I left home at 5 o’clock in the morning to get to Newport Velodrome at quarter past eight, three quarters of an hour before it was to start. Then I met up with Cameron Howard and Alan Trolove and later on with Archie Wishart, Joe Fry and Esther Coleman – all riders from the Welwyn Track League.

We signed on at the entrance of the building with Fran Millar (David Millar’s sister). We were issued with our racing numbers then went down to the track centre to set ourselves up for the day.

At 9:30 we had to go to the function room where we would have a briefing of what the day would have in store for us, and then we watched a brilliant video of Craig Maclean sprinting at the Olympics and the World Championships.

After the film finished we were introduced to everybody who was coaching and helping us out for the day, they were; Guy Elliot (The big boss of DHL), Tim Buckle (British Cycling), Fran Millar (Face Partnership and David Millar’s sister), and although I didn’t know he was in the room - Craig Maclean, who we’d just been watching!, and finally Team GB’s manager for the Olympics. As soon as that was done we were divided into two groups with Joe and Esther being in the morning group for the track session and all the others the afternoon session on the track.

When we were in the classroom we were separated in to four different smaller groups and between us we had to try and describe the Flying 200m Time Trial, then Craig judged us all and gave us marks out of 5 and my group got 3. After that Craig described to us his view of the Flying 200m Time Trial and all the groups gave him 1 out of 5 even though his description was much better than any that the groups gave.

After this we went down into the track centre and did some work on the rollers and they taught us how the Olympic team would do their warm up and they said that they’ll put that on the Sprint School website so people who have been to the sprint school can use this warm up sequence. This lasted for about 20 minutes.

After that we went into one of the 5-a-side football pitches where Tim and Craig (in his GB skin suit) would walk us through the Flying 200m TT technique. For this we had to race each other on foot and in one particular race someone was beating Craig and he decided to launch himself towards the finish line and he landed on his stomach and winded himself.

We then had a game of Sumo which is really just a giant version of the Square Game but in an oval. In this Craig was track standing right in the centre of the oval, with the cones around us being pushed in to reduce the space for everyone to ride in. Cameron tried to knock Craig off by head butting him, but Cameron just came off.

Then it was Lunch where they gave us a selection of food such as; Pizza, fruit, Pasta, Cheese, flavoured water, crisps etc… This lasted for about an hour, and then it was our turn to go on the track for the afternoon.

We went on the track at about 1 o’clock. Firstly, we had a briefing about how we were going to do the warm up, in which we were going to start in a single file line working ourselves up to being in rows three abreast. When got round to doing this we managed about 9 laps then there was a crash in front of me and I tried to avoid it but in the end I ended up riding over somebody’s wheel and ending up buckling my front wheel.

Then we waited our turn to do the Flying 200m TT which I did in 16.08 seconds. The way we did this was by starting off on the inside fence at the back of the track, then rode up on to the blue line and on the home straight we moved up to the top. Then we started to sprint from the exit bend of the back straight dropping down on to the black line at the very bottom of the track and getting to full speed as I crossed the timing line as I went back in to the back straight. From there it was flat out for 200m to the finish line. We did this twice.

After that we did a snake up and down all along the track where Jess Varnish led us around at crawling pace along the straights but she picked up speed through the bends. We had to ride dead slow under full control from the very bottom to the very top of the track. She could even come to a rest  on the barrier at the top still clipped in and on her drops!. Very skillful!

Finally we did a warm down this was when we were all allowed to go around the track on our own without being in a group without having a chance of having a crash in front of you unlike the warm up.

At the end of the day we had to give our numbers back so we could get our goody bags, the goodies were; an umbrella, a baseball cap, a fleece, a track cycling top, a holdall and a rucksack.

I really enjoyed the whole day and we all learnt something new from the day and I really do recommend it to anybody else who has been invited to take up the offer and have a go.