Team Keyne Profile

Team Keyne

Wednesday Youth Challenge

Team-Keyne Trek continues to provide a gateway into competitive cycling through its ‘Youth Challenge’, which runs on Wednesday evenings at Milton Keynes Bowl, from April to August each year, and has been led and coordinated in 2007 by Steve Hales.

The Youth Challenge provides a number of different activities for U6s through to U16s, that are both fun and seek to improve the cycling skills of those involved. These include skills tests, mountain bike, road and time trial courses, all of which take place in the traffic free arena of the MK Bowl. There is a £1.50 entrance fee per session, and we finish the series with prizes and awards for the youngsters that have taken part.

Youth Development

From these events a number of the riders have moved through to become part of the Team-Keyne Trek Youth Development squad.

Here we have riders competing to a national and international level at: road, track, mountain bike, BMX, time trial, triathlon, duathlon and cyclo-cross. In all events riders sign on as Team-Keyne Trek.

Saturday Club

Once the season has finished we have run a Saturday club from September to January from 2.00-3.30pm, generally based at the Milton Keynes Bowl. It is currently led by Richard Harrison.

We have used the Go Ride activities to improve bike handling skills, and in addition we have organised events such as a three race cyclo-cross series.

We are keen to involve parents as much as possible, one way has been by organising family rides. These have included mountain bike rides in Aspley Woods and using the Sustrans route 51 to cycle from Milton Keynes to Winslow (tea and cake at Jenny Wrens then return to MK!).

We have also made use of the traffic free redways in Milton Keynes to complete charity rides, which again have been able to involve all of the family.

Once a year we try to get away for a weekend as a group and have been to the Fircroft Hotel, Bournemouth, to ride the Swanage Downs and New Forest, and to Hartington Hall Youth Hostel, in the Peak District.

Coaching and schools liaison

We believe that initiatives taking place in Go Ride and through Team MK offer the opportunity for some exciting developments in the near future. Graham MacNamee has been working closely with us, since September, to improve our links with local schools.

Team-Keyne Trek is also talking with TeamMK club coach, Mark Booth re. coaching swimming and running. He is currently providing this coaching at the Stantonbury campus.

As a club we are also looking to increase the number of level 2 coaches that we have, all of which makes us look forward to some exciting times ahead. In particular we were grateful to Roy Chamberlain and Richard Harrison for running a number of Saturday coaching sessions which added an extra dimension to our Saturday winter training sessions.

Unfortunately a number of riders have chosen to ride for other clubs next season, which has left us few rides in the 12-16 age categories. However there are a number of young riders, with enthusiastic parents, which leaves us hopeful for the future.