October 2014: Assessment Results

Rider Development Programme – 11th October Assessment Results

We are very pleased to announce the assessment passes who may now move to the next level in the development programme. Make sure you bring your passports to be signed off if you did not do so last weekend – if you have lost your passport, bring £1 for this to be replaced. Certificates will be given out at theend of the session on the 18th of October  – these will not be ready until then so please be patient on this front! If you don’t have your certificate from a previous round of assessments, come and see us on Saturday as we have a pile of uncollected ones! Please note we are starting to recycle uncollected certificates, so make sure you have yours – you have earned it!

A Note from Your Coaches…

Bronze Groups: for the first time, we delivered 2 Bronze assessments – one for mountain bikes and one for road bikes. In both groups, the standard was high and we are very happy to see so many of you move along to silver in your chosen discipline. For those of you who are unclear, mountain biking is now included in the rider development programme, and involves having to follow a similar progression pathway as the current circuit programme. If you have passed your Bronze on a road bike, and would like to join the mountain bike group, you will need to pass your Bronze on a mountain bike as well. Vice versa, if you have passed your Bronze on a mountain bike, but would like to take up circuit riding instead, you will need to have passed your Bronze on a road bike. If you have any questions on this, please talk to coaches Ralph P, John G, Alex A or Mark D, who will be happy to help.

Silver 2 Group: The Silver II group ALL performed very well at the assessments and all riders showed improvements in their cycling skills. The criteria to move up to Gold is now quite high, and a lot of this is down to riding stamina and endurance. Keeping up with the different groups in Gold and being able to ride multiple laps is important as the Gold standard gets ever higher. Last week we saw many Silver II riders who had good bike handling techniques, but did not have the stamina to get into the Gold level just yet. Our advice is to stay in Silver II for a while and to ride outside of the club, either on turbos or with parents and friends and build up the riding fitness. If anyone would like some help and advice on how to do this please see Steve C or Paul M and we can help put together a training programme that will support you in this.

Overall, we are very pleased with your progress, and are very impressed to see so many of you working so hard to achieve your goals. We’ve also noticed that the riders with the most endurance, and most likely to progress faster, are those who come to Slipstreamers regularly and are very active on their bikes outside of the club. Unfortunately, simply turning up at the assessment and the odd Saturday in between, and not training and practicing your skills outside the club, means it will take you that much longer. If you are happy with this, perfect – we want you to work at a pace that suits YOU! But if you are keen to move to Silver and Gold, please do listen to our advice – we know what we are talking about – come to training regularly, and practice, practice, practice!

And finally, if you have not passed yet, do not despair and please do not give up – talk to the lead coaches (our names and photos are on the clubhouse board) for guidance and tips on where to improve. If you don’t see your name in the table below, but think this is in error, please come and see us.

Well done everybody who took part – it was great to see you all riding so well.

For future assessment dates, please refer to the calendar on the Clubhouse noticeboard, and keep an eye out in the newsletter for further announcements.