Blogs
Fri, 10 Sep 2010
'The Machine' on track with the team
By Sarah Storey - Horizon Fitness Racing Team
Following on from the British Time Trial Championships in Llandeilo, I stayed in the south of Wales and headed over to Newport to meet up with my Horizon Fitness team mates, Dani King, Alex Greenfield, and Hannah Rich. We had the track booked for 8 hours over 3 days and were ready to put together some sessions of both team pursuiting and individual efforts, as well as fitting in a Road Ride with Chris Sidwells of Cycling Weekly (check out "Our Ride" in the magazine towards the end of September).
The grim weather forecast never materialised, the weather was superb, and I was very grateful given that I was commuting from Newport’s most fabulous Bed and Breakfast on my bike, and there would be nothing worse than arriving for a track session with a soggy bottom!
Our preparation for the Team Pursuit went very well and with all of us having done some Team Pursuit work at various points in the past, the squad was well drilled from the start, with slick changes, a solid line, and good pace judgement. It’s funny how teams sometimes just slot together perfectly and, after adjusting our gears to find a suitable gear we could all push efficiently, we started to knock out some respectable splits. On our shortest session we split to do some individual efforts and with Hannah and Alex recovering from successful performances in Holland the week before, it was left to Dani and I to do our individual efforts.
Now the team fondly (I hope!) refer to me as “The Machine”; the one that is always churning it out in training. In fact, prior to our ride with cycling weekly, Alex posted on Twitter; “mentally preparing myself to get a kicking off Mrs Sarah Storey on a “recovery” ride!”
Come on girls I’m not that bad!
Anyway, I think we have a new training monster on our team… in the form of Dani King. With me swooping around the track doing lactate tolerance efforts, Dani was on a big gear starts session and starting like she was leading out a team sprint team, never mind a team pursuit! It was brilliant to watch and bodes very well for the future of our Team Pursuit unit and track aspirations.
I thoroughly enjoyed our sessions; it was amazing to gel as a unit, transferring a successful road season together to the forthcoming track season. We ran various combinations within that unit as we swapped riders in and out to see how the 3,000m will take shape on race day, and there was no weak point, each combination gave us our best line up, which is a brilliant position to be in. The feedback and suggestions everyone contributed to the training made it a privilege to work with such a professional set of girls and I can’t wait to get stuck in on race day.
Sarah
For more information on the Horizon Fitness Racing Team, visit www.onthedrops.com.