Mid-February weather didn’t put the dampers on the session at Furzefield….. and with the tarmac mostly dry and grippy, we did the standard Raiders individual skills circuit.
That means riders are timed as they make a lap of the playground, weaving their way through a slalom-line of cones on the way out and then negotiating a ‘squeeze’ section on their way back that is at right-angles to their direction of travel, so it needs a judgement call on how best to approach it.
The warning of a 10 second penalty for every cone knocked over didn’t deter some from blitzing their way through scattered rubble.
Best times:
29sec Joshua
31sec Daniel
33sec Aston
35sec Annabel
38sec Cooper
39sec Luka
48sec Harry
50sec Hannah
53sec Jess
56sec Janith
David Burnham then had the older group (see his report below)
I was with the younger riders where a good way of keeping warm was to modify the Le Mans race format so that riders ran an entire lap first, then jumped on their bikes and pedalled a second lap to the finish line.
The concept of finishing at the finish line by stopping squarely slap bang on top it is a concept still in the process of modifying….to a somewhat safer one where the rider continues freewheeling onwards until they reach safer resting position.
Hopefully it will become clear before long…. but we did have two First Aiders present.
Working in teams had the benefit of muddling up everyone’s thinking.
Then the entire group counted up laps as they rode together round a short loop, overtaking when necessary.
A modification saw the introduction of a clock-face challenge where they had to enter a circle of cones, complete a 12-hour sweep, then come back out.
The plan was to fit just one rider in at a time, so following riders would have to judge how much braking to do.
The riders took another approach which was to see how many they could pack in at the same time….. a welcome to the early world of traffic jams, you might say.
When you arrive do please sign in and pay…. it makes working out names that much easier for the likes of me with a brain that is well endowed with forgetfulness.
John
Report from David Burnham – coach with the older group
We started off with a skills course which we got through quickly in order to avoid waiting around in the cold.
First Go Second Go Third Go
Daniel 31 33
Joshua 29
Jonith 73 56
Luka 39 43
Anabel 35 39
Harry 48 50 49
Cooper 38 40 39
Aston 33 33 36
Hannah 57 50 54
Jess 55 53 53
The timings are above with Joshua Goliker with the fastest time narrowly beating Daniel and Aston’s rapid runs.
We then split the group in two with the older riders practicing group riding and sprinting to keep warm.
We finished the session off with a mass run of circuits to see how many laps we could achieve in five minutes - completing 101 laps in five minutes, an average of
over 30 seconds per lap - which is quite impressive.
Great to see John back and coaching again after his operation and to have Steven returning and helping out with the coaching.