In the UK :  

youth A u16..6.93m - ~7m, ~same as us, 1 year offset younger kids
youth B u14..6.45m  - bigger than us
youth C u12..6.05m  - bigger than us
youth D u10..5.40m  - ~same
youth E u8..5.10m - do we have U8's?!

They're not falling apart, in fact, Le Poms seem to do pretty well ...

In the US (not so much a powerhouse anymore, but interesting all the same) :

17-18: Unrestricted
15-16: 6.78 meters (22'3")(48x15)
13-14: 6.36 meters (20'10.5")(48x16)
10-12: 6.00 meters (19’8”)(48x17)
For Juniors 16 and under who are competing in Championship team sprint, team pursuit, keirin, or Madison the 17-18 (unrestricted) gear limit applies.

I don't have the rules for other countries yet, watch this space ..

Earlier this week CA announced that J17 gear restrictions would be lifted to a 7.0 meter rollout, which is around 90 gear inches, it was to be lifted to 86" (6.75m), up from the previous limit of 82" (6.5m).

Many of you reading here know I am very much in favour of this, but not everyone is pleased.  I hope to calm the storm a little, or at least provide some argument in favour.  Note please that this is my opinion, and I am not representing any organisation except for aboc Cycle Coaching (me!) when I write this.  Furthermore, I don't have any influence on the people that made the decision that I am aware of. I don't even know who they are.

Enough with the preamble ...

Firstly, the rule change does not mandate that every J17 rider ride 90".  It means they are allowed to, which is not at all the same thing.  J19's are allowed to ride up to 104" or something, they don't, because they usually can't.  I work with J19's who can squat small cars and deadlift your fridge, full ... they're not anywhere near being able to rev out the J19 gear restriction yet,. and managing them through J17's is a challenge (be patient, your time will come, being restricted to 82" sucks, but next year ... repeat and hope the kid buys in to the argument).

If a J17 is a great revver, they will choose smaller gears, if they're a big, strong kid, they will push bigger gears.  Up 'til now the rules have biased against strong kids and towards super-revvers, at least in sprint, which is where my attention is focused.  I expect it's the same in enduro circles.  Big, strong kids can't rev as fast as the hummingbirds (heavy legs, can't move 'em quite as quick, but they can accelerate!).  We build kids up to be strong so that they can be competitive as J19's and seniors, and not spend another 6 years trying to get them strong enough, this is an even bigger task with girls than it is with boys - they put muscle on a lot more slowly than boys.  One of the causes for the loss of elite sprinters after J19 is the almost insurmountable gulf between a J19 and a senior (hey, kid, race Perko, who is pushing 108" or more and Anna who is superstrong! good luck ...).    I've interviewed a number of guys who've given it up after J19's and this is a common theme.  They don't want to spend 5 or more years getting smacked before they're even at a level where they can keep up and not be embarrassed.

By better preparing J17's to use bigger gears, we hope to lift the standard in J19, and thus, make the transition to senior riders be less daunting.  If J17's filters out a lot of the strong kids in favour of super spinners (which, at present, it does), that means J19's are in general, weaker than they could otherwise be as a population, and then less likely to manage the jump into senior ranks.  There's loads of examples of this in sprint in recent memory, in particular in the girls, but also many of the boys have failed to make the jump past J19.  This is for many reasons, but one is that the jump is too big for most of them to manage in a realistic timeframe.

Some of my colleagues have mentioned that by allowing J17's to push 90", that this will kill the sport and other hyperbole (and a half!), or that we shouldn't change a working formula (hey, it's NOT working!  We bleed riders after J19, you haven't noticed?! Where are they all?).  Nonsense.  The current situation is that strong kids are held back (and they're often some of the best talents, so they go off and play some sport where their talent isn't nobbled), hummingbirds prosper and the less talented kids are off the back on 82".  The only difference by allowing bigger gears is that the strong kids will be able to keep up with the hummingbirds.  The less talented, or younger, or less developed kids will be off the back no matter what anyway. It happens now, it will continue to happen. I don't think much else will change.  If it does, the rules can be changed again.

OR

And this is the rub.  Many are suggesting that club racer kids will give it up because 90" is too big and they can't keep up, there'll be no tactical development etc etc.  Here's the thing.  At club level, clubs are free to introduce their own gear restrictions anyway.  You want a race where no-one can push bigger than 82" - NO PROBLEM!  Just put it in the race rules.  Brunswick did this on Saturday, everyone was on 90" (magic number?!) and it was great.  Close races, lots of skill and tactical development.  GOOD!  We had first year J19's (the ones I trained overgeared last year and got strong and who hated being forced to ride 82" in competition) keeping up with senior sprinters, which made for good training races.  But, for opens, state and national championships, the talented kids should be allowed to display their physical talent.  It may well keep them in the sport longer and help us find the next group of champions.  State and National titles are not "every kid's a winner" races, they're championships and the best kids should be able to win them.

I'm sure there will be people who will cite examples of successful riders who came through our current system, they do exist, and this is good (look closely at their development path before you cite them though, some will surprise you at how they got into the system, Cadel rode MTB, Matthew Glaetzer was a pole vaulter and did not come through gear restricted juniors etc), but we can do better (we have to, everyone else is!) and we can't say everything  is great because some physiological freaks have survived it, if they even came through it.  Our rules and development programs should not be judged by the success of the very rare genetically gifted athletes that pop up, but rather by the health of the whole ecosystem.

Finally, the knee injury furphy.  Where's the corpses?  We train our guys overgeared ALL the time, putting out much greater torque and power numbers than anyone else in the state (wanna bet?! I have data ... ), I have not seen a single knee injury.  Not one.  If a kid isn't strong enough to push a gear (86, 90, whatever) they simply won't be able to push it.  They can grind at 60rpm up a hill (that's ok ...) in a road race out at Eildon or the 1:20 etc already if they want or have to.  Knee overuse injuries come from throwing kids at huge miles and on badly fitted bikes, not from pushing a gear that's too big for them.

So there you go.  I don't think it will kill anything, I think it's for the long term good of developing better senior riders

Long have I ranted and railed ... and good news!

J17's are now allowed a 7.0m rollout (~90").

Excellent!

I have two sets, the VIS has heaps, the AIS, NSWIS, Cycing Vic and WAIS all own dozens of them. Hilton owns at least 4 sets, of the Minoura Action roller.  Why these rollers in particular?  They're not perfect, they have aluminium roller drums with 105mm diameter, which is good, but nasty plastic endcaps that fail with heavy use.  The big plus for us is the way they fold up into a small space and they have a reliable, simple bag to transport them.  I get to carry them around a lot, and the bag, and the trifoldability, is a BIG win.  This is why just about every state track team has heaps of them.  105mm metal roller drums and great transportability.  Got it?

Not that long ago they got discontinued.  Why? I don't know, the replacement is the Moz roller, same trifold frame, but smaller 80mm plastic roller drums (BAD!) and a fancier bag that has a zip instead of a flap.  This is bound to fail in our use-case.  We move lots of these rollers (Hilts' van may have a floor lined with 16 sets of rollers when we travel to championships etc) and anything with a zipper is bound to fail.

So, Minoura, please re-release the Action rollers.  If you want to make them better, replace the plastic roller endcaps with something more robust, but otherwise LEAVE THEM ALONE!

Last night at Spin, I set a new power PB of 1,597 watts.  I had a goal of 1,600, how close is that?  Given that it's a Powertap and not 100% accurate, I could stretch the truth and say I got it, but that's bollocks!  Anyway, power is going up reasonably consistently, it's amazing what a bit of unbroken training can do.  There's a hint - consistent training ... Keep working ...

http://plus.maths.org/content/leaning-2012 is well worth a read.

My next purchase will be a dry suit ...

Tonight at Spin we tested the Lemond Revolution under Dino.

To paraphrase :

It's much harder to spin up than the Kurt Kinetic, but it's too easy once it's going.

That's Dino's thoughts - given that we care about the acceleration phase, this might be a good thing.  It's noticeably less stable than a KKRM, and a LOT noisier (as you'd expect, it's a wind trainer after all, albeit a fancy one).  I will try it under a few other guys and see what they think.

Ok, we won't get power from it, at least, not acceleration, although it may be calibrated for steady state (enduro) training, but I have one of these coming which will hopefully be in time for this Tuesday's ergo.

Interesting bit of kit ...

We'll review it once we've tried it out.  Rumour has it it has a decent flywheel in it, and if so, and direct drive, it might be a game changer for ergos.  If they made one with a built in powermeter ...

July 2011, it's going to be busy.  I'm going to Adelaide with the NTID and VIS kids on the 22nd for a sprint race meeting for J17's and J19's and then staying on for a week to assist/learn/get in the way with the pre Junior Worlds camp.  The camp is three weeks long and takes the kids going to Moscow from the race meeting on the 23rd and 24th through 'til their departure to Moscow.  I've been given the opportunity to stay with them for the first week and assist Sean Eadie.  Along the way hopefully I'll get a lot of learning done.  I'm looking forward to it, but I will be away from home for a week and will miss a couple of our winter DISC sessions. 

In actual fact, I'm probably going to miss almost all the DISC sessions through July, on the 16th and 17th I'm (assuming it goes ahead) doing a whitewater rescue course.  So I will probably miss that weekend also, and this coming Sunday I can't make it either.  I've written a program that the guys can do without needing much guidance.  Nathan's going to run this Sunday, I'll work something out for the others that I can't make.  Ergo anyone?!  Nah ... I didn't think so!  Anyway, it's going to be hectic, this July.

I do have heaps of reading to do.  I believe that any good coach needs to read widely and understand a lot of "stuff", so one of my current reads is a textbook on exercise physiology.  Things are going well in the 'Haus, I lifted an equal PB deadlift yesterday (and can feel it today .. stairs .. urgh!), power's been down a bit on the bike for the last couple of sessions, but I think that'll come good soon. the other sprint squad people and assorted ring ins are all lifting well and their numbers are getting better on the track too.  It's all good!

Oh, and we now have aboc Sprint Squad ploarfleece beanies.  Perfect to keep your bonce warm at DISC or spin this winter.  All the cool kids have one ..

$20 and you can have one too!

It's proving to be a cold winter, and riding around in circles on the motorbike at DISC is .. pretty chilly.  It's been around 10 degrees or so in there for the last couple of sessions, and after a few laps, one starts to shiver somewhat!

So, how do we keep warm?  I have a few layers on, but one nifty thing I got recently is a kayaking neoprene skullcap.  Yep, a rubber hat (insert gimp joke here now).  One of these, nifty!

I've been working on going faster (oh, really?) - not just on the pushbike, which my untalented body will resist as much as it can, but also on the motorbike.  At DISC, to motorpace the really fast guys, I have to be able to ride the bank at around 80km/h.  That's bloody quick.  It takes a lot of 'turn off your fear' to do it.  Anyway ... Under Hilton's tutilage I'm slowly becoming a reasonable motorpace rider - far from perfect (Hilts is THE master of this art ...) but I have a few thousand kilometers logged riding around that track now and am getting to be ok at it. I can even ride the bank at 70km/h looking backwards now.  That's taken some time to get comfortable doing.  I don't like doing it in the lane or close to the rail yet, but above the lane I'm fine with it now.

But .. to go really fast ..

The motorbike is speed limited by basic physics.  Gravity, friction and centripetal force. Centripetal force increases to the square of velocity - ie: increases in speed means much more friction to stop the bike slipping up the bank, the faster you go, the more it tries to fly up and over the fence.  The banks at DISC are 42 degrees steep, slower than around 30km/h and the motorbike slips down, faster than around 90 (I guess) it will slip up (I haven't tested this yet).  Unless the tyres hit the painted lines, in which case there's a lot less friction and it slips, which is quite un-nerving but so far, hasn't resulted in a crash.  You get used to it when crossing the lines at speed. It's just a little wobble ... And after the first few times and realising it doesn't mean a crash, it's ok!

So .. to go really fast ..

The speedo reads fast, 80km/h indicated is really about 75km/h.  Riding the motorbike down in the sprinters lane at indicated 80 is a bit spooky, it's a reasonably tight radius and feels "iffy", but is doable, even in winter, once I've warmed up the tyres. I used to be a bit scared at 60km/h .. heh .. 60?  That's creeping!  It's a lot easier to go that fast just below the blue line, so that's what I was trying yesterday between efforts with the NTID/VIS guys.  I saw close to 90km/h on the speedo (estimated that's around 85km/h actual) when I felt the left hand footpeg touch the boards.  Ok, that's as quick as we're going! To go any quicker than than I'll have to hang off the side of the bike.  Erm ...

So .. I went pretty quick ..

And that's today's blog entry.  Sometimes I reckon I have the best job in the world, riding a motorbike in circles at an indoor velodrome at stupidly quick speeds is ace fun.

For a long time I've been a champion of the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine ergo.  I think I own 6 of them?  It's got a stonkingly heavy flywheel which makes it good (ok, at least, viable) for standing start and acceleration work, which sprinters need.  It's not without issues - the main one being tyre slip under heavy torque - ie: Those standing starts that we want to train on it.  It's issue is that it uses a roller drive, and we can work around that with skateboard deck tape (lasts around 5-10 starts depending on the rider) and it does eat tyres.  We can mate it up to a road powertap and get power and torque (sorta) from it, which is good too.  They're also pretty quiet (fluid), unlike wind trainers.

But ... it's roller driven.  A direct drive would be better, without doubt.  Of course, to do this, would mean that the powertap wouldn't be any use, so we'd lose our data.  Bugger ... We could use SRM's, if we had a huge budget, alas, not this week!

The other good trainer is the BT Ergo, which is a direct drive wind trainer.  It's bulky, it's very expensive and it has next to no inertial load (no flywheel) so it's not good for training acceleration (great for constant power etc, but not for sprint work where we want to target acceleration).   It, being direct drive, does not suffer from wheel slip though (although, since it has no significant flywheel, that's not really an issue with it anyway!). There's a power-based trainer or two around as well, the Computrainer is probably the most famous of them, but it's not a sprinters trainer.  And the AIS's Wombat, the VIS's Godzilla etc (custom made jobbies, with uber-flywheels and SRM's and a big budget to put them together!)

Here's a new player on the block (thanks to Scott McGrory, we had a brief chat about it yesterday at DISC). It's the Lemond Revolution.  Direct drive (no slip) and a flywheel.  We lose out on power measurements with it, at least at the moment, but it might be worth a play - I will see if I can get one to add to the collection of trainers I have, to see if it can fill a niche in our sprint ergo program.  If the flywheel has enough mass and we gear it up right it might be a valuable tool.

There's an age-old question in track sprint, and it's this : "How strong do you have to be?" or variations on that. Why do we care?  Because, unlike our roadie and to a lesser extent track enduro cousins, we have to push very hard indeed for a few pedal strokes to get up to speed, on what may be a pretty large gear.

No commercially available power meters give the full picture.  Powertap, SRM etc do not report peak torque in a useful way - they report averages (but measure everything, if you know how to ask them the right questions).  Averages for torque are  nice to know, but don't really answer the question.  Peak torque is how strong you are, and that's a very interesting figure to know.

I've been lucky enough to be involved in assisting a study being done around these parts which is looking deeply into the torque requirements of sprint cycling.  It's been very interesting so far and we're lucky to have some very fancy torque measurement equipment available to test some of the squad riders on.  I might even get a go on the thing myself if I'm lucky and they want to get some junk data from an old guy who's broken at the moment!  But anyway, it's proving to be very interesting indeed.  We might even be able to answer the question at the end of it.

Interesting times!

Modelled by Emily, I present the 3T Scatto.

  Compare to her using the Easton EC90's, which were 38cm c-c :

  Much better!

Bear in mind that the camera used to take these shots is a GoPro with a very wide lens, so there is a bit of distortion that makes it look worse than it was with the EC90's

Saturday, Blackburn club championships sprint day.  It's blowing a healthy nor-westerly (fast if you know how to use it).  500m ITT first, I use 90".  Held starts (we HAVE GATES FFS! USE THE DAMN THINGS!).  I ride a 40.03 (hand timed) which I think is a PB. It's fast enough to win MMAS3 and would have gotten me a bronze in JM17(!).  Good-o, one in the bag, big fish in a little pond, the other guys I'm racing against are enduros.  The Wizard rides 38.something to win MMAS2.  Dino wins the 750 at DISC at the Vic Masters on the same day (clashes with BBN's club champs).  This will be the last bit of really good news for Dino, who is clearly the fastest MMAS4 in the state of Victoria (big fish, big pond).  Emily has no competition, not a single JW17 has shown up to race with her. She rides a pretty good 500 in the circumstances.  I'm pleased both for her (win, you can only beat the people that show up to race) and also proud of her.  I believe strongly that elite riders should make the effort to race club races when possible, especially things like club championships.  It shows the younger kids where they can go and they're part of something and it keeps the elites grounded.  Likewise I'm proud of Emerson Harwood (NTID) who also raced.

Next up, flying 200's.  It's still blowing a gale, I keep the 90" on.  I ride a 13.20, another PB (by 0.1s).  That'll do, I'm 0.4s faster than the second qualifier, Richard Stringer, in MMAS3.  Emerson breaks Andrew Steel's long-standing track record, with no aero fruit.  He rides 11.8 seconds.  At Blackburn, that's very fast. Emily rides a much better time than she rode last week at round 4 of the SSS.  James Dann rides another PB and qualifies third in JM17.

Race time, I get to watch as Alan Dorin and Ben Schofiled fight it out for the chance to race me (4v5).  Alan wins that, has a rest and then I race him.  I've raced Alan many times over the years, almost always in endurance races and he has almost always been able to beat me.  Not today.  Sprint is my game and he goes later than I expected him to, gets a small gap which I use as a lay off and I zip past him to take an easy win.  Easier than I thought it would be, the standard mode of attack is for these guys to go early and keep jumping (how to beat a sprinter in one easy lesson).  Maybe he wasn't 100% fit? I don't know.  I'm though to the final.  Richard Stringer races Rob Monteath for the other chance to race for first, Richard wins it.  So I'm up against Richard in a best of three for the gold.

The first one, I have the lead (I think!), Richard takes it at a jump, gets a small gap but I catch and pass him.  One down, that wasn't too bad.  He can accelerate and handle the bike well, but doesn't have the top speed to pass me.  Good to know ...

Round two and he's got the lead, and jams me right up hard into the fence at 2.5 to go.  Jammed so hard I had to grab the fence to avoid falling over!  As I grab the rail he jumps and is gone.  I chase (it's now a 700m ITT!), wind him back a little, while watching him swerving around a few times (huh?! he's 40m in front and almost in the grass?!) but the gap is just too big and I can't reel him in, I concede and it's 1:1.  I'm not pleased about it, but this is club racing and I don't think he meant to jam me so hard into the railing.  I'm not going to protest, I do mention it to Doug but he didn't see it, no-one did, it was at the far end of the track and obscured by how we were positioned.  I don't think even Richard realised what he'd done.

Round three, this time I resolve to take this one from the front.  I have speed on Richard, I don't think he'd be able to pass me at full gas.  I have the lead, every time he moves I ramp it up a little, pulling him down off the bank and keeping him under control.  No low speed, sudden jumps this time and no way I'm letting him in front to push me around this time.  With a bit over a lap to go I accelerate, not 100%, but around 80% or so, not looking back any more, but I will kick up the back straight and again around the final bend, that's the plan anyway.  I know he's hard on my wheel but I'll break his timing by changing pace.  Up the final straight and I kick again with 40m to go and just wobble a fraction out of the sprinters lane for a brief moment, it's entirely accidental, I think (I didn't see it) it made Richard move off his passing line, I cross first and record a win.  There's some discussion about it, I did leave the lane, if the judges think it affected the results I will not be upset and I tell Richard if he wants to protest I will not be upset with him about it (I didn't see if it made any difference but I did do it).  He decides not to protest and the result stands.

Ok, club champion for MMAS3 in the TT and the sprint.  My first ever.  I am pleased!

Sunday, different story.  Vic Masters.  I'm now the little fish.  Here be real sprinters.  One guy in our division is a masters world champion and has come down from Sydney to teach us all a lesson.  In my opinion, DFL trumps DNS every day.  I'm going to put that to the test.  My flying 200 is a PB again on 96", at DISC, I ride 12.8something.  Beats my previous best by a whole 0.1s!  Heh!  Anyway, I'm pleased with that, but Gavin (the guy from NSW) rides 11.1  Uhuh .. and He's qualified 1st, I've qualified last (8th) - 1v8.  Good-o.  This will be ... entertaining ... I have the lead, tactically I do it all as well as could be expected, I keep watching him the whole time, using the bank and speed changes to control position, do the hook-and-drop at turn three with one to go, but Gavin just hits the accelerator and goes whoosh past me.  He did everything right, was patient.  I'm out 'til the keirin in the afternoon.  Still, one better than last year when I didn't get a ride except for the flying 200.

Dino's on fire, he's qualifed fastest and is up against a bloke who's flying 200 suggested his experience at this track was marginal.  Dino's lined him up to pass on the finishing straight when he (the guy Dino's racing, loses control and turns right, straight up into Dino with 40m to go.  WTF?!  Dino comes down hard and breaks his collarbone.  I'd like to remind everyone reading of a rule, an important rule.   These things happen but that should not have.  Dino's put his heart and soul into training for this event and this was just horribly cruel.  He gets bundled off in an ambulance with lots of strong drugs.

Chris Ray wins his sprints and wins Gold.  Dino gets a silver by virtue of a disqualification.  Not what he wanted and it's awful.  Emily collects his medal for him later.

Keirins, I've drawn number 1, I get the motorbike.  I'm on 96".  Safely on the bike, I lead it out, with one to go the boys behind me kick and I don't have the legs to go with it, first three (of the four in our heat) go through to the final, and they all cruise over the line.  Outgunned?  uhuh ... anyway, DFL trumps DNS.

Mick Thomas wins the MMAS4 (or 5? Mick?) scratch race AND the keirin!

After some running around with Emily (Dino's not driving anywhere today!) and a solid state team training session in the evening it's time to go home.  Phew.  A big big weekend ...

It could have been better, I might have been able to train consistantly, but that's life and we all have reasons/excuses for why we perform how we do on race day.  I'm lighter (~100kg vs 113kg) than I was at this time last year which has helped my jump.  My jump still sucks, but it sucks less than it used to.  Now I'm only having to bridge up 10m, not 40m and that's a significant improvement.  I'm back in the gym as of last week doing consistent lifting after a layoff of some 10 months so I'll get strong again.  The week in the pressure-cooker at Dunc Grey didn't help my preparation, excuse, excuse, excuse ... !

ENOUGH!  Get on with the damn racing!

Ok ..

I warmed up on 50x17, light easy gear.  Did a couple of revouts, one chasing Neil, just to get things moving.  On Saturday I'd done some short efforts at Daryl Perkins' session at DISC just before our NTID session and I felt ok.  Hitting around 1400 watts peak doing jumps.  Ok, that's not too bad for an old guy who's missed a lot of ENOUGH WITH THE EXCUSES! .. it was a good session yesterday!

Flying 200 time.  I rode a 13.5, not that far off my PB (around 0.2 I think, slower than it) - I didn't use the disk wheel, I kept the powertap wheel on all day, so here's the evidence for the flying 200.  Conditions weren't ideal, a southerly and pretty cold. I'm pleased with that time.  I still want to get down into the 12's but I think that will have to wait 'til next season.

Draw done, and I'm to race James Dann, Ian McGinley and Aaron Christiansen in the rounds.  I was the fastest qualifier in B grade (again!).  6 of us in the grade.  Being fastest qualifier helps later, as you shall see ...

James is a junior invitational rider, I coach him and he's got a kick.  But, he's restricted to 82 gear inches.  I'm on 90".  How do you take the jump out of the picture?  Keep the speed up and burn him off.  That's the theory, at least.  I lead out, jumped coming out of turn 4 (should have gone at the entry to turn 3 ...) just before the bell, James kicks and is in front of me.  Right ... chase chase chase, on the wheel, coming past but left it too late.  James bags his coach.  I'll fix him later!  Our last 200 was done in 13.4 seconds and he was in the front all the time, James was really moving.  Watch for him next summer.

Second race and I'm up against Ian.  He's mainly an enduro but can sprint a bit. A decent all-rounder.  He jumps me, I chase, I go to pass on the back straight but he uses a second kick and stays clear.  Doh!  Ian's a good racer and his flying 200 doesn't reflect his ability.

Third heat and I'm racing Aaron.  Aaron's done very few match sprints but he's a very fit rider and has ridden faster flying 200's than I have at DISC.  I can't take him for granted, that's for sure.  Again I get gapped at the jump but this time I find a bit more speed and manage to catch Aaron just in time to bag a win.  That hurt.  Lots. I'll pay for it if I make the finals.

At the end of the rounds there's a few of us tied on 9 points.  As the fastest qualifier I get the forth spot, racing against Nicholas Cockerell (another newbie).  Three laps.  I'll have the lead thanks, and I hold him tight up against the fence for a lap and a half, I don't want a long race, but I need the speed high to reduce the impact of his jump.  He gets around me, I get up to his wheel but not enough and he wins, I get 4th overall (again!).  Interesting fact, I've never been on the podium at an SSS round.  As the guy who runs it I think that's probably appropriate, but I'll get on the damn thing one day and shake my own hand!

Video to come ...

Thankyou to :

Lucie Akers (photography)

Jodie Dundas (videography)

Krissy Dundas (general help)

Anne Apolito (race entry and results)

John 'Star Trek' Lewis for race timing

Sue Dundas (commissaire)

Chris Dann (commentary)

Alex Vaughan (sausages!)

Where there's an orthopaedic issue, there's an engineering solution.  I present Dave Draper's  Top Squat

 Not since April 2010 have I been able to do a proper squat.  I've been able to front squat (sucks....), deadlift etc but with a SLAP tear and osteoarthritis in my shoulders the rotation of my arms was restricted (and still is and probably always will be) such that I can't hold the barbell properly.  But with this doodad I can.  Sorta - it's not perfect, but it's a damn sight better than not being able to do it.

So on Monday (still full of mental and physical fatigue after the Aust titles in Sydney) I got under the bar for the first time in about 9 months or so.  I only worked up to a lazy 80kg workset, the technique is a little different and there's a couple of tricks to using it (keep the thing LEVEL! or the barbell slips to one side, not ideal!) but in general it's a great bit of kit.  On Tuesday I had DOMS and that is good!

Yesterday I got to DISC early and Hilts gave me a couple of MACC's for fun.  I slapped on 96" to do 'em. Here's the graph of the last effort.  It was supposed to be 375m, with me riding the last 125m unassisted, but Hilts blew the whistle, which means keep going, and it ended up being 500m.  I think I found a new HRmax ... They are FUN! Hilton is a superb derny rider.  I have much to learn.

I'm up in Sydney at the Dunc Grey velodrome as part of the Victorian state team, a pretty minor part, as best I can tell I'm looking after the physical stuff for the guys we've been coaching for the last year.  It's a bit muddy, but I'm dogsbody for Hilts and the guys (this is not a bad thing!). It's a great opportunity to see how it all works and gain a lot of very valuable experience.  In particular I'm learning (or trying to!) how to fit in and get things done in this team environment without stepping on too many toes.  I have much to learn and a few personalities that I need to understand better to get along with smoothly.

But we're here to race, and our athletes are the reason we're here. So on with the real story :

Yesterday we had Adele and Caitlin racing the team sprint.  There was five teams in total and our girls had, on the other side of the track, Anna.  Welcome to the big time.  Adele is no stranger to the big stage but Caitlin was pretty new to this level of competition.  For those of you that remember these two girls starting at Blackburn all those years ago, what a journey they've had so far.  They're solid friends and they look after eachother.  They rode well, not perfectly, but they gave their all and finished fourth, improving their time in the final they made it into by a fraction of a second.  Given that they were the only all J19 team I think that's pretty good.  I know personally that I'm happy when a rider commits and does their very best.  Both girls did that and I'm proud of them.

Along the way yesterday, Jack Bobridge broke the unbreakable world record.  Chris Boardman set the pursuit record way back in 1994 I think, with superman position on a space-age bike.  Jack beat that record on a BT you can buy yourself using normal aerobars.  Wow....  Shane Perkins also rode a blistering 10.05s flying 200.

Today we up the ante, the J19 men do the kilo.  The girls do their flying 200 and the 500m time trial.   It's going to be intense.  Bring it on.

The guy who did it used car power telemetry software, which just reads CSV data. I reckon we can hack something up to do it with our track powermeters and that will be sexy!