Roller Races at Forest Road

Orchard and Parkwood in action

Ryan and Diana from Kingsmead test the new rollers.

The final event before the Xmas break took place last thursday at the Forest Road Youth Centre. Indoor roller racing is always a popular option in the winter in the cycling fraternity - it beats being out in the cols and wet anyway. sixty three riders from six schools attended to battle it out on the static bikes. Thanks to Young Hackney and CCH we have some new equipment which looks fantastic however the electronics part of it hadn't arrived in time from the states so we had to revert to old fashioned methods of using a stop watch and fitting bike computers to the rear wheels of the bikes. this way we could measure how far each rider could travel in 1 minute.

Leila and Angelica from Kingsmead in action.

The riders had already arrived when we found out that the computers only counted up the distance 100 metres at a time meaning riders distances were being rounded down to the nearest hundred. so we quickly rejigged the competition so that the total distances attained by each school would settle the league points. With 20 for 1st, 17 for 2nd, 15 for 3rd,  13th for 4th, 11 for 5th and 10 for 6th place. With all the schools being busy with xmas concerts and fairs we only had two teams in at a time competing but they still managed to make plenty noise cheering on their teammates.

Matilda from Orchard going hard

After all the scores were added up the results were as follows -

Gayhurst	total	8600m	1
Kingsmead	total	8200m	5
Jubilee	total	8400m	2
Sir Thomas Abney	total	8300m	3
Orchard	total	8200m	5
Parkwood	total	8000m	6

Another rider from Orchard priamry school giving it a go

As you can see the results were very close. Individually Mack Mooney - Y6 Jubilee and Ryan da Costa Y5 kingsmead both got over 900m, whilst in the girls Leila Abbot Y6 Kingsmead, Matilda de Guia Y6 Orchard, Nel Mulready Jones Y5 Jubilee and Kezia Cotterell Y5 Gayhurst all got over 800m. Well done to all who gave it a go. When the equipment is up and running properly we will be taking it round lots of schools in the borough as part of the Tour de Hackney fitness programme being rolled out by Young Hackney. Have a great holiday and we'll see you early n the new year back at the Lea Valley Velopark for the next race.

Kymani and Camillo from Kingsmead - look at the leg speed!

Hakeem and Iftikhar show real legspeed.