The Beginning Of A New Chapter

What a ride the last few months have been, I've moved an hour south to a new home, been in eight race meetings and three country's!

Team Sprint start in qualifying at the Nationals
riding with two World Champs!

So lets start back at the beginning of all of this in the month of March. The National Champs were on in Cambridge at the Avantidrome which for me was the first time that I could drive to nationals and didn't have to fly the length of the country to get there. The nationals were an up and down four days of racing. My standing lap on the first day was good, first gate start I'd done in a while and managed to get 5^th place. The next day went not so well, a mechanism problem during my ride caused me to not qualify for the sprints rounds, keirin day was similar some good racing mixed with some bad. The last day was the team sprint day and I was lucky enough to ride with two of the three members of the world championship wining team. We managed 2^nd with all three of us riding out of our favored positions. The last night brought with it a bit of a surprise that I'd be moving down to Cambridge to start training with the New Zealand elite squad as one of the development riders which was huge for me.

After two short weeks of trying to find somewhere to live in Cambridge I packed my bags and moved an hour down the road from Auckland. Cambridge a small little town at first felt a little weird as there was no rush to get anywhere, you could leave five minutes before a training session and be at the track on time if you drove which for me was hard to work my head around as I was use to having to leave an hour before a gym session to make sure I got to the gym in town in Auckland on time. By now though I'm finding the extra time extremely useful, I've now got an extra hour or two a day that I can spend studying and recovering which their can't be a downside to that.

Racing into the last corner in Adelaide

I had a thirteen week long training block in Cambridge after I arrived training every day with some of the fastest guys in the world which makes you lift that little bit more every day in training. I can still remember turning up to the track for our first day on the boards and Eddie, Ethan and Sam were wearing the world champs colours and I remember thinking that's pretty cool and it's still cool now seeing the rainbow stripes at most if not all of your training sessions is something that is such an awesome buzz knowing you're training with the world champs!

Racing in the B final in Adelaide
photo by Richard Morton

After this training block it was off to Adelaide for five hard days of racing against some of the best rider in the business. The racing consisted of three sprint days and two keirin days. The racing was extremely fast and hard, I learnt a lot from racing guys that have been World and Olympic medalists in these events like how to ride and on some occasions win or be within an inch of winning against guys who were 0.3 or more of a second faster than you in qualifying. My best results were in 2 of the sprint days with both times making it into the B finals finishing 2^nd in one and 4^th in the other giving me 14^th and 16^th respectively.

Hermosa Beach in LA
where I killed a few hours
on my layover

I left Adelaide on the 23^rd of June flying back into Auckland, I had a three hour lay over there before flying onwards to Los Angeles and then onto Newark to drive the final two hours to Kutztown Pennsylvania which is where I'm currently located and will be here till the 10^th of August racing at the nearby velodrome in Trexlertown. The racing here so far has been fast and hard. I'm still getting to grips with racing on a 333 meter track instead of the usual 250 meter tracks. This played a role in the first weekend of racing I had here, I wasn't sure how to ride match sprints and keirins so ended up getting narrowly beaten in the sprints and running out of gas with half a lap to go in the keirin but this is something I'm slowly getting used to.

Next up for me is racing tonight night here. Its an event called tandemonium and basically you team up with another rider and race tandems in sprints and a scratch race which is no doubt going to be interesting to say the least.

Summer Training

So after a long summer of training the time has now come to start my final phase of training before the national champs which are in mid March on the new home of cycling the Avantidrome in Cambridge after riding on the track I can say it is an amazing facility and the track itself is perfect. It's different to the only other indoor track we have in New Zealand, that being Invercargill so it will be interesting to see how times compare between the two tracks.

Managed to squeeze in a
cheeky gym session in Karapiro

My training over summer has been tracking along well, the introduction of a new coach seems to be paying dividends, with strength and power going up in rates previously unseen. The training itself is similar to training I have done previously but in a different approach. That combined with a new diet is what I'm backing on to try and gain myself success at the Nationals in three weeks times.

Riding in the match
sprint in Wanganui 

I recently got back from a trip down to Wanganui where I got the opportunity to race against the best sprinters from New Zealand and also one of Malaysia's and one Australians best sprinters as well. The racing itself was top notch and due to the number of countries involved the UCI decided to declare it a tier 2 event which meant that for me the sprints and the keirin had points on the results which are important for not just world rankings but also for start points which allow you to compete at a World Cup event. I'm still a long way off the 90 required to start at a World Cup but it was still good to get a few points in the bank this early in the season.

Wanganui is an outdoor wooden track which for me was a very weird feeling to ride on as I have only ever ridden on concrete outdoors. I managed to pull out a 10.83 second 200 meter time trial in the sprint qualifying to qualify me in 7^th position which made me the only rider not riding for their national team to qualify in the top 8 booking myself a spot in the quarter finals of the sprints. The sprint didn't exactly go to plan and I was unfortunately beaten by a faster and better rider in Simon van Velthooven who is an Olympic bronze medalist. I also raced in the keirin and managed to get 4^th in the heat, I was a little disappointed with this but the caliber of the riders that beat me in my heat did in some way compensate for the loss, in the b final I managed to pull of a 2^nd place which put me 8^th overall which was pretty good considering I had my saddle snap going round the last corner.

A really cool panorama of Wanaganui Track, during a training session the day before racing

Wanganui was a good hit out for me and I'm pleased with how it went, even more so considering the wind was horrendous and it was hard to keep the bike in the sprinters lane when you were going full speed. Now it's down to the fun part of training being the speed work and I can't wait to race again especially on a new track like Cambridge.

On a side note, if anyone is looking to loose a few pounds they put on over the Christmas break or just generally wanting to get fit go and check out the Les Mills Britomart facebook page for all the latest deals on the best gym in Auckland, Richard and the team there will look after you and sort you out: https://www.facebook.com/lesmillsbritomart?fref=ts