News: Youth Girls Training Weekend

Last weekend was the first of the girl’s youth race training development weekends held at High Adventure in Cowling, Yorkshire.

News: Youth Girls Training Weekend

from Bex Rimmington – (Bex is a Level British Cycling Level 3 Road & TT Coach, former CTT National medallist and raced professionally for Team WNT in 2017)

Last weekend was the first of the girl’s youth race training development weekends held at High Adventure in Cowling, Yorkshire. The goal of the development weekends are to encourage and support young female racing cyclists from around the country to develop the skills and confidence to take part in a fantastic, lifelong sport. In previous years as riders step up to the older youth age groups, junior and senior levels there has been feedback that riders are not prepared fully for this level of competition (we only have to look at the recent cancellation of Klondike GP) and as a result, this then has a longer term effect on their racing.

We therefore, wanted to introduce the opportunity to work on these skills now in a fun and relaxed environment which means stepping up to junior or senior level races in a few years’ time will not prove so daunting.

On Friday evening we were extremely fortunate to be joined by professional cyclist Alice Cobb over Skype for a Q&A session – Alice shared her experiences about progressing from junior to senior, balancing university & exams with racing and giving plenty of advice about racing, it was a really inspirational session and Alice is a real role model to these girls.

… continued after advert

On Saturday morning we welcomed the team from Go Velo to do a bike maintenance and mechanics course – the aim was to practice the little things now such as taking wheels in and under pressure knowing that it will make a big difference on race day if it needs to be done.

After the mechanics session we headed out onto a local hill circuit taking in a 1km 9% multiple times practicing different elements of climbing so that they can take this back to their own clubs and coaches and continue developing going into the season and beyond.

We then ran a short workshop on race distractions and how to keep cool and calm when things don’t quite go your way, which we all know in bike racing can happen more often than not! To finish an action packed Saturday we headed to the Steven Burke circuit to work on skills and such as navigating through the bunch in our own female peloton. The weekend finished off with a 45-mile group ride to the Bolton-by-Bowland road race circuit over one of my favourite climbs Blacko, the girls had a chance to stop and fuel at the Bolton by Bowland Tea Rooms before heading back across Blacko again.

For me, weekends like this are about giving back to the sport and helping the next generation of young cyclists coming through – I was so lucky to have a great team around me with such a wealth of experience to share and make this weekend happen – Simon Wilson (Ribble Pro Cycling), Tracey Taylor, Kate Taylor (Racing Chance Foundation) & Gemma Sargent (Team Jadan).

We were also extremely fortunate to be supported by Secret Training who provided sports nutrition for the weekend and also Merlin Cycles who provided goody bags for all of the riders to help them keep their bikes clean. Based on what I saw this weekend the future of British Women’s Cycling looks very exciting! We are busy planning the second weekend after the road and circuit season has finished in October.