2005 National Track Championships

Our final competition of 2005 was the National Track Championships held in Manchester on the 7th October.

The competition is based on an omnium of three races; the Flying 200m, the 1km Time Trial and the 3km Pursuit.

As there are not enough competitors in each of the disability categories (visually impaired, cerebral palsy and amputees), the competition is based on an index system whereby the individual or tandem pairing who are closest to their category's world record is awarded the most points and the winner of the omnium is the tandem or individual with the most points over the three events.

There were 10 competitors in all and the first event was the Flying 200m. We did this in 12.019s, which although isn't our PB (11.939s in Athens), it is the fastest we have ridden at Manchester. We were also the closest to our category's world record and so lead the competition after the first event.

We then had a couple of hours before the next event, the 1km Time Trial. We had hoped to beat our world record for this event but it wasn't to be and we did a time of 1 minute, 12.118s which was just under a second off our world record. Although disappointed not to better our time, we were still leading the omnium after two events and were getting rather excited about winning the National title. However, we still had the 3km Pursuit to do, which isn't really our forte and an event that every sprinter dreads!

We aimed to do the 3km in 3 minutes 45 seconds but that is easier said than done! This means trying to complete each lap in about 18.2 seconds. Marshall Thomas, our coach was shouting out the lap times to us as we passed him and gradually the times increased from 17 seconds up to 20 seconds by the last lap and so we lost a lot of time, completing the 3km in 3 minutes 55.002. We really thought we had blown it, as the world record for our category is 3 minutes 36.816s.

We were totally gutted and for a good 10 to 15 minutes we still thought that we had moved from our leading position to third place overall. It wasn't until we were asked to make our way to the podium, that we found out that we had actually won - although our time for the pursuit wasn't great, we had enough points from the previous events to win overall. Ellen and I had gone from total despair to total ecstasy in a matter of minutes and it ended a rather successful year for us winning 5 gold medals in all!