Cycling’s Roll of Honour
The North Down Cycling Club will be honouring its prize winners at next Saturday night’s social event in the Pickie Bowling Club. As mentioned in this column last week, riders such as Neil McKenna, Paul Swenarton and Stuart Henry grabbed most of the headlines in open events this season, but there were many others who achieved much in club events.
Cycling Club’s Winter Programme
The very successful North Down Cycling Club winter programme continued last Friday night with an in-depth talk by Commonwealth Games manager Alistair Irvine. Once again it was standing room only as Alistair shared his considerable knowledge of how to optimise performance through perfecting the set-up of racing cycles. To help him explore the myths and the research in this area the highly acclaimed former international rider and All-Ireland champion was ably assisted by his beautiful assistant, who will remain nameless.
The Italian Job
A couple of weeks ago William Barclay and Paul Ferguson made the trip to Como, in Northern Italy to race in the Gran Fondo Giro di Lombardia. This event takes in 145 kms of racing in one of the most beautiful (and hilly) parts of the world.
Turbo Terrific!
The first of the winter’s turbo sessions under the guidance of sports scientist Darren McWilliams was a fantastic success last Wednesday night. It’s a long time since the clubrooms have been such a hive of activity.
Before the evening commenced, Darren gave a short talk on maintaining fitness throughout the winter and the importance of setting specific training levels and using them in preparation for all forms of cycling. He then assisted the members to set their own thresholds.
After an arduous session on the turbos, some were even tempted to ‘have a go’ on the club’s competition rollers. Clearly the testosterone levels were high and the competitive instincts keen, as the likes of Wilf Renshaw set a personal best time of 1 minute 18 seconds for the kilometre.
Ciaran Big Wheel in Cycling
At last week’s North Down AGM, local architect Ciaran Andrews became the ‘big wheel’ in local cycling, taking on the mammoth task of Honoury General Secretary and Chairman. However, as an experienced committee man Ciaran clearly has the expertise and the acumen to carry off the role. He takes over the position of secretary from Flo Millar, who will remain as registrar.
Trip to the Tip
As a recently retired veteran cyclist with North Down Cycling Club, Noel Boyce has been clocking up many miles on his bike, taking him all over Northern Ireland. However, with the summer being such a wash out, Noel felt that he had really missed out. He explains that, ‘It's not that I am a fair weather cyclist; I just don't enjoy starting in the rain. So when we got a period of settled weather at the end of September, I decided to have one last 'good' spin before having a rest prior to the winter training season.’