Sam Webster: Hard yards done before 'cherry' of entering athletes' village

Cyclist Sam Webster. Photo / Christine Cornege

Opinion

The first of an athletes’ perspective series ahead of the start of the Commonwealth Games.

My Commonwealth Games preparation started on March 26, fresh off my rest period at the end of the 2013-14 season.

This was my first opportunity to have a structured training phase at the new AvantiDrome in Cambridge. It felt so good being able to train in the rainbow stripes as world champion, after winning the team sprint at the world champs in Colombia just a few weeks earlier.

While in Cambridge, my primary focus was "base training". This involved road riding to build endurance, strength work in the gym and heavy loaded, big-gear-ratio efforts on the track.

As stated in the name, the phase forms a great base to build further specific strength, power and speed work from. This was an 11-week training phase and a key time to really put in the hard yards and get the big training loads done.

At the beginning of last month, I headed overseas to begin specific preparation for the Games.

My destination? Kutztown in the Amish belt of Pennsylvania, with a strong Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch (Pennsylvania Dutch) influence.

It's not uncommon to see a horse-drawn cart while out on a training ride.

The big attraction to this area is the concrete 333m track in Trexlertown, which hosts a series of racing every Friday evening for the month of June.

These races help us hone our racing tactics but also gain us valuable UCI eligibility points, needed to qualify for the 2014-15 World Cup season, which is also the beginning of the Rio Olympics qualification cycle.

From Pennsylvania, we'll head to Bordeaux, France for our fine-tuning work on the wooden indoor 250m track that hosted the 2006 world championships.

Bordeaux is home away from home for the New Zealand track team; it was a base for the 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games and 2012 London Olympic Games final holding camps.

This is where the metaphorical cake of success is iced; with high-speed training, polishing of the technical aspects of racing and race simulations happen.

However, the cherry on top for me and all the athletes is saved until entering the Commonwealth Games village in Glasgow where resting up and final mental preparation leading into racing begin.

Sam Webster is a track sprint cyclist He hopes to race in the team sprint, sprint and keirin, subject to selection.

Angie Smitt is part of the Sky Next team. Sky Next supports talented Kiwis athletes.