Report on the Girls in Cycling Summer Camp as organised by the Women's Commission, and written by the participants.
Many thanks to The Womens Commision for being the camps sponsor. Also a huge thanks to those who helped out during the week: Gen, Pauline, Edel, Orla, Roisin, Brigid, Heather, Naoise, Seán, John, and the coaches: Aidan, Kate, Justin, Janos and Mark.
Day 4
Most of the
girls cycled back to Corkaigh park with Rosin and Sean while other girls
attended a women's conference about sport in the National Sports Arena,Dublin
which was held by Swim Ireland.
DAY 3 by Naomi Wade
On the third day of camp, everyone was up bright and early to go to the Velodrome Track on Sundrive road. From 11 to 2 there was track training where the girls played games on the grass, practiced 500m TT standing starts with and without the gate and had the opportunity to go behind the derny for a few laps.
Naoise was in charge of the games on the grass and she had the girls practicing control skills for when racing for example touching wheels. She had the girls cycling around in a circle at first and all they had to do was tip their front wheel off of the back wheel of the person in front of them. After a while she got the girl that were most confident to do up and overs in reverse where the person from the back comes up to the front except they had to cut the person in front of them off by bumping their back wheels off of the front wheel of the person behind them.
Next Naoise went
over our 500m TT starts without the gate so that we could get the idea of the
technique right while the other group practiced their starts with Mark Kiely.
We quickly moved on to doing starts with the gate as soon as we had learned the
basics and had got the hang of the starts while being held by hand. While using
the gate, Mark gave us great advice on what to do and what we can't do while
using the gate for our TT starts.
After we had done
the 500M TT starts, we went on to try derny pacing. We were split into groups
of people who had gone behind the derny before and people that hadn't. In our
groups of 5, we each spent a lap on the front of the group behind the derny.
Some even got to go around by themselves behind the derny afterwards. Then we
went and had lunch. It was chili and rice which was amazing, made by Gen. Later
in the day was the track league in which all the girls raced exceptionally
well. They were split between the C1, C2 and D groups. Each group did 4 races
of various kinds and distances that night. There was the 6 lap progressive
scratch, 9 lap temp, 4 lap handicap, and 9 lap C1/C2. Some of the girls even
picked up points by coming 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in
the races.
DAY 2 by Stephanie Roche
The training camp started on Monday morning with all the girls meeting at Corkagh Park at 10:30 where they were to be coached in bike skills by Aidan Hammond. They practiced cornering, sprinting, stability, and echelons along with other useful skills.
Day 2 started at 10 o
clock when we left for Ballinastoe forest in Co. Wicklow. We first signed forms and
were given bikes which we rented if we didn't have our own.
We were divided
into 2 groups of advanced and less advanced.
The less advanced group went with
Justin and Kate and the more advanced group went with Janos from biking.ie.
We mountain biked for around an hour
and when we came back we ate lunch. Then we left Ballinastoe and returned to Kippure to get ready for evening races in Corkagh Park.
The race was sponsored
by Garda cycling and all the girls raced in the B race. The race was 25 minutes
and 3 laps.
The top 6 were
1-Aoife O Brein
2-Caoimhe May
3-Aoibhe Power
4-Tara Kissane
5-Eva Brennan
6-Lucy O Donnell
U12 shona
The top 3 in the A race
1-Fiona Guihen
2-Kate Earlie
3-Orla Hendron
DAY 1 by Naomi Wade
The training camp started on Monday morning with all the girls meeting at Corkagh Park at 10:30 where they were to be coached in bike skills by Aidan Hammond. They practiced cornering, sprinting, stability, and echelons along with other useful skills. 
After roughly 2 hours of skills work, the girls headed off towards Kippure with Orla, Roisín and Seán as chaperones. It was a lovely day for the cycle and after having showers at Kippure, the girls all headed out to do team building activities.
The girls were split in to two groups for the activities in which they took turns trying out various challenges. One group started off with the 'Balance Beam' while the other group started off with the 'leap of faith' and the climbing wall. After doing these activities the teams went on to do team challenges which required good teamwork to be able to complete the challenge.
First off was the 'spider web' which involved the girls having to get through a web made of elastic but were not allowed to use a gap in the web more than once. This required girls to be lifted through some of the gaps by some of the other girls on their team (a little more intense than the trust fall 😉 ). Next, was an obstacle challenge a bit like 'the floor is lava' and no one was allowed to touch the ground. It involved swinging on ropes and helping each other getting from one tree stump to another which really helped the team to bond even more.
That evening after dinner we got a talk from Brigid, Safeguarding Officer with Cycling Ireland who was joined by Heather Boyle. She gave a talk on Internet safety and how as cyclists, when we post things on the internet and social media about cycling or about our cycling we are representing Cycling Ireland. Also she made us more aware of how many people can actually see our Facebook profiles for example if we have them on a public setting. The girls were all spilt into groups and given cards that had a hypothetical Facebook profile on it. Each group had to spot the things that were wrong with the profile, then, were given a card with an alternative profile and had to decide whether it was a safer or more unsafe profile to have.
Any free time that was had was spent wandering around trying to get phone signal!