Friday Night?...

[toolonglegs]

How'd Friday night go Alex?...good turn out equal the F1 of new legs!?!.

[Alex Simmons/RST]

How'd Friday night go Alex?...good turn out equal the F1 of new legs!?!.

It was a great night and everyone had fun. Thre was some really good racing.

I was humbled by the generosity of everyone involved, with their time, support, encouragement, auction items donations and money. We raised something (net of venue costs) between $5000-6000. I don't have final tally yet as there are some funds still coming in.

In my 500m standing TT I managed 41.9 secs, which was 4.6 secs quicker than 3.5 months ago.

Mike was there and scored himself a case of wine. I bet he has a headache now

Anyway, I wrote some more here:
http://alex-cycle.blogspot.com/2008/11/thank-you.html

Hope to have some pics soon too.

[mikesbytes]

Yeh, Alex was on rails in his TT. All eyes were glued on him.

Congratulations on breaking your previous time !!!!!!

BTW, with the Auction afterwards, how did the fund raising go? How close are you to buying the racing leg?

[Alex Simmons/RST]

I actually don't know how much it'll all cost but it won't be cheap. I'm estimating ~ $5-6k for the leg but I could be out by a lot. As Crafty said, even the leg liners I use are $1k a pop and I really should be rotating about half a dozen of them rather than wear the same one every day. My first liner lasted 3 months.

As to when I'll get it made, also not exactly sure. I want it yesterday of course but my prosthetics guy wants to wait until my hip has regained enough strength to make sure I don't need much lateral offset in the prosthetic (meaning the line of force application can be directly down the leg to the pedal and removes any lateral shear between stump and socket).

Making it too early might mean its useful life is shortened somewhat. It'll be some time in 2009, I would hope in 1st quarter but maybe by July. Not really sure.

Trick with these things is I will continue to adapt and at some stage sockets need to be replaced as a result.

[toolonglegs]

Good stuff!.
Did you race Mike?.
Thats a pretty good 500 Alex.

[mikesbytes]

Did you race Mike?

No

Needed a team of 3
- male sprinter
- male endurance
- female

We only have one female trackie and a new one at that, tho that will change soon.

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Did you race Mike?

No

Needed a team of 3
- male sprinter
- male endurance
- female

We only have one female trackie and a new one at that, tho that will change soon.

That's a shame. We allowed cross club teams to form. e.g. Warratah borrowed a Bicisport women for their team. It was no big deal, we just wanted some good fun racing. Anyway, it was the support of being there that was the main thing

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Good stuff!.
Did you race Mike?.
Thats a pretty good 500 Alex.

It's OK. I call sub 37 pretty good.

But, and it's a really big BUT, that's ~ 2 seconds/lap or so off Paralympic team sprint standard.

I know that simple weight loss to my previous race fit levels will give me close to half of that 2 seconds on lap 1. The balance of lap 1 improvment would need to come from power improvement (~200-250W peak power improvement) and some from equipment and set up (light aero wheels and bars).

Lap 2 (and god forbid lap 3) improvement would need to come from improved anaerobic power and aerodynamics. Both are doable although I should crunch the numbers.

On Friday I raced on standard mass start set up (I wanted to see the real improvement from last time).

So, at a stretch, I would say it is possible for me to be competitive at that level in that event if I chose to focus on it. I certainly have the skills/nouse for it.

Anyway, the times for paracycling individual events in my category (LC2) are uber competitive. Hands up all those that can do a sub-4:50 4km individual pursuit? Or a sub-1:10 kilo? And that's not medal standard BTW.

[mikesbytes]

Did you race Mike?

No

Needed a team of 3
- male sprinter
- male endurance
- female

We only have one female trackie and a new one at that, tho that will change soon.

That's a shame. We allowed cross club teams to form. e.g. Warratah borrowed a Bicisport women for their team. It was no big deal, we just wanted some good fun racing. Anyway, it was the support of being there that was the main thing

Yeh I noticed that Donna was racing for Waratah's, she use to be in the Waratah's before switching to Bicisport.

There are 3 more DHBC females who are candidates to start racing in next years Winter series, so next year maybe.