English
Wiggle Calshot Track Training Sessions
Calshot is a purpose built Cycle Velodrome used for one purpose only – Track Racing. Calshot track (situated within Calshot Activities Centre) is an oval shaped wooden track that consists of two slightly banked straights followed by two banked curves (usually at an angle of 45 degrees) and has 3 painted lines (Black, Red and Blue) running the whole length of the track. The Black line is located at the bottom with the Red line about 1 metre further up the track (these two lines are known as the tram lines) with the Blue running in the centre.
Calshot offers riders of all abilities the experience of track racing in a controlled and safe environment away from ‘the elements’ and the ever increasing traffic on our already congested roads. Calshot also caters for large groups of riders and for the third year running Wiggle has booked eight 1.5 hour track sessions all starting at 7.30pm.
Our group consists of riders of all abilities, who enjoy cycling. Some just ride to work and back on fixie bikes (Ben), some are keen ‘nutters’ (Jason) who like nothing better than bombing down a mountain side dodging rocks, trees, wildlife and all manner of things, whilst you have the others who prefer the road scene either being road/circuit racing (The Pearmanator, Nikki, and Jon ‘Euro’ Cannings), triathlons (David), Sportive events (Paul, Amy and Humphrey) and others who just enjoy cycling for pleasure (Dan, Steve and Martin).
Week 1: Our first session was held on Wednesday 6th October which went very well. 3 riders had to attend a ‘taster session’ that was held 1 hour prior to the group meeting. This was to allow these Track newbies to get accustomed to the layout of the track, the track bikes, and also to learn how to start and stop safely on track bikes. Ben, Jason and Nikki all rode well (pictured below) and survived intact without crashing or falling off when trying to clip in or clip out of their pedals.
7.30pm soon arrived and Paul was the first to enter the arena. One week prior to our first track session, Paul had become quite famous thanks to his Cycling Weekly interview and Malcolm, being a friend of his and our track instructor, decided that more Bowell publicity was needed and strategically placed images of Paul around the track creating a few more laughs. Once things had settled down it was back to training with Malcolm creating two groups and setting us of to complete our first task.
Malcolm decided that we had to practice basic thru-and-off so riders got a feel of distance, pace, and movement around others on the track. This worked very well with riders acting correctly whilst becoming more confident as the group circled the track. On a few occasions some riders had to adjust their position and speed by either moving up the track slightly or by back-pedalling on the pedals slowing them down slightly, but on the whole it worked very well.
Malcolm then decided to split us into two groups with both groups keeping an equal distance whilst the front guys on each group sprinted off to re-join at the back of the other group. Again this worked well with riders controlling their effort. As the evening went on Malcolm did have some trouble explaining to some of the riders what was required with the different sessions on the track and this did lead to some confusion, but this was the first week and this was bound to happen.
In all, the first of eight track sessions went very well with everyone enjoying themselves thoroughly. Roll on till the next session.
