Page 139 - Mind, Body and Spirit 2015-16

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AMS, Landgraaf - balance work
and effort. The only down side is that much of my work with the athletes is done outside of the normal work hours and with all young soldiers, they ask questions at the end of the day or at weekends. Most of the time my role as a coach is done
WO2 Whiting, centre with future AMS stars
via email and text, which only makes the few precious days each year I get hands on with the athletes even more valuable. Where I must ensure the correct level of delivery and content to match each athlete to prepare them for the coming season.
AMS, showing how to ski
Overall the last two seasons have been challenging but rewarding, the lessons learnt from the AMS ski team has been fundamental in developing the S&C element of the new Common Military Syllabus for Phase 2 PT delivery.
UK GRAVITY ENDURO (MOUNTAIN BIKING)
SSgt (SSI) S Mayled RAPTC
The UK Gravity Enduro series is Britain’s main national series it’s also serves as the Inter Services series. The series runs over the months of Apr to Sep. There are ve events at different locations around the country. Each Gravity Enduro event is held over a weekend with open practice and seeding taking place on Sat afternoon and the main enduro event taking place on Sun. Seeding takes place on one of the stages which will be used in the main race, usually stage ve. The purpose of this is to put all riders in order for the race to avoid catching the rider in front where possible, your seeding time also goes into overall time. On Sundays “race day” the slowest seeded rider will start rst with the fastest rider being last to leave the start of each stage. There are ve stages with ve transitions to each stage. Transitions are timed but not accumulated towards your end time; only the downhill stages accumulate to the rider’s overall timing.
The season took me to many different locations around the UK each bringing their own type of terrain and character. Round One, Triscombe South West England steep tight technical terrain with slightly easier transitions. Round two, Grizedale Lake District produced long stages with punishing sprints similar to rounds three, Hamsterly England and a very wet stage four, Dy in North
Wales. Then nally a brutal round ve at Ae Forrest Scotland, which was steep, rooty, loamy and slightly terrifying.
Overall it was a good race season, the team procured several sponsors for 2016 such as Ison Distribution, Bird Cycle works and O’Neill clothing. The army team beat the other three Services by quite a big margin; we had three members of the army in the top three places and managed the top quarter in the National series.
Although the sport and team are still adolescents it’s heading in the right direction and growing rapidly in demand. We hope to build on previous success in years to come, and endeavour to one day break in to the European Enduro series.
I would personally like to thank the CO JSMTC, Lt Col A Wylie for all the support in providing me the opportunity to race. Capt (MAA) G Logan for assisting me in logistics, movement and time to attend training meets. In addition I would also like to thank the Army Cycling Union (ACU) and the RAPTC for aiding in race fees. If you’re a keen mountain biker and interested in Gravity Enduro please get in touch with ACU or SSgt (SSI) Mayled RAPTC at JSMTW (Bal).
Full size render
SSgt (SSI) S Mayled RAPTC