Originally Posted by FinkFloyd

Chris, I'm in a somewhat similar position to you in that I'm fairly new to track - started about 18 months ago and have now got through the 4-stage accreditation at Manchester to enable me to race/do SQTs. You sound like you're in a pretty good starting place; once the conditioning comes back I'm sure you'll be flying. One of the joys of riding at Manchester for me is that it's a very broad church - at one end of the scale there are some very quick young guys and some of the GB lot (and the Irish track team too) are regulars, whereas at the other end of the spectrum there are lots of oldies who've been doing it forever and have forgotten more than I know. The thing that unites us is that we all love our weird little niche and want all the other newbies to love it too.

Listen to all of the advice (before deciding what to follow and what to ignore). There is a fair bit of "In my day..." reminiscing from some of them but the advice they can give is often gold. I was chatting to Chris Pyatt, a former Masters world champion sprinter, during an SQT before Christmas - hell of a nice guy and very approachable. Which track is your local?