Velodrome Night 5/12/2011
Hoy and Pendleton, eat your heart out!
Wakefield Tri’s own Chris and Victoria outshone your reputation in one
glorious night in Manchester.
Chris easily won the inaugural “eat the most inappropriate food at the
velodrome” contest. In the dry, air-conditioned
atmosphere he managed the supreme effort of riding and consuming a whole bag of
crisps (not concurrently – he’s saving that high tariff routine for the Olympic
year).
Victoria sneaked in, under the radar of many riders and spectators (especially
the deaf ones), with a walk-away (limp-away) victory in the often forgotten
“early finish” event. Sitting on the track, just
seconds before the end of the session, with her bike neatly tucked under her arm
pits, she said, “I wanted to keep my effort ‘til as late as possible and it
seemed to come off” (maybe that was “I seemed to come off”).
The evening’s events started calmly, with Greg and Shaun leading the more
experienced riders on (well, all around) the blue line. There was a moment’s scare when the
spectators thought that the pair had forgotten their helmets, but
Heather assured us that it can be hard to tell, sometimes, whether their
helmets are on or off (especially at speed – though we never got the chance to
ascertain that).
The two riders who excelled in the” lack of musical terminology understanding”
event were very clearly Paul and Stewart. Asked to
ride “a tempo” – i.e. smoothly and evenly paced – they made the rudimentary
error of mixing that up with “up tempo”. So, every time they
arrived at the front of the bunch, they immediately put in an sprint,
successfully splintering the group. However, they
received some useful feedback from the evening’s coach.
Chris’s second win came in the “suicide terrorist rider” event where his bid was
only thwarted by an alert (and rather animated) coach.
Riding round the top of the track, slowly and at ever-decreasing speed,
Chris’s attempt to wipe himself out, and take the bunch with him, was only
narrowly diverted.
We did have one potentially explosive moment when, asked to leave the track for
a break, Megan went on an impromptu sit-down strike. However, after being dismantled from her bike, she
agreed to abide by the coach’s decisions in future.
Perhaps the most memorable achievement of the night, however, was the new track
record in the “Banshee” event. In this event, the
contestants have to scream constantly as they race around the track,
By doing this for more than the old
mark of one and a half laps, Emma set what looks like an unbeatable record of
378 metres. (I believe that the traumatised netball
players are responding well to counselling).
Watch this space for news of the next event and your chance to sign up for it!