I was not in London for the Skyride, but my phone was buzzing all day – apparently the 9.30 seconds for a 200m that Sir Chis Hoy produced at the Glasgow round of the Skyride was not unbeatable. Infact Jason Kenny got close with a 9.31s, but Jamie Staff introduced a whole new level of power, with a max power in the 200m sprint of 2080Watts and a time of 8.96 seconds!
WOW
Being out of contact with the news for a week leads to some pretty interesting reading when you return. This week has seen some pretty crazy stuff…. Lance Armstrong had his time trial bike stolen, and as he says on twitter …
Whoa!! They just came to my room and said our truck was broken into and someone stole my time trial bike! Wtf?!? APB out to the twitterati.
Then posted a picture of the bike…. - there was only one in the world so it would be pretty hard to sell on, especially to anyone who had seen the news. Eventually the bike was handed in to the Sacramento Police, but not before Trek had produced another TT bike for Lance with a nice little inscription on it…
Even with a different bike Lance was on good form, 14th over all (but inside his target of 15th), but not strong enough to attack his team mate Levi Leipheimer who went on to win the Tour of California for the third successive year.
Also in the news was Chris Hoy’s crash in the Keirin at the World Cup, you can see the race and crash on Youtube or read about it on the BBC or on Cycling Weekly’s site
Lets hope Chris is able to get back to full fitness for next month’s World Championships in Poland.
Today was spent visiting with Wayne Shingle, PDM based at Siddal Moor Sports College, Rochdale. Although the drive was miserable with fog, driving rain, driving snow and of course British Traffic. Wayne was very excited about the potential of using the Wattbike within his partnership of schools, especially after we put one into a Year 7 class, gave them two minutes of explanation about how to set up the bike and off they went. They organised themselves, worked out their peak power, and learned what it feels like to produce 100W (like being a lightbulb).
The school already has Concept2 rowing machines which they use to good effect both in PE and across the curriculum and would like to replicate the same sort of project with Wattbikes, but linking to cycling on the road. After reading about the bad provision of PE and activity in schools it is always great to see projects working well and good people open to new ideas, and creating an exciting environment for learning. Watch this space – Rochdale could produce the next Vicky Pendleton (or Chris Hoy).
Tomorrow is the Youth Sport Trust Youth Talent Orientation Camp – I hope to post some pictures of Britain’s Sporting Talent on the Wattbikes.
