Chris Hoy and Ross Edgar showing true Scottish grit during racing
Sir Chris Hoy and Ross Edgar were the Scottish Olympic medal heroes encouraging the people of Glasgow to pick up their bikes and join them around the city streets on British Cycling’s Skyride Glasgow this Sunday 23 August.
With lots of activities on offer the Wattbikes took centre stage in the busy Skyride Active area in the middle of the scenic Glasgow Green. Hundreds of people came and raced the flying 200m race on the Wattbikes to give Sir Chris and Ross a record to beat. Despite some very gallant attempts in the over-40 and under-40 categories few got close to the two Olympians. Halfway through their packed day, the crowds amassed ten deep around the Wattbike arena as the two Scottish cyclists jumped onto the Wattbikes in their shorts and jeans with celebrity TV-presenter Gethin Jones.
After just a few minutes warm up and practice, the three men challenged each other to competing over the 200m flying lap course. With a fantastic display of power and efficiency, Chris Hoy took just 9.30 seconds to cross the finishing line in first place posting a new World Wattbike record in the process! Not only was it the quickest 200m yet seen on a Wattbike, but it was at a cycling efficiency of nearly 80%, which is extremely impressive for such a short sprint!
Ross Edgar and Gethin Jones were not far behind either, but it definitely looked like the 3-times Olympic-medal winner could take that time down a touch with his next performance.
Ross Edgar and Gethin Jenkins race in behind a distinctly unsatisfied Chris Hoy
The crowds duly kept the Wattbike team very busy throughout the whole day and they were a massive hit with families, and cyclists of all ages and abilities. Take a look at the Skyride Glasgow photo album as well as the Skyride website for all details. A big well done to everyone who took part, and made such an effort. We look forward to seeing you at Skyride Leicester and Skyride London!
A group of young cyclists follow in the Olympians pedal turns
Sunday will see the launch of the Skyride series with Skyride Manchester. The Skyrides see Sky and British Cycling teaming up to provide an opportunity to ride around the centre of Manchester, Glasgow, Leicester and London without the traffic or pollution. Along the route will be a series of different events, with a chance to ride through the velodrome, a family section, the go loud tunnel and Albert Square which will have British Cycling and Wattbike set up to offer a chance to find out more about Cycling in the UK and an activity zone – the Wattbikes.
The road is closed for the whole route and is open from 10am to 4pm. The Activity Zone is also open for the same time, so come and have a go on the Wattbikes where we will have a 200m challenge going on, but be gentle on us, we will be there from 6am for set up so maybe drop by with a coffee – mine will be a cappuccino if possible.
We seem to have chosen the hottest days of the year to go to London in the last couple of weeks, although it was well worth while as it was to meet with British Cycling and Sky and discuss their involvement with cycling and where Wattbike fits into “the landscape”. Our meeting with Sky was related to the up and coming Skyrides and took place at their offices. I was officially quite excited to see what it would be like, but it was just another office building, with a few small changes – it is massive (not unexpected), the Simpsons can be found lounging on their sofa in the waiting area of reception – which I have to admit I did not notice straight away even though I was sat opposite them, and there are a few huge SKY HD ads painted onto the walls – you might come round a corner and be face to face with Spiderman! The meeting was very interesting and I know have more of an understanding of the Skyrides which should really engage people in cycling in the 5 cities (Manchester, London, Leicester, Glasgow and Hounslow). We were looking at providing a Wattbike experience stand at each of the events to provide people with the opportunity to have a go on a Wattbike and pit themselves against the best in the country.
The meeting with British Cycling was in less exciting circumstances, but was equally worthwile with us planning how we can help them to develop indoor cycling, to enable them to maintain the growth in people cycling all the way through the winter.
Yesterday started with a trip to visit Sir Steve Redgrave and drop him off a Wattbike. He is a long term friend of ours and was keen to see the finished bike and to have a go! After a long discussion, verging on rant (mostly by me) about the health of the nation, lack of impact of many of the Government funded projects and especially lack of progress on the legacy programme for the Olympics we got round to the key issue. How much power can Steve produce! Still being VERY competitive Steve nipped off to get his training shoes – we half expected him to come back in a full British Cycling Beijing Skin Suit, but apparently they have all been shredded, but just trainers and his normal clothes, and he still pushed over 1590Watts on his first attempt! That was not good enough so he had another go and turned out a very impressive 1788Watts (that would put him 3rd on the ranking at the moment – and the two people who beat him are 23 and 26)! He has promised us that he will have another go today and see if he can get a better score once he is warmed up!
After leaving Steve we headed up to the Sports College Conference to join Eddie and Steve – they had had a very busy day with lots of interest from schools, and a Peak Power test by Total Swimming Business Development Manager and Commonwealth Gold Medalist Alex Scotcher - his 1236 Watts was pretty good especially as he was wearing some pretty tight trousers!
Friday was a busy day, Eddie and Ben were in Manchester running a session for British Cycling Go-Ride Coaches, Steve was setting up for the Tri Cycle Run show in Sandown, and I was in Rochdale delivering a session demonstrating developing technologies in Physical Education for Building Schools for the Future (BSF). The BSF day provided a great opportunity to demonstrate what the Wattbike has to offer to Education with the chance to run races and demonstrate the capacity of the Wattbike to impact on teaching and learning. The event was well run by Wayne Shingler (Partnership Development Manager from Rochdale) and the kids were all very interested, although I was surprised how few of them could name a cyclist, and how few knew what Power was or what Power is measured in!
Eddie and Ben’s day with the Go Ride coaches was very successful, although more attended than expected – lucky we created twice the number of packs that we thought we needed. The Go Ride coaches will be a good link for us to what is going on on the ground and both Eddie and Ben were very impressed with their enthusiasm and vision for an event that is entirely new for them.
Steve fought the snow and set up safely for the Tri Cycle Run show.
Today saw members of the staff at Roehampton, Plymouth, Nottingham, Manchester and Bristol Universities (and some visitors from British Cycling) come together for the first set of training for the delivery of the Wattbike Universities project. The training lasted from 10 to 3, with a two and a half hour practical session including an attempt at a power test, 200m race and 1000m race. After lunch we introduced them to the ranking and we are expecting to see them appearing on the ranking soon with their scores. The rest of the afternoon was spent sharing our ideas for delivery of the project. It is an exiciting project and will see members of Wattbike travelling to all parts of the country to assist the Universities with delivery of their projects.
Thanks to James and Chris from Birmingham, Nigel, Steve and Paul from Nottingham, Bridgette from Roehampton, Helen and Chris from Manchester, Kate from Plymouth and Geoff, Steve and Nicola from British Cycling for coming for the day, and of course to Eddie, Ben and Steve for delivering the course.
We have just launched a new ranking, this blog (although we have been adding content for a while now) and a new forum. The ranking will allow for people to pit themselves against other Wattbike users around the country and world and will also form the backbone for the forth coming British Cycling and Sport England Wattbike project in five Universities. You can add your ranking times and distances to the site and comment on blog posts or add comments to the forum.
If you had signed up to the previous forum you will need to sign up again – sorry about that.
Yesterday Steve Marshall visited the YST National Talent Orientation Camp at Loughborough University. As ever he was impressed with the British Cycling team there and the way that the athletes adopted the Wattbike and gave it their all. Steve’s short report is below:
“Over the past week, around 100 of the UK’s best under-16 athletes have been working with top coaches and equipment at the National Talent Orientation Camp in Loughborough. A variety of sports are represented from sailing and wheelchair basketball, to canoeists, rowers and cyclists.
British Cycling brought 12 of their Wattbikes to do some intense training with their athletes. Gary Coltman, Performance Manager Olympic Talent Programme British Cycling, explained that the usage of Wattbikes has been extremely useful in training for all cycling disciplines. During this week track cyclists, bmx and mountain bikers have all trained together, it would have been difficult to effectively coach outside with a range of bike speeds, traffic and weather conditions. With the Wattbikes and using their own bikes on rollers, the athletes have been able to really push themselves. The bmx coaches have also found the Wattbikes very useful, the simplicity to set up and the ability to accurately compare performances across a time period being the biggest advantages.
It was not just the cyclists who were using the Wattbikes as later that afternoon many rowers were brought across by their coaches to be taught how to use the bikes by the cyclists. They raced over 1000m with Chris Hoy’s time as a target. Quick, but not that quick …yet!”
