Sarah's Update from the Track

Track season is now in full swing with lots of great events recently and lots more coming up soon.

Aug 10^th was the last of the womens omnium series which took place at Reading. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the event, it comprises a 500m TT, Points race, sprint, IP and Scratch, each round of the series takes place on the same day as a dernyfest event. The dernyfest is my favourite thing ever, but so is the omnium, so this year (and as I haven’t been road racing I deserve a good workout now and again) I have been doing both. The double day of omnium and two derny races is pretty solid and doesn’t leave much time for chatting between races (my favourite thing about track) but has been fun, and I have generally managed to finish around the halfway mark in the omnium despite the fatigue – which I am pretty pleased with! Every round people ask how/why I can do it; the thing is I just love both races and couldn’t bear to part with either – even though it is tiring, I’m like a kid in a sweet shop getting to do both in one day! Even better - while I was racing at Reading, my boyfriend was busy back in London shifting all our boxes into our new house, so I got to turn up after the race to a new house with all my stuff already in it!

There aren’t many women only derny races around but the big one is derny nationals, which was supposed to take place on Aug 17^th in Bournemouth, which is my favourite outdoor track. I felt prepared and was looking forward to it and we got as far as drawing cards for the first heat before it started raining – so we will have to wait a while for that one to be rescheduled!

Still to come there is ‘Keirin 2013’, the Dave Creasy 6 and VeloJam at Herne Hill, which should all be excellent events, and in preparation for VeloJam (II) we have been busy at the track running our Sunday sessions, with each one between now and October having a theme relating to a race at the event. Every week the girls have blown us away by being talented and hard working and we can’t wait to see them race! I am especially looking forward to our special Madison session on September 1^st, when we will have a special guest coach in to pass on all his expertise!

I’m really looking forward to getting to race VeloJam this year as last year I was stuck at work, if you are thinking about entering, definitely do it, there’s lots of exciting stuff going on behind the scenes and it should be even better than last year!

xx