ANIMAL TESTING

Last Sunday 3 Team KeswickBikes.co.uk riders gathered in Whitehaven to undergo the first round of testing with their new coach Andrew Patterson (http://www.pattersontraining.com/). Andrew Wrigley and Chris Hope made the decision to work with a coach to help them prepare for there major objective of 2008, the Trans Alp mountain bike stage race, and I decided a bit of structured training probably wasn't such a bad idea either.

Andy's new conservatory was the location of choice for some early morning ramp tests to determine our baseline performances. The gruelling 'test to exhaustion' protocol was just the ticket for a Sunday morning in late November and a cruel reminder of what really pushing yourself feels like.

Renowned power monster Andy Wrigley produced the biggest numbers but also topped the post test weigh in at .......... an undisclosed figure (at least for now). For myself i was left a little shy of donning my skin suit any time in the near future after the skin fat calipers revealed some terrible truths.

With our bench marks now in place it we just need to put in the hard miles to see how we improve (we hope!) for the next round of testing.

We would like to thank Andy Patterson for making the long trip up from Maccalsfieldup to do the testing and for his patience and words of encouragement while conducting three back to back tests. We'd also like to thank Andy W's wife for her patience in the face of invading cyclists.