Summer time racing

What a blast the last few months have been! My career as really taken off in the recent months with what seems like non stop personal bests on and off the bike. It all stared last year in mid September at the Bike Nz Cup/Classic.

The first of what would be a full on action

Racing Sam in the Sprint Semi Final

packed three days started off with sprints, I managed to pull off a pb in qualifying to qualify 9th and won my first round ride against my team mate Ethan Mitchell. I raced my way through the rounds to end up 6^th, with this my confidence grew and it set the tone for the for the following two days of racing. The next day was Keirin day, I snuck through the first round straight into the semi final which was that evening. The semi was staked full of fast rider,one that would expect to see at a World Cup let alone a tier one event! I finished 5^th in that after running out of gas putting me into the 7th-12^th final where I would eventually finish 10^th. To say I was pleased with these two days would be an understatement but what would come on the 3^rd day would blow these two days out of the water! It started with a massive pb in the sprint qualifying a 10.397 over a tenth of second off my old one set 2 days earlier! I race Ethan again in the first round and though he pushed me close just managed to pip him on the line. The quarter final was against Eddie Dawkins the man you had just ridden a 9.8 second qualifying that morning smashing the previous NZ record! The first ride his speed was far superior to mine and he easily passed me in the front straight, the second ride I was able to get an opportunity and catch him by surprise and it was just enough for me to be able to sneak out a win and make the quarter final go to a 3^rd and final deciding ride, in the 3^rd I released that the only way to beat Eddie was to use his big gear to his disadvantage and try to get the jump on him again and to my complete surprise I managed to! This win put me into the semi finals that evening and also made me the number 1 seed! The semi was against the current Olympic bronze medalist in the sprint, Australian Shane Perkins. I knew with the caliber of riders I was going to be facing that evening that I would struggle to win unless I pulled something out of the hat again, so I went in the the idea of trying to learn as much as I could. The two races against Perkins really showed my inexperience at this level of racing and why he is the Olympic bronze medalist. The same could be said for my bronze medal ride off against my team mate Sam Webster, he showed his class in both rides and despite me trying to race mistake free the pressure exerted made slight errors in judgment start to creep in and made me in two minds of what I was doing in both rides. The key things that I took home from racing both of these brilliantly tactical riders was the experience and new found tactical knowledge of racing.

The photo finish of the Austral

In the month of December in the week before Christmas a group of 5 kiwi riders including myself traveled across the ditch to Melbourne to have a crack at the Austral Wheel race, this being the 117^th edition of the race, which happens to be the oldest bike race in the world! There were also tier one sprints and Keirins on offer. I managed to qualify 8^th just allowing me to make the cut as it was top 8 through, the first round was a one off ride and I drew one of the fastest men in the world at the moment Matthew Glatzer with what seemed like a couple of stomps on the pedals he was around me in the backstretch on the last lap and she was all over. The night though would take an interesting and very unexpected twist though, I had managed to win my heat for the Austral and therefore qualify for the main event that evening. I had been given a generous handicap of 105 meters. The race was 8 laps in length, I quickly caught up to the front markers and sat on a wheel to try and save myself for the last few laps. A train of riders came round the group with about 3 laps to go and with a bit of bumping and barging managed to get onto the back of them, before I knew it the bell was sounding and I was in far from an ideal position, 6-8 back and 3 wide not the best spot to start a sprint from, never the less I decided to give it a go. By the time we were half way around the last corner I was gaining at a rate of knots on the lead riders and just as we crossed the line managed to roll two riders in a close photo finish! The result was astounding and I still find it hard to believe, I managed to become only the 3^rd Kiwi to win this big race and the first for 50 years.

The Austral Trophy

Me in second during the Team Sprint in Cali

After the Austral I traveled home for Christmas but there was no let off in training with a camp coming up that had selection for the 3^rd World Cup on the line there wasn't much of a break to be had. The training in the camp and the trial days went as good as i could have hoped for and I was selected to go off and race in Cali Colombia for my first ever World Cup. After 2 and a bit days of getting on and off planes I finally arrived on the other side of the Pacific Ocean in Cali, I had a few days training there getting used to the track and making sure I was in the best possible condition for racing. I rode in the team sprint on the first night of racing, it was my first time I had ridden 3^rd wheel so the nerves were a little high. We managed to finish 9^th which considering two if the three members of the team were 19 or younger made it a pretty good result with everyone pulling out awesome times in their respective laps. I then had a day off before my second and final event of the race meeting, I rode the sprints and managed to smash out a pb and a big one too, 10.3 dead. I was over the moon with the time but made a mistake during the ride which cost me time. Cali is a very unique track it's extremely tight in the corners with long straights, it has no walls and only a roof so you quite often find yourself riding in a head wind, but the thing that was my undoing during my ride was Cali has a pretty big bump halfway trough the last corner which tends to spit you out to above the red if you're not careful and I unfortunately wasn't careful enough which led to me riding the majority of the last corner above the red, but it was still a pb so I couldn't be too annoyed at myself.

During my flying 200

A week after I flew back from Cali it was time for the last event of the season for me, the Nationals. First up was the kilo which I was uncertain about, the whole week leading up to the Nationals after Cali my legs seemed to have not decided that they wanted to come back from Cali so I wasn't exactly lighting the boards a light with fast times. Thankfully though they arrived the day of the kilo and I managed to smash almost 3 seconds off my pb to go 1.01.67 which got me 4^th, just 2 hundredths of a second off a bronze medal. The next morning followed with what seemed like during the ride my best ever flying 200, everything seemed to click and it showed in the time with another pb this time 10.271 that qualified me 5^th, after a pretty straight forward ride in the first round I drew Ethan which seems to always be the way of late. He rode a brilliant race and I made a few mistakes so he managed to blow past me like I was standing still and that was that. I then had to front up in the ride off for 5^th to 8^th, I ended up 7^th after leading out and running out of gas in the closing stages. The Keirin was next, the heat went perfectly, I rode from the front and ran away with the race which put me straight into the semi, that however didn't go to plan and it left me in the 7^th to 12^th ride off which I managed to ride away with the win and secure 7^th place. The final day was the Team Sprint and I had to slot in behind the two current world champs in their favored positions in the team them being Ethan Mitchell and Sam Webster. In qualifying I was dropped and had to ride the whole race by myself off the back, we still managed to qualify first by 0.1 of a second which I was stoked with. I knew for the final that evening that if I got on we had a good chance of winning and I managed to do that, we won by 0.3 of a second and went 0.8 of a second faster than in qualifying giving me my first ever elite national title which I was over the moon with.

The Start of the Team Sprint at the Nationals

It's be such a cool and amazing last few months and I can't wait to see what the next few months and beyond have lying in wait!

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

Worlds to Ocea's

Awesome photo from
Hannah Bayard

So since the completion of the worlds back in August I’ve been up to many things, some a little different to others. I’ve done everything from exams to milking cows even. After the worlds I took 2 weeks fully off the bike followed by a light week of training to try and get the body use to gym sessions and riding my bike again. Since then my training has been full on and non stop with up to 4 gym sessions a week at points to try and up my power so that I can make the jump up form junior to elite to try and post some reasonable results down in Invercargill at the UCI tier one event and the Oceania Champs which are coming up very shortly!

For this build up my coach Murray and myself decided to try a slightly different approach to our usual build up as we both agreed that this being my first ever elite competition I have a lot less pressure to succeed that I have had for a while we would try something different and see what results it gets. So far it seems to be working as I’m constantly pushing out pbs on the track behind the bike and also in the gym would is really good for your mindset if you are achieving these going into a competition like this

I mentioned earlier that I had been doing everything from exams to milking cows and that’s not wrong at all, with school exam season in full swing I’ve had to juggle not just training but also studying for my final exams which went all of your final mark hang on these exams it can be difficult to not let training slag off trying to keep your studying at 100% but thankfully so far I’ve managed to do it and the exams that I’ve sat so far were difficult but I think I handled them well. I’ve also been milking on and off at my Uncle and Aunties farm which isn’t that pleasant when you have to get up at 4am but it’s a good chance to get outdoors and also to make some money.

The instructors and myself after my first
rpm session at the crank

Another thing that I’ve done is in September I was very grateful to be a part of the canteen crank fundraiser help at the cloud in Auckland. It’s a great event where the rpm bikes out of the Les Mills around Auckland are taken to the cloud and set up for hundreds of people at a time to take part in hour long rpm sessions to raise money for canteen which is such a great cause. I was set to ride in front of everyone to participate alongside the Les Mills instructors, I did my session which was defiantly tougher that I thought it would be and then one of the instructors convinced me to do another later on that avo and although I loved every minute of it as it was for a super cause its hurt, quite a lot and left me at times during it wondering why I had agreed to a second rpm class.

Another mega pic of me from Hannah!

I also help a fellow cyclist and friend Hannah Bayard do a photo shoot for her university assignment by myself being the model, it was defiantly a learning experience being in a pretty cool studio and having to pose in static positions for what seemed ages at the time while the lighting levels were checked and lights repositioned to get a perfect shot. I thought this was only for the start of the shoot just to set everything up but I was wrong due to every picture needing its own different lighting meant the process was very lengthy but it was still a fun time with lots of joking around which in hindsight probably added to the length of the shoot. You can see some of these awesome shots on this update and a big thanks to Hannah for the opportunity to do this shoot you can check out some of her other work on her facebook page https://www.facebook.com/HannahBayardPhotography

Liv and myself with my
awards from my school
sports dinner

My school sports awards dinner was held in the middle of September and it was a great occasion, this year was my third time at the awards dinner and it was my best one awards wise, I walked home with 8 awards ranging from head of cycling to the two sportsman of the year awards. My sportsman of the year awards made it 3 years in a row for sportsman of the year for and individual sport and the 2nd year in a row for the overall sportsman of the year award. I'm honoured to have received these awards so many times over my years at St Peter's, this leads me to my last day at SPC in October which was a sad occasion to be leaving all my brothers behind but also an exciting day to find out what's to come in the next chapter of my life

Finally I’m looking forward to some good hard and fast racing down in Invercargill and can’t wait to see what times and results I can punch out. Have to say a massive thank you now to Steve and Jess and Cycle City who recently sold the shop, they've

A photo from during the crank
a lot of hurt going on then

been beyond amazing to me over the years and it’s sad to see you guys go but thank you for everything you've done for me. Also if anyone is looking for a good deal on a gym membership to try and get in shape for summer Les Mills is running a deal that if you join now you’ll get till next year free so take advantage of this and head into Les Mills and see the team there!

Worlds

Racing to the line in my second round ride

Well that was a bundle of things all wrapped up into one, a ride of emotions, some good and some bad, the time of my life, one of the most mentally draining days in my life. Nothing can prepare you for that moment when you roll up to the line ready to race, you know you’re next and you can hear and feel the roar from the crowed as the rider before you gets the bell, you give a tug on your zip of your skin suit making sure it’s done up and a final readjustment of your helmet and then you’re ready, to start your world champs, the day that you’ve been preparing for since this time last year. As you roll around the track gaining height your sole mental thought is on how to make yourself go as fast as you can possibly go. By this stage you’ve already done this many times in training and the line is en grained into your brain it just comes as second nature so that as you’re winding up and peeling off the fence all you need to think about it trying to rip the bike in half as you accelerate into the lane aiming to hold the black for the entire 200 meter distance. After you lunge for the line training to gain those small thousandths of a second you look up at the score board and see 10.6, disappointment can be seen on your face as you would have loved to have gone faster, but you know the track is dead and 8^th isn’t too bad. You come off the track and talk with your coach and you feel like all the pressure is gone, but you know you still have a possible 6 rides left that day.

My first round ride, controlling the front

That was my worlds in a nutshell, since I've been home for a week now I’ve had a chance to think about my worlds campaign. 7^th in the world isn’t bad I suppose and knowing that you pushed the eventual winner to 3 rides in your quarter final against him defiantly made me feel a bit better than I did feel being knocked out in the quarter finals.

My time in Glasgow was really cool, the hotel that we were staying at was awesome and it was good to be staying with some many other riders from all different nationalities. We didn’t get to see much of the city but the small amount that we did see, namely the route to and from the track and the view from our hotel room didn't seem too bad.

Worlds for me didn't start until the 4^th day which me I had to wait which was good and bad. Good being I had more time to rest and keep my legs fresh where as my competitors raced which would tire up their legs, the down side to not riding on those opening days was having to sit and watch the racing wishing you were out there and also not knowing what the track was like to race on.

controlling my opponent, keeping him at the fence

My quarter final ride off

My results from worlds was after qualifying 8^th in 10.665 this time is 0.1 of a second off my pb although the track was dead and slow so the time would have been faster in better conditions so the time wasn’t too bad. I wont both my first and second round rides which made me in the top 8 in the world, that night I was racing again in the quarter final, I lost the 1^st ride by not really doing too much wrong, my opponent just had amazing acceleration and power over the top of me. The second ride was a different affair, I went out with a plan and that was to just go out and do a flying 200 in the match sprint, I slowly wound up the pace at the top of the banking so that we were both going nearly full speed at the bell, I drew my opponent into leaving a big gape underneath him and as soon as he looked forward going through the bell I dove for the sprint lane and got the inside run underneath him home, I only just managed to hold him off winning by about 5 centimeters. The third ride I knew I would have to do a similar move by keeping the pace high and hitting him on the last lap, I ran at him well going into the bell, but unfortunately I didn’t beat him into the corner and was then stuck on his hip, in hind sight I should have gone back up the track to give me space to run at him, but hind sight is a wonderful thing and at that moment of hesitation at that point of the race if I had done what I just said I may have potentially won me the race.

Quite a cool pic of one of my quarter final rides

I would like to thank everyone for their help and support, especially my coach’s Murray and Justin, my sponsors for all their help, Les Mills for providing an amazing facility for me to be able to lift weights and gain power to get me going faster, Adidas eye wear for giving me the perfect glasses to help protect my eyes from the wind so I can focus on my riding, Keywin pedals for giving me the best pedals in the world to ride and Cycle City for fixing my bike and making sure everything was ready for me to head off to worlds and lastly my Mum for traveling half way around the world to watch me ride

Next up for me is a big training block here in Auckland as well as catching up on school work and exams. Ill be racing the Oceania championships in Invercargill in late November and this will be my first race in elite as my junior career is now over and I can’t wait for it!

Bye Belgium, Hello Glasgow!!

Last ride in Belgium
with Quinn

So after 3 amazing weeks in Belgium I've finally moved on to my next destination, Glasgow Scotland. I'm going to miss Belgium as I found it to be such a great place and I really loved it there.

My last few training sessions in Belgium went extremely well with me pumping out fast times and also a couple of pb's in the process which is a great feeling to know I'm going that fast only a couple of days out of the biggest event for junior track cyclists in the world.

The team as a whole had a chance to go and look at some preserved trenches from the First World War and a couple of museums. The day out was a great experience for all of us in the team, but defiantly the most moving part of the day was  seeing a cemetery full of fallen soldiers most of the unnamed, just there nationality. There were 18 kiwis buried in that cemetery and its fair to say that I did shed a couple of tears when I came across the kiwis gravestones .

The graves of 3 unknown kiwis, tears were shed over these graves

Dinner in the square for the last night in Belgium

We had a long day travelling to Scotland even though it's just over the English Channel, First we had to catch two trains from Oudenaarde to Brussels airport, after the hour and a half train ride, we had to check in our bags for our 2 flights that afternoon, the first of which was to London. After a quick stop over in London we soon moved onto our flight to Glasgow. The flights though being short were still quite draining and I think we all felt it.

The Sir Chris Hoy velodrome in Glasgow, such an
amazing track

Our accommodation here in Glasgow is amazing, the hotel has the nicest beds after sleeping in rather hard beds for 3 weeks a nice soft bed felt like heaven. A highlight of my time in Scotland so far has to be sharing an elevator with Geordie Shore star Vicky Pattinson and sharing a bit of small talk with her! We had our first day on the track today as well and the track is simply awesome. Just everything about it is so nice and it seems a very easy track for certain lines but also a very difficult track for certain tactics so it should spice up the racing somewhat




Here is a link to the live streaming of the world champs, ill keep you updates with time of when my races are: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7NFlV830crPa8QkRMJSr33C4xEFx3RgU

Belgium part 2

So after having some time to have a look around Oudenaarde I think I can say I really like this place. Everything here seems to be awesome from the old buildings to the scenery when you're out riding.

The Ghent velodrome

Since my last update I've be able to get quite a few track sessions on the Ghent velodrome and even one session on the new indoor velodrome at Roubaix France. My times in my efforts have been progressing well and the speed is coming fast, over the last couple of sessions especially I've been achieving pb's in the effort types which is really encouraging 2 weeks out from worlds.

The rest of my training has been pretty standard outside of the track work, with some gym sessions and a couple of small road rides just to keep the legs ticking over. Defiantly a highlight since my last update was when the sprint boys and myself when for a road ride and ended up coming back into town along a bike path next to one of the many canals here. The views that you got were quite cool seeing the barges going up and down the canal and also the back drop of the scenery.

Monument at the gate of the
old Roubaix velodrome

The highlight of the trip thus far though has to be getting to not only go to France but to see the old outdoor Roubaix velodrome that hosts the finish of one of the biggest classics races every year Paris-Roubaix and it being on my birthday to made it extra special.

The old Roubaix Velodrome

On one of the rest days, the team went down to the Flanders cycling museum. We got to see the history of another of the big classics races that is raced just before Paris-Roubaix, that being the tour of Flanders a race that goes up the famous Koppenberg climb that I talked about in my previous update. After the short video we were able to walk around  and look at pieces of memorabilia that they had on display as well as other things such as route maps and a wall that was filled up with every winner of the race.

One of the old team cars used in the Tour of Flanders

As for what I'm up to for the next wee while, I'll be continuing on with the hard work at the track and in the rest of my training. I'll let you all know how that's going next week!