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@Timmy2wheels
Do you understand aperture and depth-of-field, shutter speed, ISO and how they work together?
If not, read some basic stuff pon the Interwebz., e.g. http://jfletcherphoto.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/the-exposure-tiangle-in-beginner-speak-the-end-of-auto-mode/
Built-in flash nearly always looks rubbish so I would avoid that. A few very simplistic tips: if you want to capture some motion blur in the riders, a shutter speed of anything between 1/15 and 1/60 should be about right, depending on how fast they're moving, of course. If you want to capture a lot of people sharp front-to-back in the frame then you will need a smaller aperture, say f/10 - f/16, but again, this will depend how deep the group you want to capture is, and how many you want in focus. If you want to single out riders and throw the rest out of focus, you will need bigger apertures, e.g. f/2.8 - f/4. How much light there is available will determine how much you have to ramp up the ISO (sensor sensitivity) to achieve your desired aperture and shutter speed combo. The payoff with high ISO is noise/grain on the images.
If you're not very experienced with manual focus you may find autofocus easier; you can elect to choose the focus point yourself, or let it decide (usually goes for closest object or face/contrast recognition).
Hope that helps a little.