Vic masters sprint day on Saturday.  No excuses, I have trained all year, gotten stronger, thought I'd gotten faster.  Even lost a little bit of weight!  To no avail ... Flying 200 was 12.95something, slower than last year (12.91) despite better aero gear.  Didn't qualify for the finals.  I didn't do the kilo (never again after last year, the kilo sucks!) and in the Keirin I didn't want to get involved in the stupidity happening at the front and gambled on doing a Bradbury when they all crashed. 

They crashed in the first run of the race, Turbo got brought down most unfairly and I think no-one was watching it happen, the perpetrators didn't get suspended and from where I was, it was clear that they should have.  Modern Keirin does not include pushing down onto a rider who is in the lane and causing them to crash.  Maybe back in the 1970's, but not in 2010.

In the re-run, almost the same thing happened again, I sat off the back and watched, then when the pace went on I didn't have the legs to go with it. 

So, no better than last year.  I think that means, that after a year or so's dedicated sprint training, that I'm not ever going to be any good as a sprinter.  I can live with that, I'm enjoying the sprint series, I'll never be any sort of elite, but that's ok, I love sprinting and will keep doing it and keep trying to chip away at my PB in the flying 200.  I just won't ever be able to give guys like Lou Pascussi any competition, but that's ok with me.  We're all playing with the hand we're dealt at birth and I figure if I can get the best out myself, that'll be enough for me.

Everyone else had a good day.  Dino and Mick were the best of the Vics at the sprint and keirin respectively, I still don't know why Queenslanders and Tasmanians are allowed to enter, and win, the Vic state titles, I'm sure there's a reason for it but I don't know what it is.  Chris Ray rode his best kilo in competition (after a F200 and a bunch of sprints) and got 3rd in the sprint and I think placed in the Keirin as well?  Craig rode well given his very upset year with a lot of personal stuff to contend with too, and on the Sunday Cam and Mick rode scorchers too. 

On Monday I was lucky to be a small part of the team helping Liz Randall set her world mark for the hour for her age.  My job was to walk the line, which is basically a simple way to show the rider how they're pacing themselves, as they're not allowed to use any computers etc on the bike during the effort.  It was a good night, some 30-odd people showed up to cheer and encourage Liz and she dug deep into herself to keep going, she explains how it all went here.  It's a good read. Sadly, even though I sent an email to news@bbn on Monday, there's still nothing on the BBN website about it.  I think the world mark is a big deal and something to make a big fuss about.  Leanne Cole was there to take photos.

And on another front, for the last month or so I've been working with Hilton Clarke and the local NTID squad, a lot on Wednesday nights and over the school holidays.  This started off as racking up time for the level two coaching qualification, and sort of evolved into an assistant role.  We (Hilton and I) had discussed the possibility of it being a formal (paid!) job, but it seems that that can't happen at the moment, which is a bummer.  I've much enjoyed working with Hilton and the squad.  I'm going to keep going along and helping for as long as I can afford the time and hopefully something will come of it, so I'll be in at DISC tonight.  I'm learning a lot from these sessions and want to be involved in some capacity.

And ... round 5 of the SSS this Sunday - entries are down, probably because of the clash with the Bendigo Madison but we'll keep haranguing people to come and race.  I've also entered the Vic Masters for MMAS2 (35-40) in the sprint and the keirin, but I learned from my lesson last summer, I'm NOT doing the kilo again!  At the moment there's three of us in the sprint and two in the keirin, so I might get a third and a second place! heh ...

I'm waiting on an update to my video editing software (PowerDirector 8.0, in case anyone's interested) to resolve an uploading to YouTube issue, so have a few moments to kill between editing videos for the sprint round last weekend.

I'd like to write a big report for the club teams championships last Saturday and the sprint round on Sunday, but this will be a very brief one.

CTC, a team of three of us, myself, Dino and Russell Poole are the Blackburn 'Open Masters' No.1 team.  I'm the first rider, Dino is No.2 and Pooley is our third after the Wizard couldn't commit.  We did ok, the event was a bit of a mess, no starting gates(!) and no split timing etc, but it was the same for everyone (except we'd spent a lot of time practicing gate starts!).  We ended up qualifying fourth so we just scraped into the final, to race off for 3rd place against Hawthorn's team of The V-Train, Aaron and some other guy who's name I don't know.  They'd qualified about four seconds faster than us, so we were never going to be in it,  but we went a little faster and they went a little slower but it was still three seconds too much, so we had to settle for fourth place.  Better than last year, so that's good ...

Round 4, I did my best flying 200 for the season, but still too slow, on a perfect day, I should, in hindsight, have used a bigger gear than 91.8", I'd felt strong during the week and probably would have done better on 94" or so, but it is what it is and 13.6s would have to do.  B grade was big, 10 of us, and I was one of the slower ones in qualifying. 

A very long story cut short, I beat Craig Towers, Ed Osbourne drilled me a new one, and Stewart Lucy took advantage of a huge tactical blunder on my part to win easily too, so not the best day's racing for me!  Still a lot of fun and the series continues to get good feedback.  There's a crew over in South Africa that want to copy the format and some in NSW as well, so that's very pleasing.  Our dream of a national series is gaining some momentum!  Jodie Dundas did a great job on the video camera, Lucie took ace photos and Sue ran the day like clockwork.  We got help from Will Thomas on the scoring duties as Anne Apolito was unavailable.

In other news, Emily teamed up with Caitlin Ward to roll the JW17 club team sprint by 2 seconds, quick kid, that Emily ... more medals for Dino to find homes for!  Thanks to the Thomas's and Bev for looking after Em on the day.

And if you haven't heard (get out from under the rock!) Mike Goldie from Carnegie-Caulfield was hurt in a low speed tumble at a training session at DISC last week,  from all of us we wish him a speedy and uncomplicated recovery.

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.

Revolution is back (after the cancelled round this winter due to some sponsor pulling out at the last minute ...).  If you haven't been to one, it's a track race night, at Melbourne Park (sometimes called Vodafone, or Hisense).  It's like a world cup but all rolled into one evening, with, so far, an emphasis on sprint events (ace!).  It's a bloody good night's entertainment if you're into track sprint events.

It's not strict UCI format, which can make for a more entertaining format at times (like the Summer Sprint Series isn't UCI format either).  There's a keirin being run there, not unusual .. what's unusual is that this time, it'll be mixed.

Mixed.  Girls and boys.  Sprinters.

Hold on a minute, how does that work?

Elite female sprinters do flying 200's in low 11 seconds, elite men are breaking 10's (Hoy rode 9.8s in Manchester recently).  So the women can't race the men, but they can race the boys.  There's not a lot of depth in the female sprint ranks.  At the recent UCI world cup there was 4 or 5 women who were competitive, the rest were a lot slower, so the women don't have a lot to race against.  Until they race junior men, who are also doing low to mid 11s flying 200's.  There's a bold thought (we do it at the SSS ... no gender seperation, grading on performance and we're not the only ones).  So at Revolution 5, Anna Meares and co will be racing 17 boys in a Keirin.

Good on 'em.

After round 1, I felt crap for weeks.  Really weak and lethargic.  Every time I tried to lift heavy or sprint hard, nothing .. Flat and empty.  My diet, sleep and work had been out of kilter and nothing felt right.  To top it off, Lucie got crook and now we both have a cold.  Anyway .. Round 2 went ok, I qualified reasonably well with a 13.7 something, I was glad to be under 14 at least, given how I' been feeling that was pretty good.  The bye was a stroke of luck, I dealt with Wayne reasonably easily :

And Chris Hickey and I had a very very close finish

Both Chris and I though I won it, the photo was ambiguous and Sue and Kim in the middle thought Chris, so Chris got the win, and thus, I was to race for 3rd against Peta Stewart.

Peta's no slouch, that's for sure, and while I'd qualified faster and was probably a bit quicker, she drew the lead and I (foolishly) let her keep it.  She did a great job of boxing me up when I wanted to go and held off for a good win, so I got 4th again!

On Monday the cold really started to kick in and for this week I've been in and out of bed whilst setting the world record for litres of snot expelled by a human.  Hrm.  Anyway .. I have been able to do some anaerobic work, my squat strength is coming back, I ground out 3 x 3 @ 185kg this morning and got 1 x 5 170kg deadlifts, the deadlifts was a new personal best for me, so that was gratifying, and I pressed 3 x 5 @ 57.5kg, my press isn't my best lift by any stretch but that was a PR too, so despite being a snot-generator it was a good session, and young Will trained with me and did well as he learns the art of black iron training in the 'Haus. 

This arvo is keirins at Blackburn.  I still can't breathe too well, so I doubt that I'll be able to do well, but I'll have a crack at them. Once I shell this virus for good, round 3 will be a scorcher.  I'm going to go 13.2 for a flying 200 outdoors soon, I can feel it ...

And Em just rode an excellent time at Shep today (500m ITT) in windy conditions she's 2.2s faster than this time last year.  Go you good thing!

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!

Known to many of us as the 'V-Train', Stuart Vaughan regained his MMAS4 pursuit world title today.  The V-Train was a guest speaker at an aboc dinner not long ago, just before he went to defend his 2007 win in 2008 (he got third).  So he's now a 2 times world champion.

Results here.

Great stuff, Stu, we'll see you at the Summer Sprint Series!

Liz Randall won her pursuit too.  Awesome ...

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.

I felt a bit ordinary on Saturday at Blackburn's SoT opener, Sunday was worse, hayfever and generally blah, on Monday I was supposed to do a Texas Method high volume set in the 'Haus, but the warmup was bad and the lifting, supposed to be 5 x 5 @ 180kg squats, I got 1 x 2 and called it a day.  Did some press and that was about it.  Lower back, kidneys sore etc .. Hrm ..

Today (Tuesday) I'm feeling a little better.  This morning Dino, Pat and I were at the BBN velodrome to do some training, but the rain came in and I was feeling very stiff and sore, so I motorpaced the lads for a warmup and then called it a day.  Brad's Tuesday afternoon session was probably a washout too (the rain is good, I'm not complaining!) so I missed that, not that I had the beans to do it.

I'm up late tonight uploading videos for the SSS (still?!).  It's 1:45am and I'm done.  Here's Steelie giving me a lesson!

Turn down the volume, Alex Vaughan is commentating!

We keep getting more people at our spin sessions.  Last Tuesday we had 24 spinners, a new record for our sessions.  People are overflowing out the door and more want to come.  If everyone shows up we'll need a bigger venue and I'll need a bigger pot to make the dinner in.  We're already up to a 2.5kg mince beef and 2kg of mushrooms feed and that's about the limit of my big cauldron.

Yesterday we had the Sprint Squad in the 'Haus and it was heavy strength day.  Everyone set new PB's in their lifts and I felt good, so went for 3 x 3 @170kg squats, and I got 'em!  Woo hoo!  We also did benchpress and deadlifts to finish off, I got 5 deadlifts at 150kg too, which was a new PB for that lift as well.  The others all PB'd in everything too.  A very solid session.

Afterwards we had a thankyou BBQ for all those that helped out at last summer's Sprint Series.  aboc put on the bangers and bread and some chilli chickenwings and a good time was had by all who made it.  It was particularly good to see the Dundii again and to get a chance to thank Ann Apolito and Sue Dundas for their work last year and of course Lucie for her photography, my Dad came too (he was a photographer at one round) and had a good time.

Today we had the first round of the Blackburn time trial series for 2009.  I was pretty anxious about this, we'd had some 60 pre-entries and were expecting more to roll up and enter on the day.  Blackburns' reputation for running time trials is .. unfortunate .. over the years a number of high profile events have gone awry and with a huge field I was pretty concerned that things would go wrong, but Richard Stringer put together a great team and everything went faultlessly, or at least appeared to, and that's all that matters!  In the end some 110 riders raced the time trial and the results were done within 10 minutes of the last rider finishing.  Fantastic.  They need to be put up on the club's website ASAP too (very important these days!).  Hopefully that will have been taken care of also.

Em and I rode the big aboc Trek T1000 tandem in the time trial and I'm pretty sure we came dead last, but we did win the tandem division.  My alarm didn't go off and I was lucky that I woke up at 6:55, but I didn't have time for breakfast, having to fly out the door.  I rode the tandem solo to the city, along the way hooking up with Bev and Karen who both delighted in dropping me on every hill!  Hungry like the wolf but no food, I rode the ITT with Em and we did a solid E3 effort, then on the ride home (again solo on the tandem) I bonked ... Groveling up Whitehorse Road at 15km/h wasn't fun.  The refueling process was started as soon as I got home, we're training at DISC tonight and I need some matches to burn!

Sunday the 24th of May sees the first of the Blackburn time trials at the Yarra Boule for this winter season.  Now, I'm a sprinter, and yes, I've done one or two of these 20km efforts (on an undulating course, no less) in my time, and been slow (sorry Rob,it was our first time though and it was lots of fun).  This time, I'm bringing the secret weapon.  The big blue aboc tandem is coming, and I have a stoker with some serious power.  I think we'll still come dead last, but we'll sprint for the finish line better than anyone else there! Watch this space for the mystery stoker.

It's good to see that the Phillip Island race is chocka with entries, Mal and the crew at CCCC have a real winner with that race.  I remember racing the first one they did way back and it was simply a beautiful race track to ride around.   I don't think they've ever had any of the weather that the Island is famous for either.  CCCC also organised a fantastic race once at the Lang Lang Holden proving grounds, which is a huge (8km!) banked bitumen velodrome and some interconnecting roads.  It's a shame they couldn't get that course again, it was also innovative and a very challenging and exciting course. 

While I'm at it telling everyone who's still reading about the great racetracks CCCC have used, I'll mention one more. The race out at the Anglesea proving grounds ran a couple of times too, but I think it was a bit too far away for Eastern Combine people.  It was a big undulating loop and a shorter, but hilly and with a dirt section, loop.  I raced that day in B grade with one of my lads I was coaching at the time.  I knew I'd be off the back the first time we hit the hilly section so I worked for my team mate for the first half of the race (on the undulating loops) - the aim being to have him at the front and fresh at the start of the hills.  It was a pretty tough hour, I had to keep pulling back breaks from the boys from Burnley Finance who kept dancing away up the road every 10 minutes or so.  After an hour of smashing myself silly I dropped Wayne off at the start of the hilly section in third wheel and I peeled off and let the bunch go.  Mission accomplished and I was spent.  Wayne went on to get second and I felt like it was my placing too.  A very satisfying day out indeed.

I'm glad I did it back when it was 267km and 299km.  This year it'll be 265km.

More news here.

The last round of the Bontrager Summer Sprint Series for 2008-2009 is this Sunday.  After that I have a few weeks off and then we start the spin sessions on Tuesday nights and DISC sessions on Sunday evenings in late April.  I'm pretty happy with how the summer has gone, we've had good attendances at the BSSS and great racing and I think we're looking good for it for next summer.  I had a brief chat with Mal Sawford and we may run a round at CCCC next summer to try and involve them a little bit as a step to making the series go statewide in a year or three.  My dream is to have a state (and national?) sprint series so as to foster the growth of track sprinting in Victoria and Australia.  From little things big things can grow ... We'll see how that pans out over the next couple of years I guess. 

For now the growth we had for this past summer was good, and I think we may be close to a critical mass of riders interested in racing this format, which means we may be in with a chance.  If Andy White would come along it'd be brilliant, and the V-Train has promised to come to the last round this year too...

One of the things Alex Vaughan and I discussed on the drive back from Hotham was madison racing and the possibility of a madison series next summer.  Like match sprinting, it's a niche, and one that maybe we can dig into a bit to build it up.  It's another of those branches of the sport that don't reach down from elite levels much, and maybe that's something else we can change.  The Blackburn AGM is coming up soon (although you wouldn't know it from the BBN website! There's nothing about it there, maybe we can put something on Carnegie's site ..) and we might raise it as an idea at the AGM once the new committee is in place.  It'll be up to Alex if he wants to make it happen as I'm too busy with the match sprinting but if he can put together a small organising team I reckon it could be a good thing.

Yesterday's Vic masters.  Got up around 7, did a warmup set of squats in the 'haus, then Pat picked me up and we scooted in to DISC.  First event is the sprint, and of course that starts with a flying 200.  We're (MMAS2) the 6th lot to go.  There's some fast lads here.   Ok.  My turn, I've got the disk wheel on the back, 98.4" inches of gear (51x14).  That's the biggest I've ever used for a F200, but it's a bit of an experiment.  The air is hot already.  My line is good and smooth, I hit the tape at flat chat and hold the hammer down.  Felt pretty good.  Look up at the clock.  12.916.  W00t!  New PB by lots!  First time sub 13s.  My revised season goal is a 13.2 at Blackburn, I didn't expect to go sub 13 at all anywhere this season, so I'll take that as a major goal achieved.  It's not fast enough to qualify though (the quick boys are doing high 11's) but I'm very happy with that.  I commentate for the match sprints. 

Then it's time trial time.  We're doing a kilo (thought it was supposed to be a 750 for MMAS2?).  Awful.  absolutely awful.  I think I rode a 90 second kilo or something.  Spent the next 15 minutes coughing.  Never again.  The V-Train (Stuart Vaughan) rides his 750m ITT (MMAS4) in a time that would have won the club team sprint last week!  And he says he's not a sprinter ... heh ... Jessica Laws sets a worlds best time for her masters age group for the 500m ITT and has to wait for the ASADA people to come, and she has to be chaperoned until they arrive.  The costs of world records!  She was pretty chuffed.  Her smile was lighting up the place.

Finally the keirin, I'm not entered, not silly enough to think I'm fast enough to mix it with Carl Cubitt and Andrew Shannon just yet.  Maybe next year ... I commentate for it as well, earning a free drink from the officials esky .. helped calm down my ravaged throat after the kilo-coughing episode.

Along the way a number of people rode really well.  Craig Towers set a few PB's, Martin Lama made it through to the finals in the sprint at his first attempt, Pat got three bronze medals after some brilliant match sprinting and a great ride in the keirin, Mick Thomas got a silver in the keirin, Cam Woolcock rode a solid Kilo, John Lewis continues to come back into form and as the only MMAS8 rider there he was far from disgraced when mixing it with the MMAS7 men.  Leah Patterson got a couple of medals too and would have got different colours if she'd carried on to contest a sprint finish after a nasty hook during a sprint round.  Lessons learned there!

I handed out a lot of promo cards for the sprint series, spruiking it as best I can to the sprinters.

All up a pretty good day.  The enduro stuff is on today, so I'm going kayaking!

A bit of routine is creeping back into my regime.  I got my 'regular' Monday night swim done after a month or so out of the pool and was happy with how that went, then on Tuesday Pat, Big Johnny Lewis and I did a couple of hours in at DISC around midday sprinting, Powerhaus on Tues evening with Merv, where I didn't lift all that heavy after a week or so out of it, only did 5 x 5 @ 150kg squats and some cleans, but that felt good, and today the weather is perfect for my Wednesday tootle.

This Saturday is the Vic masters champs. There's some fast boys racing my class (MMAS2), but I'll give it my best shot and see what happens. I haven't done much match sprinting at DISC, it's different to Blackburn, the bank is a lot less forgiving.

Lifted from CSV this is the entry list so far for MMAS2 sprint, entries closed on Monday, but they do take late ones :

and for the 750m ITT :

Interesting!

It's been a long week.  I've had a headcold for days, on Friday I got stung by a European wasp, Saturday was the club teams championships at DISC, some irony, some of it was delayed by rain just after Rhys was telling us all over the PA about how good it is to have an indoor velodrome!  I was (eventually) teamed up with Dino and Martin Lama as the Blackburn 1 team for the team sprint.  After a false start from Brunswick 1, we got off to a shocker because I got stuck in the gate and must have dropped half a second at the start.  We ended up riding a 56.something 750m, Brunswick 1 rode a 52.something.  The stuck in the gate thing was entirely my fault, I tried to predict the start and must have gone a fraction early and maybe twisted a little?  Anyway ... my fault.  I don't think we would have made the final even if we'd ridden a perfect race, but it was frustrating all the same.

I've not been near the 'haus since yesterday morning's warmup sets before the teams championships, and I still haven't decided if I'll ride the sprint at the Vic Masters next weekend.  I know I'm not fast enough, but it might be worth it to do a flying 200 and see how I'm going.  The main problem is fatigue.  I was chatting with Mick Thomas while we watched the rain leak on the boards at DISC on Saturday and we're all hanging out for the end of the season.  We started racing in October and we're all burnt out.

In the Good News stakes, Emily Apolito and Bridgette Thomas won the JW15 500m team sprint this morning at the junior version of the club teams championships. Em's off to Adelaide with her family next week to ride in the Aussie titles, so Dino will miss the Vic Masters, but if he feels anything like me, that's more a relief than anything! We're all desperate for the end of season and a break from training and racing all the time.

I know what I'll be doing over most of April (break-month) - Kayaking with Lucie and whoever else wants to come along!  We'll be starting spin sessions again in April and also the DISC Sunday evening sessions.  The motorbike at DISC is now an issue, due to some problems with it recently the system's been changed and it's now $1,000 for the first 1,000km.  So our use, which is over about 25 weeks, for about 45 minutes to an hour a week (around 30km at most per session) means I'll have to find $1,000 to use the bike this winter for sprinters leadouts and paced enduro sessions.  Hrm.

I've just about finished the videos from round 5 of the BSSS, I'll have them all done today (just got 2 more finals to do!)

I used Saturday's Blackburn track racing as a training session, using the scratch race as a warmup, the handicap as a 500m effort and the mystery distance points race(!) as a single sprint effort.  I ended up winning the first sprint in the mystery distance race by accident.  I took off at the whistle and had half a lap on the field (everyone was quite content to let me go), then Doug blew the whistle for a mystery sprint, and I was still half a lap up!  I rolled over the line and took the three points.  Heh!  Then John Lewis and I rolled turns to finish the race together, lapped off the back, but finishing all the same.  Not a bad bit of fun for some training. It was great to have Steve Martin back racing again in A grade, he's always a very entertaining and exciting racer to watch.

Yesterday Lucie & I took the kayaks out to Aura Vale Lake again, she to practice some basic paddle strokes and I wanted to work on my roll. I used to play canoe polo many, many years ago and could roll reasonably well, but not having done it for almost 20 years it's taking time to get back into it being automatic, or for that matter, even reliable.  I might see if I can hook up with the lads at Canoes Plus at one of their pool sessions and get them to tell me what I'm doing wrong and fix it.

After our paddle around the lake, the Apolitos came over to the 'haus to do some training, as Em's getting close to the Aussies, we're focusing in the 'haus on power and on the bike with power and short distance endurance (35s efforts, jumps etc).  So it was squats to warm up, then hang-cleans and clean pulls.  Everyone set PB's except me, but I was backing off, I lift heavy on Tuesdays, and am hoping I feel up to heavy lifting tomorrow, at the moment, I'm a bit shaky, but 24 hours from now it should come good.

Tonight we have club teams training and we'll also find out the teams, I'm angling for lead rider in the masters team sprint, so I'll get to do one whole lap of DISC at the races.  One lap! Woo hoo!