National Team Pursuit Update
On Saturday the team rode the Welsh Open Team Pursuit, this was a final run, under race conditions, in preparations for the National Team Pursuit which takes place on Saturday 24 October at Manchester Velodrome.
The team was made up of Sam Harrison, Andy Magnier, Steve Clayton and me (Boyd Roberts) – Ian Cooper was away in Majorca riding the Masters Tour (hopefully will be flying come Nationals)
The programme for the evening was broken into 3 rides, a 3km qualifying, 2km semi-final and a 4km final.
Below is a breakdown of the times we set with lap splits:
3 km Qualifying:
22.590
16.286
16.478
16.552
16.166
15.923
16.697
16.549
16.500
16.435
16.972
16.637
3.23.785
We qualified fastest, just over 4 seconds faster than second place and went into the semi final against a team that qualified 12 seconds behind us.
2 km Semi-Final
21.78
16.45
15.66
16.41
16.35
16.95
15.88
17.22
2.16.70
We had a good start and had the opposition team in the same straight as us at about half distance so were able to easy off a little to save some energy for the final, and after this we still rode the fastest time of the teams in the semi finals.
4 km Final
21.847
16.742
16.113
17.806
16.161
16.860
16.343
17.055
17.601
16.222
16.296
15.956
15.977
16.114
18.026
16.715
4.31.824
Feeling like we were in control after the 2 previous rides, we had a steady start before getting into a good rhythm, we were able to catch the opposition team after about 3km, normally this would be the end of the race but we had asked to be allowed to ride the full distance to set a time we could use as a target for the Nationals so we completed the distance. The last kilo was not the best and the split times show this, we feel we can still improve more.
Next up is the Nationals, Andy and Sam have been in Manchester all week ride Scratch and Pursuit, Steve and I have had to get back to work and we are hoping that Ian had a good week in Majorca and is in good form.
Anyone interested in coming to support us on Saturday, we will be at Manchester Velodrome, the qualifying round is at 14:00 and the finals are in the evening session which starts at 19:00.
Will update you all on Sunday ....... 23 October 2009
