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European Championships 2011

Coming off a summer racing on the road, the track team was all fit and we just need to concentrate on turning our form on to the track. We only had a couple of weeks to do so, as you can imagine this isn’t masses of time after having such a break from the track. We managed to do it well though and with just 7 sessions on the track, we were flying round the boards putting in some encouraging times. This was all very motivating, made even better when I was told on the 14th October that I was in the team of 5 being sent out to Holland the following week for the competition. I was pleased at it meant the first stepping stone in my 2012 campaign had got off to a good start.

The worst thing I find about track racing is the taper (basically resting and freshening up before the race) This starts when we travel out to the race, where our daily routine consists of doing a short road ride in the morning or 30 minutes to an hour roller sessions.  We have designated time allocations, a track session’s normally in the afternoon which just consists of a couple of rolling team pursuit efforts or maybe a standing effort. It a fine balance between doing to much, and going in to the competition feeling tired and sluggish, not feeling as fresh as you would have liked or doing too little and blocked and not really in the correct frame of mind for racing.

The rest of the time is just spent resting, watching television, surfing the Internet, all of which after a day or two gets very boring. To keep motivated therefore finding things to entertain yourself becomes of key importance. The PS3 and Xbox definitely come in to great use then. For me I’m a bit of a technology geek so I generally spent most of time reading up on gadgets and the best way to edit the video blogs that I have started doing (see the video channel) with the latest software.

The real world came crashing back in two days before the competition, when I was told that I would not be riding in the qualification round. I was gutted, it’s never nice being on the substitutes bench, despite what anyone says it leaves you feeling second best. I was told that before we went that all 5 riders would ride as long as we were all on form. Although I was not at my absolute peak I had been going well, so I was hopeful that I would get to race the finals. Sadly there was a risk of history repeating itself. As this had happened once before at the Manchester leg of the World Cup where I didn’t get to race and became a pure spectator, which for any rider is demoralizing.

Come the day, in the qualifying round one of the riders struggled dropping the timing splits carefully prepared ahead of the race, and I was drafted in to ride the finals. I was riding as man 4 in the final, which wasn’t where I had been in training. I knew I could ride here so was confident going into the race and with having an advantage from qualifying over our closest competitor of 4 seconds we were hopeful we could win.  Nevertheless I was nervous by the time we got to the start line, which for those of you who watched it, wasn’t helped by delay after delay due to problems left from crashes and the starting gate not working correctly - it was scrapped altogether in the end.

Finally we were off and looking back, as is so often the case, I can only remember the start and the finish. This always happens and according to the Team Psychologist is a good thing as it means that I was well and truly “in the zone”. He describes it as turning on a computer mode in your brain that simply allows you to perform to the best of your ability.

Now I am off on a well-earned and long overdue holiday to Mexico with my Girlfriend. The future is looking good and when I am back we start 4 weeks training on the track in November before going out for the first of 3 road camps in Mallorca.  If you would like to see me racing live then keep an eye out for the Revolution Series at the Manchester Velodrome. These are fun nights and if you are there, do come and say hello.

I’ll keep you posted on how my training all progresses. Keep tuned for more!