Scottish Cycling Training Opportunities

Are you interested in training to become a cycling coach?

Scottish Cycling have just announced the dates of their coach education courses for 2009 and the good news is that there will be a Level 2 Certificate in Coaching Course in our region on the 17th and 18th January. It is anticipated that most of the cost of the course will be covered by a scholarship. This is the course as I took earlier this year and I think this represents a great chance for someone else to get involved in the club's activities. More details can be found on the Scottish Cycling web-site at,

http://www.scuonline.org/newsdetail.asp?Nid=2118&DID=1

and more details about Level 2 Coaching at,

http://www.britishcycling.org.uk/web/site/BC/coa/awards_overview_page.asp.

If you might be interested in attending this course, please get in touch with myself, Rik, or Keith Stocker of Scottish Cycling. Please don't let your level of experience of teaching, or cycling one way or another put you off considering the course.

Christmas Cracker Race Report

Hot off the press, here is a report from today's Christmas Cracker Cyclo Cross race. The Stepping Stanes club laid on a brilliant course with a mixture of tight, rooty single track, sudden tricky climbs, a quarry drop and plenty of fast fire road for overtaking.

The weather was cool and dry and the first race to set off was the under 10's with Drumlanrig represented by Jamie Willoughby. He got off to a blazing start gaining a few bikes length lead into the first corner. Jamie built on this lead through the race showing his strength to take a comfortable victory in the end.

The second start of the day was the under 12's and Drumlanrig rider, Rian Hill turned out a great performance in this race. Rian mixed it with the race leaders early on to eventually finish a strong fourth.

Finally, it was the turn of the under 16's with club rider Jack Taylor looking for the win on his festively festooned bike. Jack was at the front of the race for the first couple of laps with Scottish Talent Team riders Ross Green and Ryan Fenwick only to fall off the pace with two crashes on the single track to come home in third.

There's nothing on with the club from now until the new year, but then we will have a busy time coming ahead of us with coaching, races and our Family Evening / AGM. The next coaching session is at 10:00 on Saturday the 17th January at the Castle and the next race is due on the 7th February at Heathhall.

Update on the Christmas Cracker

Just a brief word about the cyclo cross race this Saturday. There are still places available on the start line, so if you haven't posted in an entry form, it will still be possible to enter on the day. To save time, I suggest that you print off and complete one of the entry forms on the Stepping Stanes web-site, http://www.steppingstanes.co.uk/ (there is also a copy in this blog two posts down). Registration will be at The Pines Golf Centre, please be there at least 30 mins before your race time. To get there from the M74 North, take the A701 from Moffat, when you reach Dumfries by-pass turn left at the roundabout, you will see the Golf centre on the left, turn left at the next roundabout and immediately left into the entrance road.

Race times:- under 10 :- 11:00. under 12 :- 11:15. under 14 :- 11:30, under 16 12:00 Entrance on the day is £5.00.

As I mentioned earlier, I am planning to run a short session starting at 10am based around a pre-ride of the course. I hope that this will improve riders confidence in the race. If you are interested in this please e-mail me and come along a little before 10 to ensure that there is enough time to get bikes ready and run through the formalities before going out on the course.

Snow Ride at the Castle

When we turned up to do the pre-session inspection this morning, we were met by two inches of snow and sheets of black ice! Surely any riding would be unsafe and we would have to cancel the session - especially since we were due to coach descending! But no, we found the ground clear at the top of the first climb and "up first down", providing perfect conditions for the session with Carol and Jamie giving us some great new bike handling ideas to think about.


To cap what was turning out to be a brilliant session, Jamie put us through our paces on the grassy slopes of the skills loops with a descender race. As you can see from the picture there was plenty of snow here!

Christmas Cracker Cyclo Cross Race

Here are details of the Christmas Cracker Cyclo Cross Race to be held at Heathhall from 10am on Saturday 20th December. Note that Race HQ is the Pines Golf Centre.

Click on the images to view full screen.

Coaching Session 10:00 - 11:30 Saturday 6th December

This week's session for will start at 10:00 on Saturday the 6th December. The theme for this session is descending and this will bring together many of the skills that have been revised up till now in this back to basics series. As with our last session, I am expecting to be assisted by guest coaches Carol and Jamie Cooper from Extreme Valley Riders as part of there preparation for Day 3 of their British Cycling coaching course.

Please see the Winter Activities Plan post in this blog for the latest version of our club activities plan for Winter 2008 (http://rootrats.blogspot.com/2008/12/winter-activities-plan.html ). This is a JPEG file so should be viewed at 100% to be legible. As well as giving you the dates and times of club sessions, our committee meetings and a Family Night that we are planning for February, there are the dates of a number of bike races. The races are being organised to encourage youngsters into the competitive side of cycling and will be similar to the very successful event that we arranged when the Tour of Britain came to Drumlanrig earlier this year. The first of these races is on the 20th December and this will take the place of the club session that was planned for that day. Please take a look at the Stepping Stanes web-site under Christmas Cracker for more details and event entry forms (http://www.steppingstanes.co.uk/).

Winter 2008/2009 Activities Plan

Drumlanrig Root Rats Winter Activities Plan 2008/2009 (updated 05/03/2009)

Spring 2009 Activities Plan

Drumlanrig Root Rats Spring 2009 Activities Plan
(N.B. Primary School Age Group Sessions with Rik start at 5:15 and finish at 6:30pm)