Round 6 is far from being a dead rubber, there's three riders tied for the T1 frame on points (Jeremy Mclay, Eddie Wilson and Dino Apolito, all on 27 points).  At the moment, big J wins by virtue of his fastest F200 time, but it's close.  The F200 countback will be from the final round if required.

We're waiting (and nagging!) on Trek Australia  for how they want the presentation to run, they've given us some great prizes and it's only fair that we give them the format for the presentation that they want, but they'll have to get back to me, I can't guess it.  James?  Mark? Are you reading this?  What do you want?!

We're having a free BBQ afterwards, which all competitors, volunteers and spectators are invited to, it's our way of thanking everyone who's been involved in the series.  This is also extended to include all the people who've helped out at any of the Blackburn summer track season, they've all done a tower of work and I think deserve at least a few bangers and some bread for their efforts.  This is courtesy of aboc Cycle Coaching.

Of course, in order for the final round to be a success we need more than just Jeremy, Eddie and Dino to race, we want a full card of riders and good weather.  If you're thinking about it, please do come along and race with us.  It's the last lot until next summer, and we'll do our best to make sure you have a fun and rewarding day's match sprinting.  If you are coming, please also help spread the word.  If we can get 20 riders, it'll make for a fantastic day's racing and will give us some real momentum to carry into the next summer series.  Help us to help you get the racing you want.  We can't do it without you!

Round one had perfect weather - cool, mostly sunny, light wind (we had a windsock!). The only thing missing was riders. We had 9 (and one had to withdraw due to an unrelated injury). In some ways this was probably a good thing. We have a few parts of our race procedures that need fine tuning.

Firstly, some positive feedback from one of the riders who raced on the day :

Carl,

Well done on today. It worked exceptionally well. The riders will come....

Interesting to see Nicko there he just loves it!

Ten reasons to race SSS:

1. Dedicated sprint racing. All day. No handicaps or points races or motor-paces....

2. After your flying 200 time is recorded, you get a printed draw which states your start time and who you are riding against. No being late to the line. Compact racing. Finishing on time. Where else do you get sprint races like that?!!!

3. Red hot racing. Everyone across all grades earns their wins. 3 races minimum...in a real race environment, complete with 'fire me up' music!

4. A chance to learn sprint tactics. Real tactics. On a forgiving track which isn't 43 degrees steep.... great for newbies or experienced alike

5. Coaches and feedback available to help you improve your race style.

6.A chance to get race ready for the Metros, States and your club championships.

7.A chance to see how your opposition in the above will ride, learn their strengths and weaknesses....hone your skills.

8. Racing lots of different riders, all with different styles and tactics. makes you a smarter rider......

9.A excellent race organisation, where everything pretty much just works. thanks to aboc and BBN...

10. The post race BBQ, where you get to sit around with other sprinters and tell them how good you are!

Possible changes:

Average each grades flying 200 times. winner of overall aggregate is the rider who betters the grade average by highest %. This will hurt A grade riders as their times will be closer. Rewards lower grades.

5 min slots instead of 10, depending on number of riders.

Simplify the logistics.

More as I think of them, but honestly you don't need to change anything yet.

Well done.

So at least one of the riders was very happy, and some of the suggestions made were our default anyway - because we only had 8 riders racing we made the races 3 laps instead of 2 and allowed 10 minutes per race instead of 5.  When we have more riders, we'll need to tighten that up to the original plan, but if we have low numbers, we'll keep the quality of the racing high.  I think that the standard of racing was good.  We had two quite clearly deliniated grades using F200 times and as a result I don't think anyone had a walkover race, there was a couple of very close finishes and certainly in the B grade racing the flying 200 times didn't reflect the final outcome, which meant that the tactical side of the racing played an important part.

We had an issue with doing the draw (my mistake!) and we had to re calculate it and reprint the draw for everyone, and we need to find a way to do the draw more quickly.  As we only had 8, in 2 grades, it was easy, but if we have the full 30 riders and 3 grades that we want to be able to cater for we need to make our draw work faster.   Dino and I will spend some time on it in the next couple of weeks.

Other things we need to remember :

• Have a coin at the start line. Can you believe that none of us had a coin?!  I got to be the tosser for the day!
  
• On the draw, have numbers as well as names.  While we got away with it as at this round there was only two people we didn't know by name already, we'll need this information at the start line and for the commentator.
• Have a marshal roving around making sure (or at least informing) riders of when they need to be ready.  We didn't need it for this round (low numbers so easy logistics) but again, if we get more riders, we'll really need to get riders ready and going on time.
• Make sure we have two people at the scoring desk.  The original plan was to have one, but it seemed to work a lot better with two.  Sanity checks and general efficiency.  Our scoring system worked perfectly, which was great.  Very easy to see who won what and how many points they had etc.
  

I'd personally like to thank all the volunteers that helped out, Bev and Nathan doing the scoring and entries and general paperwork (and Bev making the salad rolls for everyone's lunch, they were great!), Pat, Tabatha and Nicko for being our commisaires and race jury (not required!  No crashes, no protests, good clean racing), Merv and Richard for being our start line holders, timers and finish line judges, Dino for the software and much of the paperwork and Tyler for holding the fort in the cafe for the day and generally helping out, and Lucie for taking the photos.  It's important to thank Trek for their support too, we had the Trek tent at the start line giving us some shade, and of course the daily aggregate prize (Bontrager Race-Lite tyres) which were well received.