Banjo’s Mark Letters and Olympian Matt Rossiter host an evening of fun, fitness while lifting the lid on cyclor sailing.
As Spring starts to show her face, the Newbury Specialized Store opened its doors exclusively to Newbury Road Club for an evening focussing on Cycle Prep and a chance to hear from Olympic athlete Matt Rossiter, part of the INEOS sailing team. We had a fantastic level of interest in the event with the shop filled to capacity for this Free-to-attend event for NRC members.
The format of the evening was based around a demonstration with question and answer session around bike prep, with the expert presenter (Mark Letters, who needs no introduction and Matt Rossiter who spoke of his time with the Olympic Rowing team, and his current role as part of a team of cyclists training with the INEOS sailing team followed by great discussion and questions from the audience, who were astounded at Matt’s ability to cycle at 330 watts for three hours!
Newbury’s Bike Guru kicks off the event.
The evening started with Mark Letters of Banjos Cycles covering how to prep your bike for summer riding. Over the next hour he addressed loads of questions covering disc pads, chain replacement and lubrication, essential toolkit items for a ride, checking contents of your tool-bag after winter, preventative maintenance, the relative benefits of tube and tubeless tyres and cleaning your bike. We all need a large bottle of MucOff! In fact, Matt chipped in at this point and said the “pink liquid” was used by the INEOS team too, as apparently it is the only product that has R&D behind it.
It was great to have an opportunity to learn from such an experienced bike mechanic and everyone, irrespective of their bike maintenance background and ability, learned something from it.
Olympic Rower turns to Cyclor
The second part of the evening belonged to Matt Rossiter – and we learnt how he moved into rowing from school, and then into the GB team, and then to the Olympics. The amount of training, eating and dedication was fascinating.
Now as part of the INEOS sailing team, Matt’s training includes three hard days of cycling, (6-8 hours a day) physio, gym work and soon, travel to Barcelona where they begin focused sailing training, and start to acclimatise to hotter weather. He described the boat, the team of eight cyclists powering it, and the 330 watts needed for three hours from each rider in order to sail at a winning speed. (Everyone’s jaw dropped at this point!) Loads of questions and answers ensued! Retail therapy rounds off a top evening.
In a little over two hours a lot of ground was covered and it was fascinating. There was also a chance to shop using the Newbury Road Club member discount.
A massive thank you to our hosts Mark Letters and his team at the Specialized Shop who stayed behind until gone 9pm to answer questions and process member purchases, and to Matt for giving up his evening to share his knowledge. And another big shout-out to the superb Newbury Road Club Social Team for organising and for laying on snacks and drinks which were greatly appreciated!
A reminder that NRC Members enjoy 10% discount at Banjos and Newbury Specialized Stores.
Watch out for more member events! NRC Members, keep an eye out for future events which are posted on the Club App Spond.