The first in a series of 3 youth race training sessions was held on Monday the 30th March.
Slipstreamers Head Coach Dave George reports on the evening:
“Clocks forward. Lighter nights. The start of Spring. It’s a shame nobody informed the weather at Hillingdon!
Not quite a Spring evening at Hillingdon Cycle Circuit!
It was a grey, damp and cold start to our Monday night race preparation sessions. As is quickly becoming the norm, a few riders were already there waiting for me to open up – I now use this as one measure of success – if I’m early and people are waiting, it’s going to be good! We opened up, got sign-on prepared and started to welcome riders to our new initiative to introduce riders to racing at Hillingdon. We had extended the invite to riders from outside the Slipstreamers family, to come along, learn the circuit, and pick up some of our ever present safety tips to put in place when racing.
Fantastic turnout!
23 riders signed on! Great result for a wet Monday – and a really broad spread of ages and abilities. And this is key – we want younger riders to learn from our more seasoned “experts”. We want it to be challenging for all – but at the same time, we want riders leaving feeling that they have achieved something.
We started off with the “rolling road-block” session, to get riders confident in moving through groups, communicating and being spatially aware of their riding neighbours. All riders took part together, and our older riders took time to point out that there wasn’t enough communication, and riders needed to make more “gliding” manoeuvres rather than “sharp turns” when riding through a group.
We then moved into mixed ability groups practising “jumping” from one group to another. And every time a group was caught, new riders went off the front to catch the next group, and so on. The “chain reaction” of riders moving from group to group made for some hard efforts to chase riders down. Riders did help each other, and from the youngest to the oldest put in some amazing efforts and demonstrated good riding organisation.
To get ready for end of session race, we threw in a couple of uphill mass sprints – which seemed to put the required rosy glow back on cold faces! The end of session race was handicapped for the U8’s and U10’s riding a 4 lap race, with the U12’s racing 6 laps, and the U14-U16’s riding 8 laps. Again, some fantastic well organised group riding and finished off with some very close sprint finishes.
We finished as planned at 19:30, just as the light was starting to fade and wrapped up back at the clubhouse for a short debrief.”
But what did the riders think…?
It goes without say that all riders had a brilliant time, worked really hard and despite the rain had huge smiles on their faces all the way through to the end! Anastasia and Zoe said it was a tough session but good fun. Ollie said he would love to do that every evening! And a BIG thank you to Gabrielle for the chocolate eggs much needed.
Finally, a very important note and point of order:
As we are extending our training sessions to other riders outside of Slipstreamers, please be reminded that ALL visitors and guests attending these are to be treated with respect and understanding. We expect all our members who participate to take time to welcome newcomers, and think back to when you first started and how daunting a circuit of this size can be. Helping to promote cycle sport should always be on our minds and is at the heart of the Slipstreamers ethos. Details of the Slipstreamers Code of Conduct which every Slipstreamer rider and parent sign up to are fundamental to ensuring these principles are upheld, and we expect everyone to abide by these.
The next training session is on Monday 6th April – full details here.