By John Leitch
Posted: Wednesday, October 30, 2019 - 19:51

We had all shapes and sizes at Cyclopark as riders (large and small) rolled up with a selection of mums, dads as well as a grandad or two.

On the tarmac, three of the four loops were open to the general public, so we first sampled the delights of the 'velodrome'.... after a couple of warm-up laps, riders were allocated different challenges, from three to nine laps, at varying speeds.

With that under the belt we moved on to the more challenging loop at the 'London end'. Joseph showed the way and once we all had an idea of what was coming up, again laps based on Findlay doing five, some others more and others challenged to do less.

The adults, having earlier proved rather speedy and swanky, were told that every third lap they had to ride no-hands (i.e. skill rather than speed).

The penalty for not doing so (it was there in the small print) was half-a-dozen bottles of Shiraz (from each rider) for the coach.

By totally ignoring the deal, I reckon I've got 30 bottles of red wine coming my way (which should nicely get me through to Christmas).

More group riding on the 'velodrome' followed by laps round the BMX circuit.

Calum was in need of some video recordings to show him (i) riding in a peloton (ii) riding in a line doing 'through and off' and (iii) cornering.

Happily he'd brought his GoPro.... and even more happily so had Andy Adshead, our chairman, so all in all Calum went home with quite a selection for his GCSE sport study course.