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. 

All last week the forecast had been iffy, Saturday was the golfball hailstones ... Sunday morning I woke up and it was belting down rain and the BoM said 'more to come'.  So we made the call to cancel round 5.

As it was, the rain stopped at around midday, and by 1pm the track was dry.  There wasn't much we could do at that point.  The conditions for sprinting were perfect by then.  We'd probably not have been able to run a full program anyway, we wouldn't have been able to set up the track properly until around 12:30, and start the flying 200's at around 1 or so, which would have meant that we'd not be racing 'til 2, and it started raining again at around 5, so maybe ... but it's too late now to change it.  I do think the BoM should only get paid when they're within 10% of their predictions though!

Round 6 ... is 5 weeks away.  The Vic Masters are next weekend, indoors (but I bet DISC leaked over the w'end!) and then Emily's racing at the Aussie titles on the following weekend.  Come along on the Thursday evening and cheer her on as she races the 500m ITT.  We're expecting her to be starting somewhere around 6-6:30pm on Thursday the 18th of March. As this is normally a 'spin' night, spin is cancelled for the 18th.  Come and cheer on Emily and have chicken and chips with us afterwards at Nandos in Ivanhoe instead!

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.

I'll write more tomorrow when I'm feeling less nauseus after a smashing at Spin tonight.  The data (after a heavy set of deadlifts yesterday) - Ppeak : 1459w, Torque : 202.9 N-m.  Peak cadence (using the wild guess Powertap, but the graph shows it might be right) 198rpm.

That'll do.  Sleep .. trashed now ..

I appologise for being a bit quiet, after I got back from Adelaide I've had a lot of real-world work to do to keep the debt collectors away and also we had the (fantastic!) SSS round 3,  that sucks a lot of time.  Things will be 'normal' soon.

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.

Yesterday morning Dino and I trained standing starts at Blackburn.  We did a warmup, then 6 x ~80m starts.  A good session, Dino improved his starts quite a lot.

I've still got this damn cold, which is filling my head with fluff and my ears with cotton, not to mention reduced breathing ability, so it's strictly short, high intensity stuff at the very anerobic end of the scale.  I simply can't breathe enough for anything longer than around 20 seconds or so.

In the evening, we trooped along to Brad's Blackburn session.  I did a very truncated and weak warmup (breathing ... not good!) but did 3 accelerations as part of it, and hit a new PB on the power meter in the process.  1567 watts.  That's a new PB by about 60 watts.  Surprising, but I'm not complaining!

We then did some motorpaced jumps, my first one went ok, the second and I just couldn't breathe enough to hold the wheel of the motorbike, so it was pretty feeble.

After that, we did a couple more standing starts, 1/2 laps (around 150m at Blackburn).  My first one was good, on the second, I pulled back hard with 1 to go and Viv wasn't holding the brake hard enough, which allowed my bike to come out of the gate, and over I go!  I got a bit cranky about it (not to anyone there, just inside) and did one more, and hit 203 nm of torque.  Motivation ...

If I can throw this cold off, I'll be in good stead for round 3.

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!

If not shaving worked for Sean Eadie in the leadup to the 2002 worlds, I figure I'd better do my bit for the third round of the aSSS.  So far I've made two finals (3v4) and lost both, to take the next step doesn't involve training, eating smart, riding smarter, it involves the one thing all great Australian champions have, a dirty great Mo and there's only one real mo, and that's the Big Merv.

If you want to chip in, here's my donation page.  The lucky aggregate winner of round 3 at the aSSS gets to shave it off me. Now there's a prize worth winning!  Mal, you're tempted, you know it ....

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!

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 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!

I wrote in my last blog that, amongst other things, it's not about the equipment.

Except sometimes it is ...

It is when the equipment is a limitation.

If you don't trust your equipment, especially in a sprint situation which demands 100% commitment, you cannot perform at your best, and then it is about the gear.  When your equipment is a significant limitation, change your equipment.

I have an FFWD 5 spoke front track wheel.  It is being returned to the local distributor for a refund. I don't trust it.  The first one I got about a month ago, Pete and I glued on a Tufo S3 lite tyre, I took it to DISC and jumped on after some quick photos for Ride magazine.  It immediately launched into a resonating tank-slapper as I got onto the bank.  I took it off, put on the old Bonty front and got back to training and coaching for the day.  Later, Nathan Larkin and I pulled it apart and found that the bearing/axle fit was fractionally loose, and there's no way to adjust it.  Ok, send it back to FRF (local distributor), they send me another one.  This one's still got a little bit of play, but it's better than the last one.  Glue it up, wind it up at Blackburn at round one of the aSSS for my flying 200, I'm 100% committed to this effort and am going absolutely as fast as I can in almost perfect conditions.

At full speed, it does the same thing the last one did, almost putting me over the fence.  I was very lucky not to crash.

We had a look at it afterwards and the bearing/axle interface has play, enough to allow a resonance it seems.  What a seriously brain-damaged design this is.  A ~$3,000 retail wheel which has no way to alter bearing tightness.  The Mavic iO has adjustable bearings, which means manufacturing tolerances (and wear!) can be adjusted out.  Not so this design. It's a POS.  Don't buy one unless and until they redesign the hub such that you can adjust the bearings.

Not that you probably need one anyway, I don't need it, I need something I can trust, which isn't this wheel. If you're thinking about it, think again.

Turn down the volume, Alex Vaughan is commentating!

Last night many in the aboc Sprint Squad set PB's in the PowerHaus, I did a couple of singles at 200kg which Emily told me were legal lifts (below parallel squats), the others set PB's.  It was low volume, high intensity in the 'Haus and the rest of the week is a taper so we should arrive at round 1 breathing fire.  The forecast is good ... Bring. It. On!

Some data from the powertap for today's practice round for the SSS.

First up, my flying 200.  13.51 I think, hand timed as the electronic timer was 'teething'.  Gusty west/souwesterly wind, 98.4" gear.  Not a PB, but given the weather at the time, not too bad.

After that, the first sprint vs Dino Apolito. Dino got the jump on me in front of the clubrooms from behind and I didn't quite catch him. Close, but not close enough.

Finally, my race against Craig Towers.  Craig had fallen earlier (not a crash, a mechanical as he rode to the start line!) and was a bit bruised and sore.  I jumped clear and won by quite a margin.

This isn't an airing of dirty laundry! Last night we addressed (eventually!) the 300kg gorilla in the room - the Friday night DISC slot.

Nicko's initial suggestion was one that most of us were pleased with; retain Saturday's racing as-is.  Grab the Friday slot at DISC and use it for club training and once a month racing - something special, a niche that people would come to race like the SSS or Hawthorn's Sunday Roast.  Maybe do more Friday night races over winter? Most of us nodded in rigourous agreement with this.

Then Nicko had to go, family stuff, and we got bogged down a little.  To cut a long story short, almost everyone at the meeting was not going to move on Saturday's racing staying as-is.  The Saturday program at Blackburn is what makes the club special, it has broad appeal and is suitable for everyone, if Tom Leaper, Barry Woods, Stu Vaughan and Steve Martin can race on Saturday alongside the F grade novices and keep coming back then we have something very special indeed.   To steal the words of one of the people pushing to change that to Friday at DISC instead of Saturday at Blackburn, consistency IS important and the Saturday races benefit from being consistent.

So, at the end, nothing was really achieved and no firm decision was made (nothing new at  a BBN committee meeting!) except that the Saturday program will continue as planned this summer - The guys pushing for the Friday change have gone away to cook up another plan.  If they're smart (and they are and I mean no disrespect to them.  We're friends and we all want the best for the club) they'll realise the importance of Saturday's racing and NOT TAMPER WITH IT.  When I started the Summer Sprint Series we were very careful to compliment, not compete with, Saturday's racing, which is core to the identity and ideals of the club.

One of the things our racing on Saturday does really well is provide a venue for riders of just about every level to compete in a welcoming family environment.  Sure, some riders will out-grow it and will want and need to move to higher level races but that's a normal thing and I think a sign of the success of the race program and a win for the club if and when it happens - we shouldn't fight that, we should be proud of it.  We're awfully proud of Richard England, who came up through our program and now races professionally, we don't expect to see him very often but he does show up sometimes and race with us and he remembers where he came from, as does Tom and the other elite guys who race with us and have a lot of fun doing it.  That's what club cycling is all about and that's how it should be.

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.