Office Gossip - July 2011
Velodrome
Leech & Co's new found obsession with cycling took a new twist with an organised trip to the Manchester velodrome.
In addition to the existing Leech Velo MAMILS (Middle Aged Men In Lycra) were some new potential recruits including Senior Partner Emma Leech.
There was a general feeling of trepidation (if not downright fear) in the air when the steep sided track was observed close up. Most of the group of twelve had never ridden at (or been to) the velodrome and the near vertical ends of the track are daunting.
The starting point was to acquaint ourselves with our steeds for the evening. These were fixed wheel Dolan track bikes. They have no gears, no brakes and you cannot freewheel because if the back wheel is moving then so are the pedals.
In a nutshell you attach yourself to the bike while holding a rail at the inside of the track and the only way to finish is to end up back holding the rail.
The initial session was to familiarise ourselves with the bikes and the track. We had two coaches with us for the 2 hour session and they explained that you treat the end of the track as uphill sections and the straights as downhill. The technique is to pedal harder through the ends and marginally less hard down the straights.
Some took to it like a duck to water and were up the banking right from the start. Others took a little longer to build confidence, but by the end of this first session all of us were up on the banking. The fear of falling down the steep sides had been overwhelmed by the effort required to constantly cycle with no freewheeling!
After a rest and some water we all took part in a standing start time trial of one lap. This entailed cycling slowly to one of the coaches on the line who would then hold your bike in position and count down from 5. The coach informed us that the British team were short of one rider and that if we could break 17 seconds we were in.
The standing start is tough as getting these track bike moving quickly from the off requires a mixture of strength and balance. In addition once you have gone through the line at the end of your lap you have to keep pedalling because if not, as Richard found, the bike tends to bunny hop down the track!
Unsurprisingly Craig was the fastest with a time of 24.37 seconds. Generally the times were between 26 and 28 seconds. With hindsight we should probably have had a second time trial as everyone was convinced they could have honed their technique and cut a couple of seconds off their time. I still don't think any of us would be troubling the British team!
We had another rest and then concluded the evening with a training session of sprints. The coach advised us that being sick after this is a good thing as it means that you have given everything. "Sickness is your friend"!
The session was 10 seconds at ordinary pace and then 10 seconds sprinting on the coach's whistle. 5 of these sprints was then followed by a 2 minute relax (continuing cycling!) and then the same again.
This was really hard work and Kieran was certainly close to making sickness his friend!
It was brilliant to have the whole velodrome to ourselves for 2 hours and it will not be the last time that Leech & Co have a cycling night out.
In the photos below you can see the team shots and Craig Delahaye in action on the circuit.
