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9/26/2017 0 Comments the journeyTack a step back through time and re-live all the good memories of training and preparation that lead us right through to the end of the 2017 Pedal Prix race. Check out the video below and feel free to share it with your friends.
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One of the most challenging aspects of pedal prix racing is making it out of the night alive. Check out the video below and watch the night racing action continue through until the race finish at 12 noon the following day. 9/26/2017 0 Comments behind the scenes-Racing is only one part of the huge experience that makes up Pedal Prix. There is camp set up, food preparation, warm ups, warm downs, setting up sleeping arrangements and mechanics work stations and the change over pits. Check out the video below to re-live some of our funniest moments, as we modelled our new and refurbished vehicles and grooved the night away. 9/24/2017 0 Comments track side action 24SEP17After a lengthy delay to the start, due to a severe wind warning that bought gusts of around 65km/h, the 'Grand Prix' of Human Powered Vehicle Racing was cleared to start at 4pm. Students quickly assembled at 'crash corner' to witness the thrills and spills when 206 cars negotiate a tight S bend in the track. Our Navigator College teams quickly settled into their race routines and emerged from their stint on the track buzzing from the challenge of managing multiple evasive maneouvres. Some were not as successful anticipating all of the changes in speed, gears and quick thinking needed to remain incident free, when averaging between 25 and 40 kilometres per hour. Our cars quickly started to show the evidence of 'contact' on the track. The speed of cars like 'Relentless', 'Toothless' and 'Donald Trump Trikes' was spellbinding. These vehicles consistently averaged around the 65 kilometres per hour mark. Professional riders certainly provided an incredible display of precision driving and over the course of the race their cars showed the paint scrapes and bruises consistent with multiple roll overs and continuous riding on the 'edge'. Night time was a huge challenge for our teams. This event is a 24 hour race and at all times a rider needs to be clocking laps. Riders were allocated into teams, to then be responsible for covering a 1.5 - 2 hour block of time. Riders increased their time on the track with the 6-7's averaging 5 continuous 1.7km loops before handing over to another team mate. Students fell asleep sitting up, shared where a crazy dream was interrupted and made a monumentous effort to keep their team mates spirits focused on the job of keeping the car rolling. It was cold, dark and challenging riding, with just the red tail light of the car in front leading the way. Serious racing teams did not relent through the night in their determination to stay on top of the lap and speed counters. There was a relatively serious crash that saw a driver from an unknown team receive specialist medical attention from the on sight fire and ambulance teams. After witnessing the crash and extensive response of race marshals and medical teams, our riders were relieved to discover that the rider had suffered a dislocated shoulder in the roll over rather than something more serious. Once the tack was cleared the race was quickly resumed. The chill of pre-dawn arrived and it wasn't long before the warmth of the sun thawed cold bodies. Coffee, hot milo and herbal teas warmed tummies and the smell of bacon and eggs signaled that there was still plenty of work to be done. As the morning progressed, the intensity of racing rose to a whole new level as teams processed their race data and projected final placings. The top teams stopped at nothing to achieve their team goals; whether it be to set a new lap record, extend their category lead or cement their position on the top of the ladder. Cooper Bishop and Aaron Thomas took their position as our final team riders and before we knew it 12 noon had arrived, the chequered flag was waved and victorious teams commenced their celebration lap. This will not be the last time Navigator College fields a Middle School Team in the HPV International Race Series. Students thoroughly enjoyed the experience and thrived. 9/23/2017 0 Comments the track is LIVE! 23SEP17So today we all woke up between 6 and 7am and were all pumped up and ready for the race! We all went down at 9am to have a look at the shootout which is a race allocated to the fastest 18 cars. This was our first taste of 'crash corner'. Then we got some disappointing news at 12, finding out that the race was gonna be postponed till 4pm sue to extreme wind gusts up to 65 km per hour! Now everyone is on the track and pumped! Whilst the 8/9 team worked on the set up of our pits and managed the cars through scrutineering, the 6/7 team together with 5 parents and teachers headed off to Monarto Zoo for the afternoon. We were joined by our guide Mr Richard Arberry who accompanied us on our bus and introduced us to the many species of animals that call Monarto home. Following our drive through the park were also spent time at the Chimpanzee, Meerkat and Yellow Footed Rock Wallaby exhibits. Among the animals we viewed was the Mesopotamian Fallow Deer. This animal is critically endangered in their native habitat and it has been recorded that the total population in reserves and free range in 2001 was only 290 animals. We also visited the Giraffes and met the famous giraffe - Kinki, named because her neck is kinked and out of place. When Kinki’s mother gave birth to her, she was sick and unconscious and had to give birth sitting down (Giraffes are supposed to give birth standing up). The zoo first thought that she wouldn’t survive, but miraculously she did and just recently gave birth to her own beautiful baby girl giraffe. Another highlight of the visit to Monarto was visiting the lions. We discovered that the felines are actually in control of hunting and need to hunt for the males because of their manes. We had quite a chuckle at the saying, ‘Big manes, no brains’. Because a lion’s manes are so large, they can easily be spotted when hunting prey. The highlight of the day had to be the chimps because they have a toddler ‘Enzi’ who will be two years old on the 19th of October. Enzi has an older sister called Zuri who is five years old. Like human brothers and sisters they love to play around and today they were trying to steal a blanket from each other. Arriving back to the track after our visit, we went for a walk around the track to get used to it and we saw many amazing, cool, crazy pedal prix cars along the way. The timed practice runs then commenced and there were a couple of crashes (mostly around crash corner). The fastest time for our Navigator College group was 2mins 50secs made by a Year 9 - Aaron Thomas. 9/22/2017 0 Comments Track Side 22SEP17The set up here at Stuart's Reserve in Murray Bridge is huge. Both the 6/7 team and the 8/9 team walked the circuit following the set up of our pits, cooking, relaxing areas and sleeping quarters. It was incredible to see the sophistication of some of the other camp set ups coupled with the entertaining and unique skins which some of the pedal prix cars are sporting. There are cars named 'Betty' and 'Penelope' with 'Fluro is the New Black' a real crowd pleaser. Some of the racing teams involved have serious technology set ups with multiple computer screens recording, processing and projecting lap times, live feeds being monitored and more race statistics that we could dream of being analysed. What a privilege to be part of such a grand event that has been hosted by Murray Bridge for 21 consecutive years. Through the afternoon both vehicles progressed through scrutineering and were deemed race worthy. All of our riders were also able to undertake a practice lap with the fastest lap times being used to determine our grid starting position for the 24 hour event.
9/21/2017 0 Comments On the road 21sep17We had a great farewell in the morning, parents all arrived on time with students pumped and ready to make the trek to Murray Bridge. Stops along the way over included Cowell and Port Augusta where we took a quick break to stretch our legs, kick the footy and have a bite to eat. We were super excited on the way over to discover that we have the technical know how to bring you live feeds on the Navigator College Facebook site. We did a trial run of our bus sing along which featured “Big Red Car” and “The Wheels on the Bus” - so stay tuned on facebook, as we are keen to provide more footage through the weekend. We were able to use our time on the bus to finalize our racing teams and schedule the day and evening track racing allocations. Our accommodation for night one is the Adelaide Shores Bunkhouse and we were able to quickly unload, stretch our legs on the jumping pillow and settle in before making our way along the beach to the West Beach Surf Club. Everyone was able to pre-order schnitzels and the meals came out straightaway and were really delicious. After dinner at the West Beach Surf Club we met together to discuss our plans for the rest of the night including showers. Students had the opportunity to chat with their parents if they needed to before we had lights out at 9pm. Tonight we needed to make sure that we took advantage of a comfortable bed and quite environment, because the weather is predicted to be quite windy which could make it challenging to sleep on Friday night. The 6/7’s are very excited to go to Monarto Zoo tomorrow and can’t wait to hit the road. Our wake up call is at 6am and we will be on our way by 7am. So we are back in training ready for another term, building our racing skills in preparation for the 24 hour event in Week 9. Our mechanics team have spent many hours improving the handling and safety of our training and racing vehicles and one of the biggest improvements has been the introduction of heavy duty training tyres, as the road surface at Ravendale is very abrasive. It was awesome during today’s training session to have three vehicles available to ride as well as a number of bikes bought by students who have been able to ride to school. This is giving us a great opportunity to be more aware of other riders on the track and perform steering maneuvers to avoid collisions. For the actual race there will be around 170 vehicles involved over a 1.7km track. We have just started roll over drills as well so that we are more familiar with how to stay safe if we find ourselves in this position. The Murray Bridge event is sneaking up on us now, being just 8 weeks away. The question is … Will we be ready? Lots of the logistical organisation for our travel to the event is progressing well with bookings for the bus and Adelaide accommodation stop over now confirmed. Sponsorship opportunities for the cars have now closed and this has enabled us to purchase a new racing vehicle as well as uniforms for the whole team. It has been awesome to see so many members of the local community put their hand up to be involved in sponsoring Navigator’s involvement in the event. We will travel to Adelaide by bus on Thursday 21st of September and then travel on to Murray Bridge on Friday morning. The Year 8/9 team will be involved in setting up our camp at the reserve, whilst the Year 6/7 students will be involved in an educational excursion. We are possibly looking at this being to the Monarto Zoo. On the Friday we will all meet back up again at 4pm which is when the track is open for practice laps until 6pm. This will give us a fantastic opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the layout of the track and consider points where steering and negotiating other pedal prix traffic may be challenging. Racing kicks off at 12pm sharp through for 24 hours until 12pm on Sunday. Throughout the Sunday morning we will be involved in packing down our campsite in preparation for the conclusion of the race and final presentations. Our travel back to Port Lincoln will commence following the finalization of the presentations and we plan to arrive back home around 9.30pm. All of the students who have been participating in training now have to make a final decision about being involved in the Murray Bridge event. Notes have been sent home advising that our final rider numbers for Year 6/7 will be capped at 20 and our final rider numbers for Year 8/9 will be 14 students. Thanks to Mattisse Fuller for putting together the dot points for this blog post. Another awesome video from Stella Cozamanis with a backing track from Simone Morgan! We are blessed to have such an enthusiastic and creative 6/7 media team! 6/7/2017 2 Comments Flash Back to Term 1 TrainingThankyou to Stella Cozamanis for sharing her creative videography and exceptional talents in developing original music soundtracks using the Garage Band App! This video will take you back 9 weeks to our first training location out at Parnkarla Waters at the Port Lincoln Marina. |
AuthorThe creative content of this blog has been developed by students and staff of Navigator College who are involved in the 2017 Pedal Prix team. New contributors and guest contributors are welcome to submit possible news worthy items to our media team for consideration. Email [email protected] with your photos, videos or story ideas. Archives
September 2017
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