Today's ride happened entirely by chance. A couple of weeks ago I was glancing at road.cc and saw a couple of lines offering the last few tickets at the Geraint Thomas track day at a discount. I'm always up for a bargain, but, together with others, I might well have paid full price if they'd been advertised a bit better. But there you go.
Anyway, the time-table was to turn up at Newport Velodrome at 0830 to be fitted for a bike, ready for the off at 0900. Arrangements were good - bikes and mechanics were ready, and at 0900 the man himself arrived. 'Hello', he said, 'I'm Geraint'. I think most of us knew that, but it was polite of him.
The event was in four parts; a session on the 'Wattbikes' used by the GB squad to train; a track session; lunch in the centre of the Velodrome with the Mayor and Mayoress as guests and then an auction of cycling memorabilia such as signed shirts (and a new Trek Madone).
The WattBikes were interesting - they certainly gather a lot of data, and a coach would be able to make good use of it to train an athlete to deliver consistent performance and increased power. I don't think my performance will be transformed - though it did illustrate that I can deliver more power out of the saddle, but in a pretty inconsistent way. I sort-of knew that, but it's good to get the data to back up your hunch.
The track session was the highlight, and the reason for being there. I was pretty confident of a strong performance, having been coached by no less than Frank Cubis. 'Set off down the straight', he had told me, 'and then turn left'. Nothing to it. Well, not exactly - I've never ridden a fixie before, neither have I ridden on a banked track, but the organisation and coaching were excellent and within an hour or so I was proficient enough to do timed laps against the clock. Not the fastest, but not the slowest, either.
Once we had all had enough, G and some of his Sky chums showed us how it should be done, and just how quickly you could go with a motorbike pacing you. Impressive stuff.
Lunch was good - and eating in the centre of the Velodrome is quite a novelty. I skipped the auction as I've already got a lot of old cycle shirts. For the best, really - some bids started at £250.
Good fun all round - and instructive too. If you haven't tried it, it's worth a shot, though I don't think I have much of a future in Track Cycling.
Mark
