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The Hoghton Tower cyclocross race hosted by Red Rose Olympic CC now has an impressive video produced by Crank IT Racing and Stanley Road. There's also a few photos.

This season we have been getting together on Tuesday evenings and on Saturday mornings, if there is no race on, to work on our CX skills.

We have had coaching input from Jack Humphreys and Matthew Field who have both helped to create fun, challenging sessions. Mike and Jez have also been on hand to help out.

We have concentrated on skills required in races to tackle obstacles that the course designers will incorporate, so this means off cambers, run ups, hurdles etc.

Saturday saw the final race of the North West Youth League. This year the league was made up of 5 closed circuit races, a cycle speedway race and a cyclocross race. This last race was the cyclocross race and was held around the Salt Ayre cycling track, hosted by Salt Ayre Cog Set who designed a great course for the riders.

Red Rose were well represented in the event with riders in the D boys, C girls, C boys and B boys categories.

The overall results for the league were announced after the race with Tom Lees finishing 6th overall in the B boys category.

Rossendale RC hosted their cyclocross event at the Landgate Quarry, renowned for its challenging course with a tough steep run up, boggy dips, a super fast descent with those scary (for me anyway) drop offs and long steep off-camber section for good measure!

The day started with the hillside in thick fog - we could hardly make out the course, if you know what you are looking for you can probably pick out the pits on the photo below - but the sun was shining by the time the first race started and we were treated to a fabulous sunny day in the Lancashire hills.

The Hoghton Tower cyclocross race hosted by Red Rose Olympic CC was the first race of the season, so it was time for our riders to put into practice the skills they'd been working on in the pre-season coaching sessions.

The course devised by Jack, was challenging with plenty of climbing, off-cambers, fast descents and of course the steps when leaving the barn! 

Red Rose Olympic Cycling Club will be delivering the first round of this year’s North West Cyclo-Cross season at Hoghton Tower, Preston, for a 3rd year running.

For daily updates please ‘like’ the Red Rose Olympic Facebook page

The continental indoor barn section will be there again doubling up as sign on with the course going through the barn following a short cobbled climb. We have had to change the course this year ...

Fresh from the Rio 2016 Olympics, gold medal winner Steven Burke paid a surprise visit to the North West Youth League race at the Steven Burke Sports Hub in Nelson, despite the rainy conditions.

Steven was on hand to start the A/B girls race then said a few words, posed for photos and chatted with riders and spectators.

 

Saturday saw the last of this summer's coaching sessions on the track at UCLAN Sports Arena. Feedback from participants was positive with almost everyone having a different favourite activity.

Red Rose Olympic's summer of cycling continues with an off-road focus next week. We'll be meeting at 9am at the sports arena.

We will be focusing on mountain biking and then cyclocross skills ready for the start of the cyclocross season.

Thursday 28th July saw the last of the Lewis Balyckyi Glasdon Crit Series at UCLAN Sports Arena.

Tom was there representing Red Rose Olympic and just managed to take 4th place by a very slim margin.

After taking part in 17 out of a total of 18 races Tom came 2nd overall based on the best 10 results - well done Tom!

This morning we had a great turn out, we welcomed some new riders and it was good to some guys making it down for the first time this year. Happy birthday Jessie!

So we were working on sprinting out of lanes, cat and mouse (the cats behind!) and moved on to sprint trains and lead outs - hard work but looked great fun for the riders.