By John Leitch
Posted: Thursday, July 14, 2016 - 13:51

 

It's a good idea to put something on the agenda that we’ve never tried before… and this time we had two fully-new items to unwrap as well as a tweak to that skills exercise circuit we developed at Toyota last month in the Go-Ride Racing event.
 

First off.... welcome to two new riders.
 
First up was Rory Edwards-Webb aged six with a fit looking parent, just back from a training camp (we’ll nab him for working as an engine then) plus Max Nahom aged five being shepherded by Heather his mum, though that would change/develop in due course.
 
Good to see you both/all.
 
We got everyone hot and sweaty with a solid six minutes of mass participation, riding a short loop with a ‘traffic roundabout’ on the return leg, so with riders both coming in and out of the roundabout at the same time, it was a case of looking out for others, assessing the need to brake or accelerate, and for communication.
 
All in all, it went quite well.
 
Next up was (all riders at the same time) an oval lap with two boxes marked on each of the straight sides and a ruling that you were only allowed to pedal while in the boxes.
 
The idea was to get used to accelerating hard while permitted, then freewheeling round the two bends, pedals in the right position.
 
After all that, the sack-race time-trial where we had two fastest times of 65seconds and 68seconds…. and a lot of muddle in the middle.
 
This was a three-part effort. First, the rider pedalled round the school to the grass and then did a high-5 with his/her parent who then set off in a sack, bouncing along to a sack-race finish line where a second  high-5 set off the rider for the final part, which was to cycle round the corner, up the little hill and round the square to a finish line.
 
(I’ve had one whacky parent take me to task in the past for my expression ‘he was flying round the corners like a bullet’ so I’m sure he’ll find something amiss with this one of ‘cycling round the square’ but never mind… just keeping you on your toes Paul, the one currently in the Yorkshire Dales that is.)
 
As a spectator, the most chucklesome part was where/when a couple of dads came bouncing to the finish line only to see their rider moving away (disobeying instructions to stop) at a tantalisingly close gap of two or three feet, so the bouncing went on and on and on.
 
Here’s the strange part. As soon as the parents saw what they were being suckered into, mum Heather somehow magiced up a dad from out of nowhere, while she took a back seat. All quite bemusing. Turned out he’s a world champion sackracer.
 
There are videos posted on our Facebook page from later when we had a couple of sack-races for all, Raiders and then their parents…. have a look.
 
Final race – handicap, 3 laps – younger riders
 
1 Rory Edwards-Webb
2 Cooper Lang
3 Max Nahom
 
Final race – handicap, 5 laps – older riders
 
1 Cooper Lang
2 Janith Gabrielsen
3 Annabel Canning
 
That’s right, Cooper’s name is in there twice…. it was my suggestion and his decision. Well it should have worn him out for the journey home if nothing else.