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

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

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

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

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

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

heh!

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

Many of you know, and if you don't, you do now ... I'm a bit of a fan of Trek bikes.  For a long time they've only had an aluminium frame track bike (the T1).  It seems they now have a carbon one .... It looks like an Equinox TTX with track dropouts.  Interesting ... I have our local Trek rep on the job to find out more.

The picture tells the story.  This morning was to be the first of the DUCC skills sessions for 2010.

At 11pm yesterday we weren't sure, but by 7am today, we were, and it's been deferred 'til the first Monday after Easter.

C'est la Vie!  Rain is good ... We need more rain ...

Hotham was great, we had perfect conditions for it and a really good group of people.  No cliques, no tupperware parties disguised as seminars and everyone said they'll be back for more in November.  Excellent!

A lucky 13 took the trip up to Marouka Lodge for the 12th aboc Climbing Camp, no human casualties, one broken bike chain.   Great efforts by, in particular, Alex, 'Von and Carmen!

Thankyou to everyone who helped in the kitchen and with cleaning up too. A more full report is to come soon.

Salvaging some pride :

I'm relieved that the Australian Junior Titles are run and won.  We (aboc people) had Emily, as you know, who rode her socks off and did everything she set out to do.  Dino and I also video'ed all the Victorians, I wasn't in any way part of the coaching team for the Vic squad, but I wanted to help out in some way so I took the camera and video'ed everything.  It's not much of a contribution but it's something and it's good for the kids and their parents.  It meant I didn't have time to get many stills but Leanne Cole was one of the official photographers and she got some rippers.  You can see her work here.  My videos are being uploaded to youtube and you can see them all as they go up here.  I got almost every Victorian ride except the JW17 500m ITT and a couple of qualifying rides. I got a good photo of Hilton doing what he does best, which I'm happy with.

And so now things will return to normal for a bit.  Which is to say, busy, but not overwhelming.  Yesterday we had our DISC summer session which was well attended, I didn't have Nathan as he's got transport issues so I did all the motorpacing for the sprinters as well as the enduros and they all left well toasted.  This coming week I'll be training and coaching on Tuesday morning at Blackburn, coaching on Wednesday afternoon and evening with Hilton and the NTID/CCCC mob from probably 3pm-ish 'til around 10pm, Thursday sees us running Summer Spin at Blackburn, Friday we head up to Hotham for Climbing Camp #12 for the weekend and on Monday morning next week the first of the DUCC skills sessions at Blackburn.  Along the way there's a few strength sessions in the 'Haus and a pile of training programs to write.  You should see my calender! Phew ...

The goal.  Ride a sub 40s 500m ITT and win a medal at the 2010 Australian Junior Titles in the 500m ITT.

The ride :

The time, 39.850 seconds.

The medal, silver.

Mission accomplished!

I'm going to show you the full results of the JW15 sprint qualifying and the 500m ITT for 2010.  First, the sprint :

and now the 500 :

Compare that to last year :

Sprint :

And the 500 :

What changed?  In 2009, none of the JW15 girls did the 500 in less than 40 seconds, the closest was 40.079.  In 2010 two did, our own Emily (who rode a 0.6 second PB and got silver) and Macey Stewart from Tassie who rode a 39.139.  Last year at the Nationals Emily rode a 41.772, so she found 1.922 seconds in a year, Macey went from a 41.471 500 down to a 39.139, finding 2.332 seconds.  That's a huge improvement in a year from both girls. It's also a big raising of the bar for JW15 compared to last year. 

Looking at the sprint qualifying we see a similar picture. In 2009 four girls went under 14 seconds, in 2010 seven of them did, and our two riders of interest, Emily went from a 14.145 to a 13.445 and Macey 14.189 down to a 13.367.  It's a lot faster and the competition a lot tighter this year than it was last year, that's for sure.  Some things may have helped, it was very hot in at DISC yesterday and also quite humid, so that helps with fast times.

There's some amazingly quick girls there this year, and Emily's one of the very best.

Emily's safely through the first bit of the Aussies, she's qualified second fastest in the sprint with a 13.445s flying 200, the fastest girl is from Tassie and rode a 13.367, so it's going to be close.  Em's previous best was at the Vics a few months ago, a 13.857, so she's found almost half a second since then and both her and the girl from Tassie are breathtakingly close to Imogen's Australian record.  The first sprint round was held shortly after the qualifier and the fastest girls get to race the slowest, so Em was up against a girl who rode a 15.something 200, which was unlikely to be difficult.  Every sprint's a risk though but Em rode patiently and won through safely.

She's off recovering at home at the moment and then will get ready for her big race tonight, the 500m ITT.

Almost 12 months ago Emily Apolito and I sat down up at Mt Hotham at the climbing camp and had a chat about what to do next.  She'd won the JW15 500m time trial at the Vics as a junior girl in her age group and finished mid-field at the Aussies.  She was pretty keen to do better and so we drew up a plan together.

And so we're at crunch-time.  Tomorrow at around 6:15pm Emily will be racing in the Big V on her home turf in her biggest race.  This time she's not racing for experience, she's there to win it.  Come and cheer her and the other juniors along.  It's not every day you get to see elite sportspeople racing at their very best and Emily and all the other juniors will be giving it their all.  Go Emily, Go!

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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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 ...