What a busy weekend that was and it's still seven days before the Tour de France and all that comes with it.
I've just been picking my fantasy team with Skoda/Tour de France so hoping to see good stuff from Chris Froome and Andrew Talansky in the overall, plus Marcus Kittel and Arnauld Demare in the sprints....which does rather show I think that Mark Cavendish might be on the receiving end of a squeeze in his fortunes... I'm sure you'll tell me if I got that wrong.
We got the all-clear to return to Gatton Park for our annual session with a difference.... first whizzing down the grassy slope onto the football pitch and then into the trees and onto the path with its array of leafy piles and twigs and other woodland clutter..... in the past we've had a fallen tree to contend with but we found things fairly normal this time round.
Our link with the Royal Alexandria and Albert School has changed, Ian Rowe the maths teacher having returned to New Zealand. Now we have a keen mountain-biker called Tom Rhodes who hails from Barnsley (which reminds me that I met Dicky Bird last summer in front of the town hall - but you might not wish to know that).
Tom and I met during the week and he gave things the once-over and the green light to proceed.
David Burnham, coach, got things rolling by firing riders off one at a time on a loop on a grassy slope, riding down and across the incline and finally coming up again which called for a surprisingly low gear.
Once everyone got their fears sorted we rode as a mass group for a spell of five minutes..... there were no mass pile-ups (happily) on the way down, but plenty of traffic jams on the way up as people found the rider in front had come to a halt because... the rider in front of them had come to a halt.... so slowly people got the idea of looking further ahead and picking a clear route to the top. Well done.
Next on the grass was the BMX style sprint out of the blocks, down the gravity fuelled slope and a bit of high-speed on the flat to a finish line. It was good to see how important you all thought it was to get your bike into the right gear... and have the pedal at the right angle to push off hard.
Then into the woods.
David fired riders off at 10-second intervals and we logged the times to reach the finish line at the end of the loop, which had a descent and turn at the mid-way point.
A big range in ages, so a big range in times.
2min 0sec - Christian Bright
2min 2sec - Joe Levine
2min 4sec - Alastair Canning
2min 9sec - Dan Levine
2min 12sec - Peter Carpenter
2min 20sec - James Tingle
2min 37sec - William Gatland
2min 45sec - Abbie Frew
3min 0sec - Ellen McLeod
3min 55sec - Annabel Canning
4min 0sec - Rhiannon South
4min 5sec - Amelia South
5min 13sdec - William Boyer
Having a second run allowed several riders to grow in confidence big-time with Rhiannon speeding up by 40 seconds and Annabel by more than a minute.
The group was then divided into two, with each having their own race.... and with each race having a handicap start.
Results of first race - handicap
1 Peter Carpenter
2 Dan Levine
3 Joe Levine
Results of second race - handicap
1 Alistair Canning
2 William Gatland
3 Christian Bright
Back on the grass for the mum's race on the downhill BMX track and what a close call as all three went shoulder-to-shoulder all the way to the line. It took some starting this one as mums either hived off for hidden bikes (Anne) or had to persuade a child to temporarily hand over their steed (Kim).
Then the charging bulls... oops I mean the dads and it was testosterone-fuelled stuff as usual. You'll notice they backed out of a race on the woodland circuit. Again it was a close call.
Next sessions: both Furzefield School at 11.45 signing-on for 12noon start
13 July
27 July