Saturday 7th April - Go Ride at Stocks Green

This week thirteen youngsters signed on to take part in Go Ride.  With the weather improving we can finally focus on skills other than just trying to prevent our riders from freezing to death!

Our chosen distraction activity for this week was Cone Heads; Michele, Calvin and Luke got started, loading a cone on each rider's helmet, the challenge is to ride without letting it fall to the ground, this takes a good, still upper body (a grippy helmet helps as well).

Next up, we got going with Thread the Needle, good, controlled riding from everyone, especially those who'd practised at Bedgebury last week too.  

Once everyone had had a go at threading, we split into two groups and worked on some slow riding techniques.  Using body position, brakes and part pedalling to really slow everything down.  The younger riders had a few games of sardines to practise;  Alfie was unbeaten in my group!

We moved onto our endurance block; this week we'd added a slalom section, a slow section and a sprint section.  The coaches reported excellent riding in all three areas.  Despite the sprint section being followed by a tight bend including a tree and a fence, everyone stayed upright, proving that they had their sprints under control and had full use of their brakes.  The re-fuelling break was particularly appreciated after all that exertion.

Lap board and bell in action!

To finish off we split into three teams and ran a couple of relays.  The Slow Relay, where the penalty for putting a foot down was to ride as fast as you could to the end (fortunately the kids didn't twig the possibilities here), followed by The Egg & Spoon Race, a KVK special which produced the usual range of skilled riding and expert cheating.  All done in good humour, it's fair to say none of the eggs survived in tact.

Anna, Ewan, Fin, Leon, Alfie, Hannah, Fraser, Bronnie, Lucy, Isaac, William, Alice, Ivo

Thanks to coaches, parents, volunteers and riders for contributing to another great morning of bike riding.

Next weekend Saturday 14th April we are racing at Bedgebury.