By John Leitch
Posted: Wednesday, September 7, 2016 - 15:06

Furzefield School opened it’s gates to us to kick off the autumn term and lots of new faces rolled in…. welcome to you all.
 
Maddie Adlam (age 10) was the first in action, followed by Max Racher (age six), then Kamran Rashid (who will be the same age in a couple of months) and Pranjay Zharotia (age nine).
 
We also need to add in a well-overdue welcome to nine-year-old Ella Mae Scrase.

She came to the session at Gatton Park at the end of June and the paperwork somehow fell down the cracks and it has only just been fished out….. which in turn means she’s not been getting emails telling her folks of the dates of our sessions … so she missed Sunday.

Hopefully we can put all that right now.
 
At the other end of the Raiders’ age spectrum, Adam Harrington has joined our merry band.

As Adam is already 16, he’s settling in with the big cheeses who do stuff out on the road.

He already plays rugby and does some sprinting (I mean athletics)….. all good news… and I picked up a rumour that he’s already booked himself a slot at the London velodrome so I’ll check up on that. Keen. We like that.
 
Alan Gayle (see his summary below) is working through six sessions with the same group (individuals change from one session to the next a bit) and I had the younger group and first off they did a zipping exercise.

Each group had and engine (parent) at the front and they followed the engine, one group riding between the narrow lines of cones and circling clockwise, the other group anti-clockwise.
 
With the engine, they turned well and entered the cones with their bikes already positioned in line…. but then without the engines to lead the way, it was chaos as they imagined that the bike can turn 90-degrees by magic. We made lots of progress though.
 
The challenge of always having something new on the agenda recently triggered a three-part timed exercise where the middle part involved the parent running in a sack.
 
It’s too good an idea not to be developed.
 
So this time we kept the parents on their toes, the new aspect was that they had to  wait for a high-five from their bike rider, then run off through the archway of saplings, return and make a second high-five before the youngster rode off towards the finish line.
 
By the time the parent got back, a couple of excited riders had managed to get their bikes facing the wrong way (to watch the fun)… a splendid muddle.
 
Time-trial with parent running through the archway.
 
28sec Pranjay Zharotia
30sec Chloe Stuart
32sec Max Racher
36sec Kamran Rashid
38sec Charlie Stuart
 
Final race for younger group – handicap – four laps
 
It wasn’t so much a dead-heat as a pile-up that might well have been worse as three riders arrived at the finish line at same time but from totally different/clashing trajectories…. plus fourth rider Kamran flew in at the same time at an angle of 90-degrees to all the rest (the concept of riding outside the cones is still to come).
 
The answer was a re-run. … but the parents all agreed that was a disaster waiting to happen and it was far better to call it a day while all were safely in one piece.
 
John
 
This from Alan
 
The older group focussed on pedalling technique to help improve speed and endurance
 
Joseph won the Time Trial – beating Daniel by a whisker
 
Emily won the handicap race
 
Next time:  cornering techniques to help improve race times