EXCITEMENT HAS BEEN building steadily in Irish cycling circles in recent weeks. Stirring and whisking itself up with each revolution of the wheel and lap of the track.
Today is the day so many elite Irish cyclists have been waiting for, a chance to show the work they have been putting in far from the madding crowd.
Not that there will be anything like what we would normally call ‘a crowd’ watching when the National Track Championships are played out over the coming days at the Sundrive Velodrome. Yet the peer group will provide more than enough pressure to spur on performances.
“The aspect everyone’s missing is being able to race against each other,” says Cycling Ireland high performance coach Tommy Evans, a successful road racer in his own right before he moved to the other side of the handlebars.
With individual athletes spread over a wide distance with differing schedules, lockdown did not necessarily change Evans’ approach to coaching. Working with athletes remotely was always part of the remit. However, this year has given the cyclists under his watch a chance to step outside the hamster wheel of the circuit and put down serious foundational work and target something other than the next race on the calendar.
It actually gave a lot of guys a great opportunity to just get strong… for a long time we were just going from race to race to race. A lot of them needed a good period of being in the one place and just getting good honest training done.
“We should see some good performances out of them and some surprise packages at the weekend. Some of the younger girls have done really well through this in terms of managing and training.”
And there’s the beauty of this weekend’s National Championships (which will be broadcast on Cycling Ireland’s Facebook page from 10am) it’s a chance to finally put training aside, and simultaneously, to use.
Conditions on an outdoor track likely won’t make for landmark times given recent weather, but the chance to go head to head is what every competitor wants. And who knows how valuable outdoor track experience could be on the world circuit. Or for how long.
“People think velodrome and they see the nice wooden boards, indoors. This could possibly be the new racing style for the next few months anyway. Many events could be hosted on outdoor tracks if indoor tracks won’t be permitted,” reasons Evans.
“The only difference is its windy the whole way around, there’s no shelter.”
“Guys are hungry to race. Competition will be a lot hotter than before because they hadn’t had an opportunity to really go out and race against eachother. They may have been chasing points for Olympic Qualification.
“Now that’s all done, they can all race for themselves and compete against eachother. It’s good healthy competition, because they’re all good friends.
“A lot of guys who benefitted from just getting some miles on the clock, endurance miles, when before we didn’t have an opportunity to do that.”
“I’d say it’ll be one of the hotter contested championships we’ve seen in a while.”
Today’s schedule will see men and women’s sprint and pursuit events with Fintan Ryan, Cian Keogh, Kelly Murphy and Orla Walsh among the contenders to watch out for. While Sunday brings the time trials and the Scratch race, in which Mark Downey will hope to underline his power.
Of course, for Cycling Ireland, lockdown and 2020 has been about a broader picture than just the elite athletes atop the pyramid. The closure of gyms across the country and people’s heightened need to get out of the house to enjoy the outdoors brought around a quarter of a million extra people into the saddle over the summer.
Evans and Cycling Ireland can see that number swell the field competing in virtual races on the Zwift platform and can’t help but get excited about potential talent that might be on the precipice of a breakthrough.
The advice Evans would offer to any competitor – no matter the horsepower – hoping to keep progressing even when the roads grow dark, wet and treacherous due to both terrain and traffic would be those virtual races. And your nearest club.
“The road is a dangerous place at times. Sometimes people don’t realise we are only on two little thin wheels and a bit of lycra. They can be in such a hurry to go nowhere. You do have to be safe out there,” says the 1996 Ras winner.
“They do couch to 5k in running, there’s no reason why you couldn’t do a couch to 50k on Zwift. Now, the one thing it won’t give you is the bike handling skills, but anybody’s that been out will know there’s a certain amount of trial and error.
“The advice I’d give is not to go for the most expensive equipment. Go for the most practical. Something that’s durable, reliable. If you really need to invest in something, go for something that’s middle of the road and then get good quality clothing. If you’re running, you get good running shoes. If you’re spending a good bit of time on the bike you’d want to buy yourself a good quality pair of shorts that will protect you… and a seat that’s comfortable.
“There are clubs everywhere, Clubs are the best people to guide you and give you advice. They’ll have different levels of rides and also that social aspect.”
Most of the 250-odd thousand people who took up an interest in cycling this year probably don’t have the bright competitive streak or sporting pedigree of Brian O’Driscoll. The former Ireland rugby captain, as part of his position with sportswear brand Gym + Coffee, took up an offer to undergo some of Evans’ testing for high performance athletes.
With the caveat that O’Driscoll is 41, coming in cold and with runners on, he acquitted himself well.
“We did a shortened version of a Vo2 max test with him. We didn’t give him time to warm up and he was in his running shoes,” offers Evans.
“What he does in his last minute, for our guys, is what they should be able to sustain for 4-5 minutes.
“You ramp up the resistance every minute. Then with heartrate you can get a gauge of how close someone is to their limit. For Brian, probably, that test wasn’t great for him.
If I’d given him a bigger number he’d have battled on, but I was looking at his heartrate and decided he had had enough. He was probably cross at this and wanted to do more!
“That wouldn’t be a strength of a rugby player that test. So we tried a max power test, he did about 1,200 watts – which given he was in running shoes was pretty good.”
The higher wattages will be on show at the track championships in Sundrive this weekend.
Irish athleisure brand Gym+Coffee have partnered with Cycling Ireland to become the official leisure kit supplier to the sports governing body. Cycling has experienced a boom in popularity as over 510,000 adults take to 2 wheels and enjoy the physical and mental health benefits of leading an active lifestyle. Both Gym+Coffee and Cycling Ireland are keen to continue to encourage this recent surge in cycling activity.
