Sprinter things: gate starts

In road racing, they have a race called a time trial and they caught the race of truth . Our version of this is also a time trial and we have to do it from a stationary start in a contraption like this, they call a gate. These Gate Starts are like a sequence of steps to launch ourselves from stop to max power in under a second.

This vid is defs for the bike nerds out there. You’ll hear a count down beeper ( 10, 5,4,3,2,1) and the riders melt to launch and get to max speed in under 10 seconds .

The big guns will get up to top speeds of 70ish km/ph from a standing start like this. It’s essentially like a power life in the gym, but you need to launch yourself at the same time. You’ll also notice I slap my quads and glutes- this is to prime the body and nervous system for a maximal effort. Sometimes I go a little overboard and bruise myself from these slaps, but it’s worth it to prime the body.

Gate starts are such an art- last year I trained these starts to an inch of my life and then at the French world championships I made some bad equipment choices that meant my start was 200th of a second slower than my competitors. This tiny margin meant that I was awarded a bronze instead of a silver at the world Championships and it’s now burnt into my brain to always ride what you train.

So enjoy my first gate start of the year, lots of refine and work on!

X Sammie