A Day in the life of a track cyclist (at the final rounds of the UCI TCL)

Contents

Time to travel

Every race trip begins with a travel day, so on Thursday 5th December I packed my bags and hit the road, making my way to the Lee Valley Velodrome for Rounds 4 and 5 of the UCI Track Champions League. Upon arrival I checked into my hotel for the weekend, grabbed some dinner, and headed straight to bed to get some sleep for the upcoming days of racing.

Friday 6th (Round 4)

The next day marked the first of the 2 London rounds, the racing didn’t start until the evening so I had a few things to do beforehand. I had breakfast at the hotel, which consisted of lots of carbohydrates to fuel my body well for the racing. I then headed into the velodrome to do some media, this involved myself and Sophie Capewell doing an ‘alternative commentary challenge’ whilst watching a match sprint between Emma Finucane and Martha Bayona. Once that was done, I took the time to get on track and get a feel for it, this was my first time riding at Lee Valley so I wanted to get a few laps in before we started racing. Following this I did a short spin on the rollers with a few revouts, all just to wake the body up and get neurally switched on for the racing.

Now we were finished at the velodrome, we decided to go for a quick coffee and I also grabbed a slice of banana bread, after that we then headed back to the hotel, where I had a quick shower before having some lunch. My lunch included lots of carbohydrates (again), mainly rice with a bit of pasta, some chicken breast, and a nice tomato sauce. Once I’d fuelled up, I headed up to my room where I would chill out for a couple of hours before heading back to the velodrome to start the first night of racing! Before leaving I had to pack my bag, this included; my skinsuit, leg warmers, a long sleeve jersey, shoes, spare shoes, heart rate monitor and liquid chalk. Alongside my bag I also had to take my aero helmet and track pack, my track pack is a bag filled with chainrings, sprockets and tools, which I use for changing the gear on my track bike. With all this luggage, I decided the 15 minute walk to the velodrome was not for me, so I found a nearby Lime e-bike, the basket at the front helped with my luggage and with the assistance of the battery I arrived at the velodrome within a few minutes.

Warming up

The stage was set, the velodrome looked amazing, it was basked in a deep blue light and you could tell the atmosphere was going to be unreal. The track opened up for an hour just before the racing began, without any turbo trainers our options were limited so all the sprinters followed a similar warm up plan. Once I’d squeezed into my skinsuit, got my bike ready and found someone to pin my numbers on, it was time to get on the track for our warm-up. We started with a 30 lap wind-up, which included sprinters from GB, Australia, France and New Zealand, it was slow to begin with but in the final 10 laps or so it really ramped up in speed. The aim of this was to get the legs moving, get the blood flowing and raise our core body temperature. We usually put on a very small gear, I rode a 92” gear but there were people riding much smaller than that, this promotes a really high cadence which helps with everything we were trying to achieve during this part of the warm-up.

Following this I did a jump on that same small gear, this will usually be a rolling 3/4, this is where you roll into the 50m line relatively slowly and then go as hard as you can to the finish line. It’s not a very long effort, but it’s great for warming up because it gets you to hit a high peak power and also switches you on neurally because of the high cadence. After that, I would come down to the track centre and make sure I am fueling well with carbs (usually through gels or bananas) and take some caffeine to make sure I’m switched on for the racing.

Then I would change to my race gear, for the 3-up match sprints at TCL I rode a 118” gear, this gear provided the best versatility for me, it was small enough to be able to accelerate quickly and big enough to keep pushing it at top speed. Once this was changed, I would go out and do another rolling 3/4 just before the track closed, this time on the bigger gear it’s a much better representation of what it’s going to feel like during the race. Now the body was primed, the crowd had arrived and we had less than 30 minutes till we raced.

The Racing (round 4)

Those last 30 minutes consisted of some light spinning on the rollers, going through different tactical scenarios in your head and putting on some of the final touches (like aero overshoes). As I was putting on my liquid chalk and getting ready to race, one of the GB girls got their name announced as they headed up the line, the crowd roared, it was easily the loudest crowd I’d ever heard and really got my heart racing. A few minutes later I headed up the line for my match sprint, it was an amazing experience having the support of a home crowd, especially in a packed Lee Valley Velodrome.

The race was a nervy one, it started out very cagey and half a lap in all three of us went into a very tight track stand, at one point I thought I was going to crash as I was sandwiched between the rider below me and the perspex around the top of the track, but luckily my pedals fell into the right place at the right time and I managed to hold it. The following few laps were fast and unfortunately I crossed the line in 3rd, narrowly missing out on 2nd.

I cooled down by spinning over on the rollers and flushing the lactate out of my legs, I then changed my gear in preparation for the keirin. For the keirin I decided 122” was the gear for me, slightly bigger than the match sprints because it’s much more fast paced so you don’t need to accelerate as much. I had a good chunk of time until the keirin heats, so when I was asked if I wanted to fire a t-shirt cannon at the crowd I of course accepted.

I had a tough keirin heat, but then again there were no easy heats. I drew position 2, I knew a big move was going to come from behind but I didn’t know when, unfortunately it came as soon as the bike pulled off. This caught me by surprise and before I knew it I’d gone from p2 to p5, but there were still 3 laps to go. With about 2 laps to go the rider in front of me made his move, pushing up round the outside full gas, I stuck on his wheel and with a lap to go it looked like it might work. But unfortunately it wasn’t to be, we didn’t manage to get round and both got stuck on the outside, I crossed the line in 5th just missing out on 4th.

That signalled the end of my racing for the night, I finished Round 4 16th overall, so I packed up my stuff, found a Lime e-bike again and went back to the hotel to grab a shower and get some food. At this point it was very late, so me and a friend quickly ordered a pizza online, and eagerly awaited its arrival. We scoffed the pizza down and went to bed, and even though I was knackered I found it tough to sleep because of the caffeine still circulating around my body.

Round 5 (The Finale)

I woke up very leisurely at around 10:30 am, my parents had come down to watch so I went to breakfast with them. I had a very carb-heavy breakfast, pancakes, maple butter and banana, with freshly-squeezed apple juice. Saturday was a lot of the same, for lunch I had lots of rice again and then on the way to track I stopped for a cheese toastie and a coffee.

The GB riders had to get to track a bit earlier than everyone else because we had some media to do with Sir Chris Hoy, he gave us a motivational speech for the finale and it was just awesome to be able to chat with him. Following this it was time to start gearing up again, so I did the same warm up as the day before and prepared in exactly the same way. The crowd was sold out for the finale, and it sounded like it, the roar everytime a GB rider was announced was unbelievable. I tried to enjoy every second of it, my sprint heat went well, I managed to finish 2nd, losing out to the Olympic Champion Harrie Lavreysen, but this got me some good points and moved me up to 14th overall.

Just like the day before I was gearing up for the keirin before an unfortunate crash in the women’s keirin saw the event come to an end early. It was an unfortunate end to a great event, but luckily everyone involved was okay. Once everyone was informed that there would be no more racing, we all packed up our stuff and headed back to the hotel, there we ordered pizza (again) and with that the 2024 season of the UCI TCL was over.

It was an amazing experience for me, it was such an amazing event and I treasured every moment, being able to race against the best riders in the world in front of sold out crowds.

I’m really grateful for all the support Yellow Jersey has given me throughout the event, not having to worry about anything happening to my bike throughout TCL was amazing and relieved so much stress, it allowed me to fully focus on the racing and helped me achieve the best results I could.