If there’s one thing that flummoxes me the most since coming to NZ in 2011 and beginning organising the local track racing, it’s the difficulty in getting more roadies to mix up their programme with a bit of track.
The velodrome is a safe, contained environment to improve top end speed, race tactics and pedalling style – it’s the best cycling facility in the greater Wellington area, we have the rental bikes and a really fun, welcoming community, and yet it’s so hard to get the local road scene interested. So many of NZ’s top pros have come through the track system, it just makes sense.
On top of that, my feeling is that many local coaches don’t have the track cycling knowledge to properly use the velodrome and what we do to benefit their riders, especially their under 19 and under 23s. Watts, data and loads of kilometers aren’t everything folks.
It’s with this background, that Wellington fielded a small team at the Elite Track National Championships. Wellington has a decent sized population base but is one of the smallest centres at these championships – something noted by the interim Cycling NZ CEO Jacques Landry when I met him on one of the rest days.
Wellington’s lack of top end elite track cyclists coincides with an incredibly strong endurance track cycling scene elsewhere. The strength in depth of the fields in the endurance events was incredible, the country is awash in talent. Track sprinting not so much, but that’s a story for another day.
The Wellington Team Pursuit squad weren’t there to set the world on fire. Our primary goals were getting to the start with four riders, to ride as a team and finish as a team. There’s nothing worse than seeing a team completely explode, and in fact we even saw a Waikato rider crash during their team’s practise.
Training had gone very well and we were extremely comfortable riding together, knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Meeting one evening a week for five months had really paid dividends. Our first night back in October we only managed a half distance effort at full noise, and there were plenty of sessions where the team shredded or the pace yo-yo’d around.
By January we were knocking out two or three full length team pursuits at a consistent pace with decent lap times. On January we broke the Wellington Velodrome record with a 5.02.83 time, 1.5seconds faster than the previous mark.
But we lacked time on the wooden velodrome and I can’t emphasise enough how important this is. Cambridge is roughly six seconds quicker a kilometre than Wellington – there’s hardly any friction on the wooden boards compared to concrete.
When you hit the front you can roll through and carry speed for 3-5 seconds so that the rider changing can get on before the rider on the front starts driving into their turn. On Wellington, you have to up the effort the instant your nose hits the wind.
Cambridge can also give you the illusion that you are floating on air, especially after the first couple of laps when you’re fresh, so it’s easy to go too hard, too soon especially in pursuits.
We were aware of all these factors but until you practise dealing with them, and how it all feels at top speed, it’s extremely hard to get right. We received plenty of advice just by hanging around and getting onto the velodrome: NZ legend Greg Henderson, who was coaching another centre, gave us a couple of tips after our first go on the boards. Some of the other coaches from other centres were happy to point us in the right direction, and most useful was learning where exactly on the banking to change.
Getting any amount of time on the velodrome during the championships was a total pain though. Cycling NZ rules are such that you can only get on in the hour before a session that you are riding in. We tried a couple of times to practise during these periods only to get kicked off as our session wasn’t until Sunday morning. Given nobody else was riding on the track, this was pretty frustrating.
But we had so many good laughs leading up to the race, nipped down to Te Awamutu for a blat around their track, and watched some absolutely thrilling racing back on the Avantidrome. The men’s elite points race was an absolute ripper and our lone under 19 rep Louis Hodgkinson rode like he had nothing to lose, which quite frankly, he didn’t.
Hamish Bond’s incredible 4km individual pursuit record, and then Finn Fisher Black’s world under 19 3km record were other highlights.
I did do the individual pursuit on the Thursday. It’s a horrible distance, and I went so deep I couldn’t walk, was lifted off my bike and later told I was making some worrying noises which I don’t remember doing. I’ll be happy dropping back down to a more palatable 3km masters IP distance.
Team pursuit race day was Sunday morning and we were pumped. My legs felt amazing and the others were well up for it too. By this stage we’d accumulated a bit of a Cool Runnings type vibe, we were the plucky underdogs with a nice story, so got lots of nice remarks from commissaires and other teams. The commentator Paige Patterson was full of praise for us giving it a go.
Pat managed to get his home-made Crowe Rishworth bike through the UCI check, despite some very funky looks from the commissaires – it was highly amusing to watch the head-scratching and rule-book-checking, but credit to them, they didn’t kick up much of a fuss.
We rode a solid race but probably hit it a bit too conservatively, nervous about blowing to bits and getting carried away on the fast wooden boards. I was first man, and had certainly had some anxious nights prior worrying about not being able to get on the back after setting the team off.
As it transpired, we were well within our limits and in fact my legs felt great. This is not to say we were cruising, but we just didn’t know how hard we could push it on the unfamiliar track.
But what a buzz! We fizzed into the corners, powered along the straights and snapped some 10/10 changes. It felt glorious.
Our time was so far off the pace though – the fastest guys did a 4.02, whereas we went 4.46, dead last. Unfortunately we also found one of our riders had a slow puncture on his rear disc – he normally smashes us and this definitely slowed us down a bit. I reckon we could beat by 5 seconds at least if we had another run at it.
Ultimately though we were well trounced by some of the best endurance track cyclists in the world, but came away having had a total ball over the past few months and learning so much to pass on to future iterations of this team.
Rule of thumb is that it takes about three nationals to get things right, if the team can continue the momentum of the past season, there’s no reason we couldn’t get within spitting distance of the qualifiers.
Personally, I have some mixed emotions. It’s probably the last time I’ll ever get to do a team pursuit at this level, a race I have a long history with. Coming away feeling like I have more to give but am unlikely to have the opportunity is a hard pill to swallow.
Best bicycle-related adventure I’ve had in ages, all shared with great mates, highly recommend.
Cycle Wire 