Surrey League Race Training
Myself and another British Cycling Coach, Michael Guilford were running our sessions on a local Karting track. This was an approx. 600 metre track, with a very smooth surface, a couple of tight corners and what can only be described as a modest drag. All in all a pretty good place to ride safely in groups and with enough technical aspects to put the riders through their paces (plus a tight chicane that would be thrown in occasionally to keep them on their toes!)
After a clothing a bike check and initial briefing as to what the day would entail, the sessions begin with a warm up drill. These would consist of the first rider mounting and then riding a lap of the track solo. Every lap another rider would start up, catch and then lead the group around until all the riders were on the track. This would give the coaches a quick chance to watch each rider individually and make sure that everyone was safe and competent on the basic riding skills.
As much as most of these riders wanted to crack on with race techniques and tactics, it was important for us to ensure people were going to be safe out there and to have a look at exactly how they were riding. For instance, some riders were cornering with the inside pedal downwards, others would choose a bizarre line round bends or if you asked them to sprint, they would automatically flick to their biggest gear and try and power away with a cadence of approx. 10 rpm an weaving all over the road. These were little aspects of people’s style that we could help tweak or point out as we went along. Marginal gains I think someone once mentioned…
So after the basics, the bunch was then broken down to work in smaller, 6-8 rider groups to work on riding in a pace line, where the line would look to occasionally rotate the lead rider, with them peeling off to one side, ease and slide to the back of the line and then looking to accelerate before re-joining the line again. This exercise would get them used to riding behind another rider, judging and leaving a suitable gap between them and the wheels in front, changing pace when leaving the front and then needing to accelerate to re-join the line again.
This exercise would then be progressed to joining 2 groups together so the line was longer and the rate of change was then also increased. This sounds easy at first but when put on a short, twisting track, it became important to judge when to make your move, the ever changing speed of the line, gap filling and where other riders might be. The importance of knowing when to change and when not to was explained and put to practice. The effect of the wind was also brought into play (we had a very still day, so improvisation was key!) as this could have massive effects on the direction that the change is made.
After a quick debrief- which would happen regularly throughout the session to drive home points we had been practicing and answer any feedback or queries, whilst it was fresh in the riders minds – the groups were split back down again and this time practiced riding with 2 pace lines side by side and with a constant rotation, basically going through and off like in breakaway or a Chaingang. Again, once this had been carried out to the coaches satisfaction, the groups were brought together to have one big group, with all 30 riders working together and sharing the pace setting on the front.
These may seem like simple manoeuvres and techniques but for a lot of people who ride solo all the time, they simply do not appreciate the importance of being aware of other riders around them, quite often riding at different speeds and on different lines. Swinging out of a line, suddenly changing speed or your line through a bend can be catastrophic in a close nit bunch.
Continued overleaf…
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