From Clay Worthington, WAIS sprint coach :

Hello All,

Please pass word around that TCWA has agreed to run a winter sprint series in Perth. We have targeted the last Friday of every month starting in April (and with one exception … please see attached), and we think it doesn’t clash with many major events (although there are likely to be clashes with road events). The better it is attended the better the racing experience will be for everyone.

Racing format is still being developed, but we’ll start smart and let it grow. At this time we’re planning a F200 qualification to determine racing groups by ability (not age, gender, or category). We’ll run 2up match sprints, derby’s, and Keirins depending on numbers and all in sprint formats and distances (i.e. sprints 2-3 laps, derbys 2-4 laps, Keirin 6-8 laps). I’m not planning any “Coach’s Kilos”, but will keep working on DB and Muzz to line up opposite one another. J If you attend, expect to race 4-6 times plus a 200.

Registration will run through TCWA as per a typical Fri Night Racing (i.e. Tues midnight deadline, through TCWA website, or email Ken Benson), but please feel free to express your interest to me as we’ll need attendance to keep it running. Same $15 as is typical.

At this time, I’m expecting to be registration desk, session coach, commissairre, motorcycle driver, etc as it’s being listed as a TCWA Sprint Training session; but we’ll be racing for training. Warm up starts at 6p and racing starts at 7p with qualifications, and we’ll plan to finish by 9p. Electronic timing gates will be on track with hand timing for back up and to deliver splits.

If you have questions, please call/email/text me. If you know of folks who want to sprint but haven’t gotten a chance yet, please tell them their opportunity is here!

Thanks for your attention.

Clay

Over the last few months I've had reason to answer the question, in a couple of different contexts, "How important is winning?".

It's a very interesting question indeed.

Ultimately, we race to win. In sprint, it's not about finishing the race, unlike most of the people who race endurance events.  Just to finish the Warny for example, is a win.  Second place in a match sprint is not a win.  Finishing a flying 200 is not a win. It sucks to lose a sprint and still get a medal.  In some ways bronze is better than silver, emotionally.  You won bronze, you lost to get silver.

How important is it?  It's very context-sensitive.  If you're a recreational sprinter racing the Summer Sprint Series, it's important to be competitive and have fun, that's why we grade it and it's a round robin format.  For development purposes, this is an ideal format, plenty of racing, plenty of chances to win, and try things and to try things that don't necessarily work the way you expect them.

If you're a coach in a government funded elite squad, winning is all-important.  Head sprint coaches at the Olympic games for Australia, Great Britain, Germany, France etc are there to win.  That's their job. It's absolutely vital that they win. They can't all win, and those that don't can get the chop by their organisations if they don't.  It's very intense and the stakes are high. It's only a bike race, but it's not!  Millions of dollars of goverment and private funding, years of dedication and sacrifice from the athletes and the coaches, there's a lot at stake. When it goes badly at that level, it's brutal. 

Compare this to Cool Runnings.  We've all seen it, it's a classic and one of the best sporting movies ever made.  Those guys won, not the race, but a battle against almost overwhelming odds to get to the start line.  If you're not at the top level, getting to the top level is a win.

Think about Lori-Ann Muenzer in our context, or Sir Chris Hoy, who was a pioneer of what is now one of, if not the, best sprint programmes in the world.  Hoy's story really is amazing.  His autobiography is a must read for anyone in sprint cycling.

From a development perspective, working with a development group like I do with the Vic sprint group (15 to 18 year olds, mostly) and some of the aboc guys, winning bike races isn't as critically important in the short term.  It'a a long term goal - we ARE training the kids to win races and it's important that they do, but it is at least as important that they develop the strength, power, speed, skill and emotional maturity to cope with the pressure to win that they will face if they make it into an elite squad.

These attributes can take time. A junior athlete with potential may not be winning much at first, it may take years of hard work for them to progress to the level where they are winning races and if winning is everything, these guys drop out.  We need them (and the seniors!) to concentrate on improvement and processes.  You'll hear a lot of "focus on the process". This means focussing on what you're doing, whatever it is, and letting the results take care of themselves.  If you're focussing on a solid start out of a gate, arms straight, head up etc and not on "I must win this race", you'll usually do a better start, and are more likely to win, or at least, give yourself the best chance you have to win. The athletes need to protect themselves from this pressure (pity the coaches!) and have sports psychs to help them with it. In order to win, they need to forget about winning.  Just like tennis in a lot of ways.  There are some very good books on tennis winning, I can recommend The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey.  Get it, read it. It's good.

Back on topic, winning is, ultimately, what it's all about for us, but we must approach that with a long term plan and process and with athletes fully aware that while we're preparing them to win, we want to see focus, dedication and improvement.  Tick those boxes and the wins will come.

Minor rant time.

Sprint is starved for competition.  Famished.  We get next to nothing.  Until the NJTS came along (and I, and a few other coaches, lobbied like mad to get more sprint-ish races included in it, thank you Max Stevens for listening) if you were a sprinter as a junior, you get two, maybe three or four if you're in Melbourne, chances a year to compete.  Club championships, state titles, metro/country/Vic Track Cup and nationals if you made it that far.  I'm going to take credit for my Summer Sprint Series as well, but that's only club stuff and we have 5 rounds a year.  So maybe, if you're in Melbourne, not including NJTS, you can, at most, have 9 chances to race sprints per year.  Nine.  Count them.

Enduros - HUNDREDS!  Clubs fall over themselves to offer junior tours, there's track racing two to three times a week or more for enduros, more road races, crits and other stuff than I can count.  Hundreds of opportunities to race.  The "sprint" races at the NJTS are not match sprints, they're short (2 laps) events and baby keirins that enduros can be competitive in.  The NJTS gives us (sprint coaches and talent ID people) a chance to see potential sprinters if they pop up from the default endurance setting that all clubs impose and maybe we get a chance to rescue these kids if we're lucky.  It gives the kids born with some sprint talent a chance to actually stand out in some racing before they give up and go play footy because they're all fast twitch and can't hang on up some hill somewhere because that's not how they're made. 

The NJTS program is weighted to the advantage of the sprinter? Take a step back and look at the big picture. Our sport is so massively, overwhelmingly biased to endurance that the suggestion is absurd.

A Huge thankyou to Steve Hassett from Foundation Technologies Australia, he's agreed to be the major sponsor for the Summer Sprint Series for 2013-2014.

After a pretty pleasing round 2 of the SSS, I've had a few setbacks, a niggling knee twinge, a week at the Oceanias, not much/any training ... And my power is down ~150 watts!  Doh ... Round 4 is coming soon, and I'm feeling better, hopefully it'll be a better day at the races!

SSS round 2, and close to perfect conditions,  I rode a 13.079, which is a big PB for me.  53x15 gearing, I rode a low entry line and it worked.  It put me into A grade.  Second last qualifier, so it was going to be tough ...

I rode a good race against Nic Mark, I had a good gap and had a chance, but flatted (lucky, back wheel!) down the straight with a lap to go, lucky not to bin it, so Nic got that one.  Next up I raced Dino, and again I lead it out, Dino got right on my hip passing me coming into turn 3 and I got spooked and backed off (Dino would have won anyway, this wasn't why he won!), and in the last, Kyle Muir went from 600m and I didn't bother to chase him. 

So, apart from race 1 I was a gumby, but I did ride a big PB for my F200 so the day was good!

I've been pretty busy of late... Last weekend (no, sorry, the weekend before, June 23 and 24) I was looking after a bunch of VIS/Sprint Academy sprinters* at the Perth Speed-Dome on a flying visit to race a Grand Prix and the Westral, we flew in to Perth on Saturday morning, drove to the velodrome, trained, back to a motel, dinner, sleep, back to velodrome for a full day's racing, packed and drove back to the airport and flew home.  Phew!  I was so tired when I got back to Tullamarine I couldn't see straight, thank you Jayne for rescuing me! If I'd have tried to drive home it would have been a dangerous trip indeed.

We've also, in conjunction with Blackburn, started running Friday night training sessions at DISC.  So far they've had low attendances, but hopefully word will spread and we'll get more numbers - we run a sprint and enduro session, with each group getting roughly 20 minute time slices.  It's a format that works well and I've been using it for years with our Sunday sessions, but the Friday nights we have the luxury of three hours, not two on Sundays.  More time!  Sundays are chugging along well, it's been pretty cold in at DISC but we're doing good quality work and the guys are going faster (when they attend regularly!). Our program is always published in advance on this website, and I am more than willing to entertain requests and suggestions for additions and alterations to the program.

Also the Tuesday evening Spin sessions at Blackburn are trundling along - we've had some huge nights and some quiet ones - if you're not coming, I'd really like to know why, it will help me to improve the sessions if I know why you're choosing to do something else.

So that's Friday and Sunday and Tuesday evenings locked away.  What else?  Wednesdays I'm at DISC doing the Victorian Sprint Group coaching, assisting Hilton Clarke, and he's away in the US for a holiday until the 16th of July, so that's Wednesdays from ~11am 'til 7:30pm or so.  This also happens on Saturdays, from ~11:30 'til 5ish.  Lock away Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat and Sun.  Anything else?  Oh, yeah, coaching and lifting in the Powerhaus gym on Mondays and Thursdays from ~3pm 'til 8 or so.

That's, ahh ... pretty busy!

So if I've been a bit slow in getting back to anyone with emails etc, now you know why! I have to set dates for next summer's Summer Sprint Series, urgh ... Calendars ... Clash. clash clash ... Keep an eye here for dates.

* - No, I am not employed by the VIS, I was sitting in as a Sprint Academy coach for Sean Eadie while he's in Italy with the seniors in the leadup to the Olympics

Firstly, I've revised my coaching structure a little, and am waiting for Nathan to see if he wants to change his stuff, the revised structure is here. This is to better reflect my specialisation in sprint and my experience.   I will still be running the Tuesday ergo sessions which are both sprint and endurance sessions, as those of you who go already know - that's just had a pricing change and is otherwise mostly unchanged.  I'm not coaching endurance riders so it makes sense that I make that clear.

We had to cancel the last round of the SSS for 2011-2012.  This is mainly due to clashes with so many different events and training sessions that I just couldn't see a path through, and burnout on the part of many of the guys in the squad, not just racers but also the vitally important volunteers who run it.  We're fried and need a break.

Now the good news!

DISC is closed from mid April 'til the end of May to have the leaky roof fixed.  Good-o!  But .. yes that takes away our Sunday DISC sessions for a bit.  I'm considering (read: will, somehow!) running a Sunday sprint-Ergo session during that time, maybe at Blackburn, maybe at the powerHaus, maybe at home (if Jayne agrees!).  Better than nothing.   We'll charge a tenner to come and suffer, BYO chunder bucket and road bike as usual. It won't be an enduro session, just sprint.  If Nath wants to put together some enduro stuff we can certainly accomodate that but I will leave it to him to decide.   The track time loss is more critical to sprinters than enduros during the off season, but if Nath wants to make it happen I'm happy to help.

Not many of you will have heard of "Junior Worlds Syndrome", it's not in wikipedia that I know of, but it's a big deal for coaches and program directors who work with junior track sprinters.

What is it?

Kids come back from junior worlds, and leave the sport or change tack and go race endurance. 

It's quite common.

Why?

I had a chance to have a debrief with one of the kids who did this after a recent junior worlds, and three main things cropped up from this discussion.

I'm going to focus on one.

Sprint pathways aren't clear - Once a junior comes out of J19's they have to race Shane Perkins, Anna Meares etc.  Daunting, and it takes a long time (3-5 years or more for most of them) to build up to that level.  Professional road racers have a defacto grading system with lesser races and second division teams etc for riders to be part of, track sprint is Olympics/World Cup or nothing, or at least, that is how it's perceived.

Interestingly burnout was not mentioned

Bearing in mind that this is essentially a brief summary of one discussion (ie: I just listened and prompted a little) It does raise some interesting points for discussion.

What can we do as sprint coaches and program directors do to alter either the process, or the communication of the processes, to our riders such that we might increase the chances of keeping them in sprint programs?

We need to provide more sprint racing.  This is fundamental.  We need to get event directors to put in more (some! even just one!) sprint events into track carnivals.   I rant about this a lot, we need my sprint series to grow, get some real sponsors, not just me and my wonderful band of volunteers, and be a viable pathway, perhaps integrated with the Sprint Academy.  

We need sprint to be taken seriously and for track carnivals to reflect this.  A few years ago the Revolution races had a really good mix of sprint and endurance racing, but it has fallen by the wayside despite it being a very entertaining format.  Copying it or some parts of it will help.  The J19's and early senior sprinters need more than just another wheelrace to aspire to as a stepping stone.  Sending developing sprinters to Asian Cups and so on is of value and needs support from the state sports institutes.

We need the various event directors to understand that the modern sprinter is a specialist, they wouldn't put Usain Bolt into a 800m running race, why would you put a cycling sprinter into the equivalent except to embarras them?

We need the National Junior Track Series to allow sprint to feature more.  I've spoken with the organisers and hopefully the next season will showcase more pure sprint events.  We need clubs to "get" sprint as a seperate part of the sport and to be a bit passionate about it.

A long long time ago I posted that I wanted to ride 12.5 for a flying 200, not a terribly ambitious target, but for me, I though a pretty challenging one.

Today, at the Vic Masters, I clocked 12.428s.  I certainly didn't expect to go that fast (ok, slow, but for me, that's fast!) - I'd been in Adelaide for a week, doing nothing, had done some longer efforts on Friday night, generally about the worst preparation you could have - but there you go.  Goal achieved.  That makes 2011-2012 a successful season.  I won a couple of rounds of the SSS (r1 and r2, B grade), rode a target flying 200, and there's still a couple of rounds to go.  Peak power is still down, but that's on its way up again, slowly.

Got to be happy with that!

The guys did well today, I'll pop up a few photos that are already on facebook of the team, but there's a haul of medals of every colour (including my bronze in MMAS3 for coming 3rd/last).

I was going to write about SSS round 2, which went pretty well (ok, it was great!) but that can wait a bit.  You can see all the videos and results over at the SSS website if you want.

I want to write briefly about learning, learning new, alien skills and the art of excellent teaching.

I'm lucky enough (wellll ... pretty lucky, wellll ... extrordinarily lucky ...) to be being exposed to a new skillset by a teacher/coach with some of the best teaching skills I've ever experienced.  Learning new skills is hard, especially in an environment where you're way outside your comfort zone. 

In a really fortuitous twist to this tale, at the same time as I am being taught new skills, I am in parallel, teaching new skills to the teacher who's teaching me (a swapsie, you might say).  I am teaching whitewater kayaking and basic track cycling, I am being taught .. wait for it ... Ceroc modern jive (I think that's what it is anyway? All I know is I keep tripping over!).  Yes, dancing.  Me .. Dancing .. You want to push my comfort zone, that is IT!  I can fly a plane, SCUBA dive to 55m on mixed gasses, play violent contact sports, climb rocks and ice, race sprints, paddle down rapids, kill spiders and ward off snakes .. you name it, no worries, but dance?  Ohhh ...  I'm game enough to admit to being petrified of dancing.

This is a very interesting position to be in, when teaching skills a teacher needs to know when to back off, say nothing, let the student experiment and make (harmless) mistakes, and when to intercept and cut off any frustration or danger with the right cues.  Timing of this is critical or the student either doesn't get the chance to learn (over teaching is waayyyyy too common, just SHUT UP, STEP BACK AND LET ME WORK THIS OUT FOR MYSELF!) or gets hurt and/or frustrated to the point that they can't learn (spit the dummy time or get injured!).   

The teacher must have the absolute trust of their student that they are looking after them.  I'm putting my student into dangerous situations in whitewater rapids and on steep banked velodromes. I'm being put into a social context that I am deeply unfamiliar with as well (who wants to look like a dickhead in front of your partner's peers?).  Trust is vital.  Having a teacher or coach that you trust gives you the backing to be able to push you limits.

I also think it's important that the teacher not pretend that a new skill is easy - track stands are not easy, eskimo rolls are not easy, swan drops are not easy (really! I threw that in because I tried to learn that last night and last week and it's tricky!), power cleans and proper squats are not easy.  None of these things are natural, they need to be learned and pretending that they're easy harms the trust relationship between a teacher/coach and their students. They're worthwhile to learn and will take time and effort and will be rewarding when learned.  They are not easy to learn.

To cut a long story short, I think it's a great experience to be taught something new and totally alien and I'm not just (slowly!) learning how not to bowl over dance partners, but more importantly, I'm learning a lot more about how to teach and coach, by being a total novice student all over again in the hands of a brilliant teacher.

Oh, I won B grade on Sunday at round 2, undefeated (although Ian McGinley and I were very very close) and rode a PB flying 200, I'm only a 10th off breaking into 12 seconds at Blackburn.  I think it was world Vegan day on Sunday, I had a couple of steaks to celebrate.

Quick recap of round 1 of the SSS.  I qualified ok, no PB (13.4) but given the gusty southerly that was ok, and given I was using a new 5 spoke front wheel for the first time at Blackburn, in a gusty wind, and it took me off the line quite a bit around turn 3, I'm not displeased with the time.  I'll go back to my normal front wheel for races ...

Racing - first up Ian McGinley beats me, I rode like a chump and didn't dig hard enough to keep the lane when he passed me, probably should have won it, but mistimed a lay off and run due to some confusion with Ian staying up out of the lane. 

Second time and I'm up against Nic Marc, I got him, too easily, he gave me way too much gap at turn 3 on lap 1 and I escaped.  Learning experience for Nic, who made me look like a goose at DISC a few weeks ago, now we're 1-all!

Third race and I'm up against Tyler Spurrel, who qualified badly but races well and can out-jump me.  Sure enough, he does and he wins, I almost chopped him into the infield when he jumped under me out of T4, Mea Culpa.

By virtue of fastest qualifying time in B grade I'm through to the 3v4 final, against Ian again, this time he leads out and I duck around behind him for half a lap seeing if he has his radar on.  He doesn't seem happy riding while looking behind so I take a chance and go pretty early, get a small gap and gamble on being able to vary my pace and break his timing when he tries to pass.  This works, he tries to pass on T3/T4 but I lift a bit (kept a bit in reserve) and take a win.

So I win my entry fee back!

Standout performances from the J17 lads I've been working with, James Dann (15y/o, on 82") rides a 12.6, Jay Castles is a tiny bit behind him and John Cochrane also right up there despite a bit of a bug.  A mixed day for everyone else, first race back after winter is an interesting one, especially since we've been indoors at DISC all winter and outdoors at Blackburn is different.  A lot of the Sprint Squad guys are peeved with their times, but it's early days yet ...

Tomorrow I fly up to Sydney with the Blackburn under 17's who are racing the first round of the new National Junior Track Series (NJTS).  Three sprinters, Emily, John and James, and three enduros, Chloe, Michael and Pierce.   I'll be back first thing on Saturday morning - hopefully while I'm up there I'll get a chance to catch up with Sean Eadie again, I have much to discuss with him!

We've done our strength blocks, our capacity work (ouch ....) and this is a taper week, because on Sunday it's round 1 of the 2011-2012 aboc Summer Sprint Series.  The weather forecast is good (enough!) - the team is ready, and my sprinters are ready!

I've been very lucky in this sprint coaching caper.  Right from the start.  So here I am in Adelaide again, after a weekend's assisting Hilton with the Vic VIS and TID kids at a sprint camp.  Now I'm spending this week (I'm here for the first week of a three week junior worlds preparation camp) with Sean Eadie, assisting him as much as I can, working on The Book some more.   Amazing opportunity to learn and develop, and hopefully be a tiny bit useful to Sean for the week too.

The water here still sucks, and finding an open supermarket on a weekend is a challenge, but that's Adelaide for you!

The weekend's racing was good - everyone learned a lot and developed skills and confidence.  The format was similar to the SSS, which as we know, works!

Tonight was the second of the Blackburn "aboc" (but not run by us) sprint nights over winter.  It was a bit of a messy night, some things took far too long to happen (we sat around for ages after the first race before we did the team sprint).  But .. I was pleasantly suprised by my peak power, I hit 1400 watts for the first time in a long time, which is promising.  I raced ok, in the two races I had against live oposition, Caitlin "the flicker" Ward was too fast (and a little too hard to pass!) for me and in the B grade keirin final I was baked and pulled out after 2 laps, no legs left at all. I was reasonably happy with how I went, considering the recovery from my injury, I'm not unhappy with my progress.  Yesterday in the 'Haus I squatted (singles) 150kg and deadlifted 175kg (again, just a single rep) and the deadlift was a struggle but I got it without too much rounding, but the squat was easy.  The deadlift isn't that far off my previous PB (185kg for a double), the squat is still way down, but it's getting there slowly.  Don't rush it ... the summer sprint series is still months away.... I did have to race in front of most of the VIS and NTID kids we coach, I think they got a laugh out of watching an old, slow, talentless bloke, it was all in good humour and I think most of them had fun.

The series needs work to make it run better, but as Richard Stringer and I discussed afterwards, we'll chip away at it until it works.  Tonight we got to nominate our team sprint teams which was an improvement, little steps ...

I'm starting to ask around for sponsors for the 2011-2012 Summer Sprint Series.  Andrew Steele from Avanti Plus Croydon is onboard as a minor sponsor this coming season, but we'll need a major prize.

Also, I'm considering a minor rule change - We have J17's as junior invitees, in the past they have been ineligeable for the series aggregate and I'm thinking of changing this so they are able to win it.  This will, as well as give them a chance to win a big prize, simplify the aggregate points calculations.  In the past if a JI rider got aggregate points I "slipped" them out of the results and moved everyone below them up - so for example if Emily won C grade and a senior got second, the senior was credited with points for the win (10) instead of second (7) and so on.  In hindsight I think that was wrong and it will be better to just have the JI's able to win, if they can. 

So, who wants a JI entry?

You know what to do if you do ...

As I mentioned in a blog entry last week, I only did the flying 200 (rode a reasonable time, considering, 13.05, not that far off my PB), the team sprints and the keirin (I was rubbish in the keirin!  Totally pissweak effort! anyway ....)

At the end of the night I was asked for some feedback.  Here it is :

Do flyng 200's every time to start and grade everyone - these are an important sprint discipline and practicing them (and racing them!) is important.  Do them over the full 3.5 lap distance, not 2.5 laps.  It's what we train for, and how we race.  The juniors whop are along to have fun should get exposed to this properly.

Team sprints - we did them in teams of 2 (good) but with the fastest and slowest combined, second fastest with second slowest and so on.  This meant that it wasn't really a race and the kids felt bad for holding up the seniors they were teamed with, despite our best efforts to encourage them.  They did learn, but I'd suggest we do two team sprints - one like this, and one graded with nominated teams that we can be a bit more serious about.

Keep the keirins, and keep them at the end of the night.  To give the sprinters time to recover, run scratch races between the sprints for enduros (or enduros that want to also sprint, go for it guys ... who needs recovery?!).

If numbers are low, match sprints, if numbers are high, more keirins.

I'm focussing a lot of us older guys who train in the Sprint Squad on legspeed and power at higher cadences, one way to do this is to do a motorpaced drill called a "windout", where, on a small (or at least, not a big gear) gear we follow the motorbike through a flying 200 windup, then a flying 200 entry line, chase the bike for a set number of laps while it speeds up at every corner.  This doesn't use up our power getting to speed so it saves us for high cadence high power work, where we rarely get to train without the aid of a motorcycle (or, on the road, down hills).  Last night our main drill was a 500m windout with the motorbike pulling off at 100m to go, the rider then has to try and accelerate (or, at least hold speed) for the last 100 meters.

That's what it looks like from the back of the motorbike ...

Here's my power meter data for one of my efforts from this session (I did 4 of them, all on 90").  As you can see, I am not very fast or powerful (and am even worse than I was last summer, but I have some mittigating circumstances!  Injury has taken quite a toll this year so far, but I am on the mend!). Compare this to the week before, where we just did windouts without the motorbike pulling off at 100 to go (ie: chasing all the way in the draft).  The power at the last 10 seconds is the interesting part.  Here's the charts :

	500m windout with rider unassisted for the last 100m
	500m windout with draft to finish

And here's the last month or so's overall power figures (it's a funny slice of a graph!)

  It's a long way down from my best (~1550 watts peak), but it is going up, and that's encouraging.  This is all post my back injury that dropped my peak power down to the sort of numbers an enduro would sneer at! (800 watts!  You must be joking!) ... As long as it keeps going up, as are my lifts in the gym, slowly but consistantly, I'm happy.  I have abot 5 months to get some speed before the next Summer Sprint Series.  Keep on trucking.

aboc, ie: me, is sponsoring this; Blackburn's running five sprint nights at DISC over "winter".  The rough program is this :

Flying 200 for grading.

1.5 lap dashes (4 riders at a time I think)

Team sprints (graded by your f200, not able to nominate your own team - this is still being 'discussed', I am not happy about not being able to nominate my own team or starting order).  These at least will be no longer than 3 laps (they originally wanted 4 laps, huh?  What 'team sprint' has 4 laps? And then expects the poor bugger that rode 4th to race again in 15 minutes?!)

1k handicap, held start, no push (The kilo is dead, no-one trains for it anymore ... why is this in the program?  To embarras sprinters?)

Scratch races for the leftovers

If there's enough time, keirins to finish.

I will only be racing the F200, team sprint (assuming an acceptable team and I'm lead rider) and the keirin, assuming the program doesn't have to be cut short because there's too much going on.  The other stuff is just silly and I'm not doing it.

Those of you who were at the last round of the SSS will know that the above is not what I planned, but since I'm not running this, it is what it is and it's better than a night of scratch, points, h'cap and/or motorpaces. It's a start.  If it's a bit successful, we can lobby to make it different for later rounds or next year etc.

So that's tonight's festivities at DISC.

I've been pretty busy with the NTID squad and helping Hilton for the last few weeks, as well as coaching in the 'Haus a lot, running Spin, Sunday DISC sessions, and that's my excuse for not writing much here in May.  I have loads ot writing to do for The Book too ... lots of gaps to fill!

Summer Sprint Series round 5.  Beautiful day, near perfect weather.  PB's in flying 200's for almost everyone (including me, which was a big surprize, 13.212s) and my first ever podium at the SSS in 4 years of trying.  I also rode my fastest ever last 200 metres, 13.049s, during a heat racing with Aaron Christiansen. I think I'm capable of getting into the 12's if everything goes right.

We had a decent turnout of riders, especially considering that three regulars were out, Dino with a busted collarbone, Ian McGinley with a matching busted collarbone and Emily at Vic team training.  17 riders took the track in the end and we had Jamie Stockland from Canada, who gave Chris Ray a real run for his money and Alissa Maglaty from San Fran.  I'm not yet sure how they heard about our racing but we were thrilled to have them with us.  The organising team was, as always, brilliant and everything went smoothly.  Chris Ray was very close to breaking the magic 12 second barrier with his 12.068s flying 200, which is a record for the SSS, but not quite for Blackburn.  Neil beat his target time and whooped it up to his and everyone else's delight.

A top day's racing!