We are pleased to have Alex as our guest writer for this week,where he will tell us about his last 6 weeks on a bike.
Sainsbury’s UK School Games
It’s been a busy few weeks with a long awaited return to the indoor track, starting with the Sainsbury’s UK Games in Manchester. The competition brings together the best able bodied and para cyclists from each region of the UK, including several GB development riders, and is run to mimic a major world event with opening and closing ceremonies and the athletes travelling as a team and accommodated in the athletes village for the 3 day duration – a fantastic opportunity all round.
The mixed para cycling team competed against each other with ‘factored’ results, the complicated UCI handicap system used when they cannot separate men/women, ages and classifications for each group. The placings were given according to which of us beat our individual time targets by the largest percent so as a junior male C5 rider I was given the toughest times but rose to the challenge!
My events were the standing lap, the 500m TT, Flying 200, Kilo and 3000m pursuit. Encouraged by my coach, the crowd and keen to put some good times down, I managed to beat all of my targets and came away with 5 bronze medals and some PB's which I was happy with as a basis to start my track season with.
It was a really great experience living and racing with such a large group of para and able bodied riders my age and having to organize myself as independently as possible over the competition. It gave me a good benchmark to work from and was fantastic preparation for my first Para Track Nationals at the end of the month.
Thank you Alex, we are looking forward to hear more stories from you tomorrow.
Have a good week everyone and stay safe on the road.
SD Team