Morning Africa,
Well I certainly upset my finely tuned apple cart this morning by still being in bed at 08h00. I thought the knocks on my door were the lads playing silly bug…rs, by disturbing my relax time, whereas the reality was I had set my watch two hours backwards instead of one hour- oops-la.
Still we arrived at the track before nine and proceeded to build up the track bike in time for the 10h00 track session. There were quite a few minor issues with the bikes, previously used by the juniors, which provides a clear indication that a bike and mechanical course is imperative for our young athletes. Many of the screws were fasted far too tight, if not stripped. There were bolts missing from the crank sets, seat posts, and time trial bars, which has served as a further learning curve.
The endurance lads are a little tender and suspect at this stage, which showed in the early parts of the training session. Yet all things considering including that two of the riders have never seen board track before, and none of them had ever ridden a front disc before we ended off on a high note posting a 1.01.09 for the final 1Km effort on a 96” gear.
The sprint lads were in high spirits, as usual, whilst Bernie supports a new Mohican hairstyle. I didn’t time their efforts, yet they spent a good amount of their session practicing skills.
We returned back to the hotel for lunch, and spent the afternoon visiting Terry at his bike shop as he repaired some of the minor issues that athletes had on their track bikes. Once back at the hotel, each athlete completed their afternoon’s training sessions on the rollers.
Supper at 19h00 was lasagna accompanied by boiled potatoes and veggies, a salad bar, fresh rolls, and fruit juice.
Towards the end of super I received a call from Darren Tudor the Welsh Head Coach whom wanted to come and pay us a visit. There after I received a call from Shane Sutton whom said he would advise Darren on our training session for the day, and would travel through to Newport to assist us with our training session on Thursday. How AWESOME is that? a training session and advice from the maestro himself J)
I spent about an hour chatting do Darren whom confirmed that he would meet us at the track at 14h00.
Although the team appears to still be in a slight holiday mood, which is cool as they are all relaxed, Wednesday’s training session will be a wake up call for all. But this is for tomorrow.
Best regards to all
Roger