It was only made formal about a week and a bit ago, but I'm one of the coaches at the 2011 Junior Australian titles for the Vic team.  I'm again a junior/assistant and will be a general dogsbody for the sprinters.  Dino Apolito and Hilton and I drove up today, I drove the CSV van loaded with bikes, Hilts' ice bath and frame etc (the CSV van is henceforth known as The Van that Rocked, my mp3 player kept us going and the van has good speakers!) with Dino to keep me from falling asleep, Hilts drove his VW Transporter with some 16 or so bikes in it.  I think it took us about 9 hours to get here.  Dino's very kindly thrown some frequent flyer points at me for accomodation (things got a bit confused with regards to where I was staying for a while) for which I owe him a debt of gratitude!

Anyway, we're here and I don't have to sleep in the van and the local pub serves suprisingly good steaks (given that it's a pokie barn in the BadLands of Sydney, I was amazed .. but there you go ..).  The team arrives tomorrow around midday and we have the same gear storage that we had for the senior titles a month and a bit ago, which is a big gear room at the velodrome.  There's 21 riders and bikes and four coaches to look after them so we have heaps of coaching resources and excellent team management, so I expect things will go smoothly.  Everyone's done this before (although for me, only once and it was a very steep learning curve) lots of times so we're unlikely to run into anything we haven't experience to cope with.

Hopefully I'll get to spend some more time with Sean Eadie and Clay Worthington and will get a little more done on The Book.  They're (Sean and Clay and Shorty, from the AIS) are doing a talk on sprint coaching later this week which I'm looking forward to as well.  This is going to be a great week!

Heat 1 vs Andrew Steele :

Heat 2 vs Aaron Christiansen :

Heat 3 vs James Dann :

Final vs Nic Marc :

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!

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