I Can’t Think Of A Title This Week

Saturday saw me at the UK National Cycling Championships held in the magnificent Manchester Velodrome, part of SPORTCITY and home of British Cycling since 1994. Now you might be thinking at this point “what’s this got to do with this weeks theme” Previously the site was in use as industrial land and Bradford colliery.

It seemed the perfect excuse to have a go with the Olympus 75-300mm lens, especially as you can walk around the spectator area of the velodrome and find a good spot. During the time trials the cyclists get a push to start them off then they have a couple of laps to get up to speed before the timing starts. They need a good time on record before progressing to the later race stages.

They get a fair speed up so you have to lock the focus and make sure you track them as they go around the track, excuse the pun. Fortunately the Olympus E-M1 camera has a Continuous Auto Focus with Tracking function. It’s not so good for bird photography, because it sometimes strays away from the intended target, but with larger objects like cycles and planes I get a good hit rate. Is that another pun…?

I like this type of race. Team Pursuit. At the opposite side of the track is another team. They both set of at the same time and in simplest terms the object is for one team to catch the other. However it’s more likely to go to timing and it’s the third persons time that counts at the end of the required amount of laps. That is of course unless one team catches the other, then it’s all over. does matter how many laps have been run. That red contraption is the timing equipment.

 

Round and Round they go. Faster and Faster. This will never catch on…..

Photography as a fad is well-nigh on its last legs, thanks principally to the bicycle craze. – Alfred Stieglitz – in 1897.

Now a big race, 60 laps, riders gain points at set stages in the race for being in the leading positions. Of course there’s a lot of jockeying for position and riders at the front are constantly looking behind them to see who is challenging.

Sometimes it all goes wrong and a rider, or even a few will crash out. Ouch! That hurts…..

There’s even tandem races. In this instance it was Paracycling. The rider behind is visually impaired, The rider at the front is not.

Jack and Jill have just climbed Le Alp de Huez on a tandem: “Phew that was a tough climb” said Jack “Thought we were never going to make it“. “Yeah good job I kept the brakes on” said Jill “or we’d have slid all the way back down!”

Seriously though both the riders do a good job and work together as a team

 

Well that’s it for this weeks challenge. I hope you enjoyed the photographs.

Here’s what other bloggers are saying about this weeks challenge;

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