If anyone is interested in Youth training Robin Fox says he can take one or two without accompanying coach.
If you dont know me, I am one of the Level 2 coaches at Solihull CC and mainly responsible for lowering the average age of our club from the mid 70s to the low 40s in 3 years !!!
As you know, the Tudor Grange circuit in Solihull is a great regional facility, that very shortly clubs can book themselves if they would like to.
We are organising our 2009 training program for spring/summer for the Solihull riders, but to kick it off Id like to arrange an open regional training session on the circuit that West Midlands regional clubs can bring their younger youth riders to.
I think that the format of the Regional School of Racing for older youth riders works very well so Id like to try a similar program to the RSR but for the younger youth age groups. Call it a Regional nursery of racing it you want !!
With the youth racing scene so buoyant in this region, its good that the riders can get together out of competition. This will help strengthen relationships between the regions clubs and also help develop individual relationships between the riders.
Ive set a date (see below) and some guidelines. I am prepared to write the overall session plan for the training but I will need a level 2 coach from each of the participating clubs to help manage the session. Its possible we could have too many riders on the session so I have listed an age group I think we should target but obviously we are all aware there are riders in our clubs who might be fringe to this age group but would benefit from this type of group training. If you think this applies to riders in your club, then you just need to apply some common sense and then let me know.
I think we need to set a ceiling on the number of riders, based on the fact that this is the first time weve done this and we dont want to be swamped and have safety concerns. My idea is that we go for a max of 60 riders and see how it goes.
Many parts of the training session I have in mind can be done will all riders on the circuit, other parts should be done by splitting into smaller groups. More details on this later.
You never know, if it works out well, we could run a similar program across the regions facilities that your clubs could organise as the different facilities all offer something different.
So the details/guidelines are these.
1)Date : Saturday 7th March
2)Time : 10:00 13:00
3)Venue : Tudor Grange Circuit. Parking can be at the Tudor Grange Lesiure Centre. This is a 2minute ride through the park from the circuit.
4)Age groups I wanted this to be flexible but not too wide ranging on the grounds of safety so to put a stake in the groundwere typically looking at riders from final year U10 to first year U14 (ie 9-13 ish) but if there are others on the fringe, then let me know and a decision can be based on merit.
5)Bikes Road bikes only (or CX bikes with road tyres)
6)Club coaches. To make this work effectively, each club that brings riders WILL also provide a level 2 coach.
7)This is NOT a go-ride session. It would be a structured quality training session targeted at the age groups concerned. There will be a mix of race/training type scenarios and some informal races to complete the day. So the amount of physical exercise will be high for this age group.
Please get back to me if you think you and your club might be interested in taking part and start communicating it internally. It would be better for me to have a list of riders, (their names and ages) so I could roughly work out some groups before hand. I can also tell from this what volume of riders are being proposed.
