a jam-packed program of training.  It all mostly worked out and the program was mostly adhered to.  I got home at about 11pm, totally knackered!

Thanks to everyone who came to DISC last night for our training session.  The AIS-inspired K1 drill went well for the sprinters and the revouts .. what a blast!  Em's legs were a blur! We were very happy to have Fast Eddie come and train with us, and hopefully he'll be a regular, he's looking strong and is blisteringly quick and is one of those genuinely good guys that's great to have around.

So what else has been going on?  I've been to Adelaide and done the first part of the level 2 cycle coaching course.  Mixed feelings on that.  Some of the presenters were excellent, Craig Colduck (strength coach) and Shona (AIS recovery) in particular were superb.  Some of the presenters were presenting some quite dated material and some were clearly poorly prepared and not willing to explain what they did in much detail.  To be fair, that wasn't always their faults, John Beasley was brought in at the last minute to fill a gap and even with limited preparation he was a solid presenter.

It was a pretty intense 6 days and I met some really good people and caught up with some old aquaintances as well.  There's a lot of work to do to finish the level 2 but I don't see it as being terribly difficult, just time-consuming.

We had the third round of the SSS just after I got back, and I rode a shocker of a flying 200 (despite near perfect conditions!), a 13.8-something.  I knew I'd be flat after the 6 days in Adelaide doing bugger-all, sitting down a lot and eating sugary food too much.  My warmup in the 'Haus on the Sunday morning was no false alarm, I was flat and weak!

But I did manage to win a couple of races, despite being in a hole.  I'd qualified slowest in B grade, which wasn't a good sign, but Leon Simms didn't bring his race-face and I got him in the first heat :

But in the second, Ed Osbourne has a savage jump and he used it to smash me to bits!

Too easy, Ed!  Well done!

In the third heat I was up against Wayne Arazny.  Wayne has a habit of racing Glenvale in the morning, which means he comes tired and hasn't the snap I know he's capable of.  After a f200 and two sprints, he's toast, and it shows :

So two wins, but with a bad F200, I'm not in the finals this time.  C'est la Vie.  Next time ... There's two solid months of training between now and round 4.  I'm a bit burnt out, but with an easy week I'll be right, and I'm gunning for a 13.2-something at Blackburn this season.  That's the goal.  I've done a 13.4, I can find another 0.2s ... Somewhere!

The round went really well, our team was superb (Thanks Sue and Jodie and Anne and Lucie) and everyone had a ball.

Yesterday Lucie and I got to play with some big bits of Meccano.  Specifically, one of these.  It's around 200kg and pretty heavy duty. It took us about an hour and a half to put together and was way more fun than any Ikea furniture to assemble.  The PowerHaus is slowly coming together.

Today Swervin Merv and I tested it, I finally had a little bit of strength and did some 180kg squats and some snatches after a terrible week of being feeble and slow.  Maybe that's not 100% spot-on, I rode ok on Sunday at DISC, my standing 125's were ok and motorpaced I was reasonably quick, but on Tuesday I was TFU at both morning and afternoon sessions at Blackburn.  Must be getting old, it's taking three days to recover from a hard session.  I haven't felt good under the bar since just before round 1, three and a half weeks ago.  Overtraining?  Maybe ... Certainly poor sleep and bad food hasn't helped.  We have an ergo session tomorrow night which I'm looking forward to, hopefully some decent wattage and torque will present itself.

Still, round 2 of the Summer Sprint Series is this Sunday, I don't feel as good as I did last time, but it's 4 days away and there's time to come good.  Speaking of the SSS, those of you that read Ride have now got THE article.  Lucie's photos, my writing (with some help from Dino).  I think it came up pretty well.

PS: Doug Reith, we need you at Blackburn.  Whatever you want, you ask for it and I'll do my best to make it happen ...

It's been a pretty busy week at aboc HQ.  I haven't had time to write much, but it's been hectic.  We've had many people over helping to clear the shed in preparation for the launch of the aboc PowerHaus, I've trained with Brad Robins at Blackburn, and Pat and Dino, and Dino again on Thursday on ergos.  We raced on Saturday, trained again on Sunday at DISC, very busy indeed.

I haven't lifted at all for almost two weeks.  I feel bad about it, but every time I've tried to squat heavy I've felt weak and unable to get any sets done.  So, a bit of time off to recover, and I'll hit it again next week.  A big increase in volume of track training has probably contributed to my gym training's flatness. I'm not too worried, the gym work is to go faster on the bike, not to be good in the gym all the time.

Last night was our first Summer DISC session, a healthy turnout of riders, mostly sprinters, made for a busy night - we did standing half laps out of the gate, and then revouts chasing the motorbike, the enduros did a couple of E3 efforts then some motorpaced sprint efforts and revouts.  Suffice to say that come time for chicken and chips, everyone was well toasted.  Chris Ray's overtaking of the motorbike was a sight during a revout.  He's going pretty quick ... And Em and Jamie chasing the bike on J15 gearing at close to 60km/h .. Those kids have some legspeed ..

Speaking of going quick, round 2 of the aSSS is now oversubscribed, we've got 32 pre-entries and a rider on the standby list.  Fantastic.  Ride is due out this week, so we'll get a flurry of interest from that too I expect.

I've had signups and payments for the Hotham camp trickling in, the lodge is now paid for and we're all looking forward to it in four weeks.

I got the chance to congratulate the V-Train for his regaining of his world masters pursuit world title, he's riding at the sprint series this Sunday (round 2) so we'll see how he goes at that too, there's a bunch of new faces racing with us, it should make for some pretty exciting racing. I can't wait!

I've (finally!) booked in to do the Cycling Australia level 2 coaching course in November/December in Adelaide this year.  I've been wanting to do it for some time and with the move to Adelaide of the course, increase in time (6 days from 5) and more sprint focus, and thus a chance to speak with and learn from the AIS sprint team there I couldn't resist.

So I'll be away from the 28th of November 'til the 3rd of December, but will be back in time for round 3 of the aSSS.

In particular I'm hoping to get a chance to spend some time with Craig Colduck, who is the author of this post from fixedgearfever, there's a few details I want to ask him about.  I'm pretty sure that a lot of the stuff in there is really only meant to apply to elite athletes, in particular the "set a personal best, go home" bit, which is, I strongly suspect, intended only for riders working near their genetic potential where overtraining is a real concern.  This is similar to some programming data in "Practical Programming for Strength Training". 

Anyway, I'll be in Adelaide for a few days without a bike during the leadup to round 3.  I'll have to see if I can borrow one of Pete's folders and train on that!

It's great to see that Liz Randall won her first event at the UCI World Masters yesterday.  I didn't know she was doing the 500m ITT, but not only did she do it, she won it.  Another world title for Liz! She's also qualified fastest for the 2k pursuit.  There's no such thing as a dead cert, but I think she'll come back with a few more than just one world title.  I'd bet on all of them for her age group.  Go Liz!  I spent a few mornings over the past month at DISC motorpacing her, I'm not her coach, but am a small part of her team, and that's a great thing, I'm very pleased.

For our second last DISC training session for 'winter' we had a very healthy turnout - Lucie came along and took some photos which I hope to have to put up on the website in the next day or so, and we did some good quality training.

I tried out the new 5 spoke FFWD wheel but had to stop as soon as I got it onto the bank, it started wobbling - something was loose and I'm not sure what, so it didn't have much of a debut, I had to quickly swap back the Bontrager carbon front to do the warmup. 

The sprinters warmed up this time with revouts behind the motorbike (150rpm at 57km/h for me, not too bad) and then we did flying 100's.  Nath was timing but my old stopwatch is a bit flakey - He recorded me doing a 6.1s flying 100, which if it was accurate, I'd be thrilled with, but I'm pretty sure it's out by a bit.  The powertap did record 58km/h but not for the whole 7 seconds of the effort ... We'll see next weekend at the Practice Day when it's 200m, outdoors ... That'll show if there's been any significant gains made over the winter.

We did a few other drills, and Chris Ray punished all of us doing jumps in big gears.  We (sprinters) finished off with match sprints, Dino surprised himself by pushing a big gear and riding it very well indeed (maybe that gym work is having an effect Dino?!) and I matched up against Emily.  I was on 51x14 (98.4"), she's riding a 6m rollout with a 47x17 (73" or something?).  To be fair though, I put her in the lead and made the rule that I could only react to her, not initiate the sprint or I'd have way too much speed.  She did a really good job of covering all the moves I made behind her and with a lap and a half to go she blocked me up high, took a sharp line down at the end of the finishing straight when she kicked while I was still having to go up the hill, and I couldn't catch her.  Very impressive!

Afterwards at the traditional chicken & chips, we spoke of club politics.  I urge anyone reading this who is a Blackburn member to come to the re-scheduled meeting this Wednesday night - if you agree or disagree with the proposed move to DISC - come and have your say and vote.  I think this is something very important indeed for the future of the club and for accessible club-level appropriate track racing.

This week I got unstuck doing squats, I'd been bogged down at 185kg for about 3 weeks, not able to consistently get three sets of three with any sort of form.  This week I bit the bullet and got up to 190kg, and have now done two sessions of 190x3x3's.  That's ok ... Tuesday's turnout at Spin was healthy despite the dreadful weather that kept a number of people home, wisely choosing not to travel.  Tonight at DISC I suspect I'll be pretty slow - Yesterday's squats have significantly disrupted homeostasis and I'm feeling very flat!  Thanks to Hans Seyle ...

I've seen a draft of the full article for October's Ride Cycling Review and it looks pretty snazzy.

We have to plan ahead to summer now.  Our DISC and spin sessions will be winding up at the end of September and two of the DISC sessions in September won't run, the 6th because it'll be father's day and many regulars won't make it and the 20th because that's the practice day for the 2009-2010 SSS.  So what'll we do over summer?  Last summer we did some unstructured sessions at Blackburn on Sundays and also at DISC on occasion, but this summer there seems to be a bit more demand.  We also ran a Tuesday morning session at BBN last summer which worked well, and we may revive that one.

We've built some really good momentum at Spin over winter with, as mentioned, huge numbers (peaked at 31!) and it would be a shame to lose all that, but I'm not sure how we'd fit anything in.  Over summer there's crits on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays where most of the racing riders will be, and the trackies will be doing afternoons at Blackburn or evenings at DISC if they're not doing more endurance stuff on the road, but the DUCCs and a few of the non-racing people want to keep going. I'm welcome to your suggestions please.  Remember Blackburn's Summer of Track on Saturday afternoons and of course (how could you forget?!) the Summer Sprint Series for the sprinters.

I'm thinking we might do a race skills (road bikes and/or track bikes) on Saturday mornings again.  Maybe once a fortnight?  It's a trip for some, but for others it might be worth doing and maybe we can sell the idea a bit - I have a basic syllabus that I developed for the DUCC sessions that can be expanded on and fine-tuned and with some marketing may be worth doing more of.  No-one actually teaches race-craft that I'm aware of except us and that's a possible way to not only keep the regulars involved over summer if they're not racers, but also to allow more honing of race skills for those who do race but want to work on tactical development.  Again, if you're interested or have any suggestions, contact me please!

Last week was a busy one with real-world work, but I did manage to consolidate my 185kg squats on Wednesday with the Sprint Squad which I was happy about, but it does mean I have to increase volume or intensity (work up to 3 x 5's at 185kg or go to 187.5kg for 3x3's) which is going to be bloody hard!  It's now only about 7 weeks until the first round of the Summer Sprint Series for 2009-2010, so it's time to switch from an emphasis on strength and power to endurance - not the sort of endurance that gets trained when riding for 90 minutes through Lysterfield on a mountainbike though.

Which was what I did yesterday with Alex Vaughan!  Alex, 60 minutes MAXIMUM and EASY!  I don't want to get out of E1 unless it's to go below it! Not up and down bloody hills for an hour and a half!  Alex has become quite a good MTB rider in the last few months, and I am a complete gumby on mine (yes, I get off and carry the thing over log jumps!) and he gave me a royal flogging through his favorite bits of Lysterfield!  Argh! 

Today I'll be doing a light set in the 'Haus, a warmup squat set then some snatches or power cleans at a light weight just to remind my legs that they have a job to do tonight at training at DISC.

Last Saturday (8th August) while training in the 'Haus with the Sprint Squad guys, I managed to grind out 3 x 3 @ 185kg squats at last.  I stuttered on the second set and had to revisit it (repeat it!) because on rep 2 I lost control of the bar and had to regain balance, but I got the lifts. In the end it was 3, 1(stumbled on 2), 3, 3.  So I'm happy with that.  

We had a solid session at DISC last night, it got cold very quickly after it being quite warm at 4:30pm, but by 6 it was an icebox and we all rugged up a lot.  Come 7pm and everyone was pretty-well shattered, so job done for another Sunday.  Our 1/2 lap chase onto the bike, 1 lap paced 1/2 lap sprint drill is starting to get challenging and we'll keep making it harder (the bike goes faster!)

At the moment, according to FedEx the track Powertap wheel is in Australia!

In other news I'm pleased to see that Alan Dorin won CCCC's Lenny Hammond handicap on Saturday down at Modella.  This year it was their hilly course, way back in 2004 I won it, when it was flat!

Normally I wouldn't write about something as trivial (you could make the case for this blog being trivial, and to everyone but me it is, but you're reading it ...) as my local video library shutting down.  My local video library is shutting down.  It's a shame, they were a great independent library with a lot of interesting stuff.  Still the days of the video library are numbered and once there's nothing left but the big chains, I won't shed a tear to see them go.  If only McDonalds would die the same death ... Anyway ... To cut a dreary and long story short, they're flogging off all their stock.  So Lucie and I, while waiting for a souvlaki, had a bit of a poke around.  I found something quite unexpected in the video tape section.  Tracks of Glory.  Never heard of it?  Neither had I.  We've all seen Breaking Away, American Flyer, Overcoming (yes, Bjarne, it is a hard sport ...), Hell on Wheels and Triplets of Belleville, but I'd never heard of this one.

It's a story about Major Taylor, who was a black American track cyclist at the turn of the century (1900's, not 2000's!) and Don Walker racing in 1903.  So I bought it.  I don't have a VCR anymore but I'll find a way to rip it to DVD and then we might have a video night at the clubrooms soon.  I think it's quite an important film to see.

I spent this morning with the DUCC's at the 1:20, pacing one of the guys there and back and observing his ride up the hill. He was a bit off his time, but we looked at the graphs afterwards from the power meter and next time it'll be a much faster ride.

In other trivia, the track Powertap wheel is currently in Honolulu according to FedEx. I expect to have it for our DISC session next weekend.