Herne Hill Saturday Training

Hi everyone. First post, long time reader. Just some feedback from the training accreditation session I did yesterday (Sunday 2 March) at HH. First of all, this is not an induction session - it's pretty serious. Not a lot of smiling and people were nervous, even people who had been racing for ages. You pin a number on your back but you'll have failed by then if you were late. I'd been doing Monday race training on the old stamps system, but hadn't completed my 3 racing stamps (not that that mattered, everyone is having to redo this new system). There were four exercises, two coaches, with a short water break between each - not really necessary as I didn't find the pace/intensity a problem. First is through and off, then rotating pairs off the blue line, some half lap changes, and groups of four coming off the front on a whistle. Everyone in my group (12 of us) was comfortable with the drills and felt safe. However, if anyone failed it will have been on looking behind at all times before moving - treat this like a driving test and do loads of obvious looking around before moving off a line, or back into the line and you will be OK. Remember they start marking you even when you cross the track with your bike. I passed - but it was nerve wracking - they take individual riders to one side and talk quietly to them. Don't know whether everyone passed. So turn up on time, do lots of looking, and make sure you don't leave gaps in the paceline and you will do OK. It did make me realise that I am not likely to be able to pass the race accreditation without doing much more training. Hope to see a few of you there (and at LVV) in the future, and thanks for all the good advice I've already had on here.