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Plus, I was included in my cycling club's team pursuit team for the National track championships, which was very exciting to finally get the opportunity to ride in this event I had been threatening to ride the last couple of years. The team pursuit means you have to ride in team formation as close as possible to the other four riders in the team and alternate with changes, moving up the steep bankings on the track and then diving down the banking to rejoin the end of your teams line.

This sounds relatively straight forward and watching this event on television, when done well, it really does look easy! When your heart rate is at maximum and you are trying to get millimetres away for the wheel in front of you and execute perfect changes, this becomes very challenging. After a good final practice session, my team were ready to try and finish in in the top five teams at the National Track Champs, which was exactly what we did with a surprise second place in qualifying.

This meant we raced for the gold medal where we were successful in becoming National Champions! The team pursuit means riding at varied powers in the line, the front position requiring the biggest power output, around 500-600watts, then in 4th - 2nd position in the line varying from 200 watts to 300 watts, with your heart rate never really dropping that much throughout the whole ride.

It's a real thrill to fly round the track at speed within millimetres of your team mates and as a "sprinter" the novelty of getting more value for money out of an entry fee as the event lasted four and a half minutes rather than the usual 62 seconds of a kilo! It was also good to have another jersey in the collection and after winning tandem sprint championships earlier in the year, as well as the keirin and team sprint a number of years ago, the team pursuit jersey became my 5th different event for National jerseys.

 
In more familiar territory I was also on the track for the kilometre time trial with my World Champion and World Record Holder partner from 2009 Worlds, Neil Fachie. With less preparation than we had prior to the Worlds and without the usual race equipment, we still clocked a 63.5 which was a decent time and we won the silver medal on the disability factor system that was being used. Going slower than the Worlds also forced us to analyse the power data and lap splits more closely so we could see where the holes were in our performance and that gave us some interesting information to take back to training.
 
The tandem pursuit event was the day before the team pursuit event so I knew I'd need all my powers of recovery overnight between the events. Again riding with Neil, it was to be a first for the pair of us and whilst I have a background in road racing as a Junior and Under 23, Neil's background is 100m and 200m in Athletics so it would have felt like a marathon to him. With our schedule carefully planned to allow us to tire in the second half, we managed a consistent pace and although it wasn't as fast as we'd hoped, I was pleased with the way I paced myself and was looking forward to racing it a few weeks later in Germany.
 
After a short trip to Delhi to watch my wife Sarah ride at the Commonwealth Games, we celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary and then I flew straight to Germany to meet with the team and ride the Buttgen Grand Prix. It was time for a switch round with the tandem pairings and I joined up with my Beijing stoker, Anthony Kappes.

We were to ride the sprint and tandem pursuit to see if we might be the stronger pairing to ride all three track events to try and score maximum points for London. In the same way the Olympic team have a tough job with qualification points, so do the paracycling team and whilst the Olympic squad may be able to score enough points early to prevent too much long haul travel next winter, the paracycling squad, especially the men have a tough job trying to qualify enough places for all the talent we have in the programme.
 
The sprint was the first event and Anthony and I last rode together on this event when we won in Beijing, so the old habits soon clicked back into place and in freezing conditions, we qualified in 2nd place behind our GB team mates. As we are seeing across all track cycling events, the strength of the rest of the world is really on the up and it's no different in para-cycling. We had tough rides against the French and Spanish but made it through to the final and were over powered by our team mates who had more gas on the day.
 
Our tandem pursuit entry caused a bit of a stir and given we are known for our sprinting, there were several other nations who saw our bike in the gate and thought it was a joke! On seeing us qualify in 3rd place, less than a second from qualifying for the final, saw our opposition come over and apologise! The time between the qualification to the final is a strange time. It seems to take forever, but with our sprint muscles we knew we'd need more time than the road riders for our bigger muscle mass to recover.

Racing the Irish in the final was a tough race and whilst they went quicker than the qualification, we hung onto our morning schedule and managed to win the bronze. It was certainly an acceptable start to the new challenge and now the winter poses the opportunity to train with another event in mind as well as my usual sprint options.

With the racing on hold for several months now before World Championships next March, there was time for me to fly on holiday with Sarah, who needed a much needed rest after her long season on the road.

We flew to Grenada for 12 days and then back through Barbados for the final 3 days before the flight home to tackle the new season of training. Spending time on the beach and pondering the opportunities that lie ahead, I am excited to see what will happen in the new event and keen to defend my titles in the Kilometre and Sprint.

There's a lot of hard work ahead and some exciting social events so I'll check back in soon with news of our winter activities.

Cheers, Barn.

Related:

Link is to the latest episode of "That Paralympic Show" where Barney took to the tandem with T.V presenter Jon Snow as a stoker!  http://www.channel4.com/programmes/that-paralympic-show/4od#3123812