Back in October those interested in road racing for ERC were invited to an evening of wonderful food and open discussion at Calum Macleans home.  “If you build it they will come” and they sure did, almost 40 eager racers turned up to put forward their ideas and proposals for the coming year.  Behind the scenes a six month plan had been drawn up in preparation for the season ahead. The open forum prompted a number of alterations to this plan and a summary of the finalised road map was put to the race team the following week.

The over whelming subject matter of the ERC Race plan was the notion of “Team”. Team members needed to buy into this from the start if they were to be part of this group.  All too often cyclist train by themselves and don’t partake in enough team rides or bonding sessions. Our plan was to tackle this mentality and ask that each rider attend a percentage of the team rides as organised by the management.

Our sessions had to be diverse to cater for all aspect of bike riding. Some of the sessions are physical while others are sit down sessions which demand the brain do the work. 

We have had such an interesting first 3 months.  The team generally does a long ride at the weekend. These rides have varied from steady processional rides aimed at improving bunch discipline to much faster interval rides aimed at learning you and your team mates limits.

Mid week sessions have included 

• Bike Skills sessions,(Bumping, barging, taking fast corners  and balancing on a bike)
• Hill Climbing sessions
• Sprinting sessions
• Sports  Psychology
• Nutrition
• Injury prevention
• Coaching talks from pro riders
• Spin classes

With the race season just around the corner mock races have been scheduled so that the team can immerse themselves in a racing environment. Making mistakes and errors of judgment, finding out your strengths and weaknesses is all part of the learning process.  

The team as a whole has bought into this structured plan and are proud to represent ERC. Perhaps more importantly they are proud of each other as each is riding the same long hard road. That is what makes this different from other years, each rider knows what the other has been through, what skills they improved on and where their weakness lie. Throw all this into the melting pot and you have the makings of a really good team. Come the end of the season and whatever that may hold, be it success or failure the team can say ….at least we gave it a honest go.... and you cannot ask for more than that.