Kid's pursuit

On Saturday as part of the On Yer bike event and with a great deal of help from Ross and Kirsty, we organised a kid's pursuit race on a track, painted on the playing field, at Linlithgow Primary School.

The whole day event was organised by Helen Brown at Green flag at home and was set up as a family day to promote cycling and get kid's back on their bikes. There was a bike doctor, a bike powered scalextrix, a bike skills course and recreational rides along the canal. There were also stalls hosted by the Linlithgow Cycle Action Group, Linlithgow Climate Challenge and Revolutionary bikes.

The pursuit event followed the format of the Olympic race where riders start at either end of the track. Our track was about 110m long and for four hours we hand kids queuing up to get a shot. During the day we managed to hold 80 races with 45 kids and 23 adults getting their names on the results board.

We followed the format of Top Gear's 'Star in a reasonably priced car' with each time posted on a league table with the kid's name and age so at the end of the day we can see who was the quickest in each age group.

The kids were incredibly enthusiastic, with most coming back again and again to get a faster time, you could see they got a real kick out of the day. One girl, in particular, turned up with out a bike and blasted around 5 seconds faster than the next child and riding faster than all the adults and only half a second behind triathlete Mark Ewing!

Many thanks to Helen at the Green flag at home, Ross, Kirsty, the West Lothian parks dept and everybody else who helped on the day

See pictures here