Hi, my name is Dale McCallum and I’m 17 years old. This season I will be riding for The BicycleWorks Under 25 Race Team.
I have been cycling for just over two years now and I got into the sport through my dad, Scott. He rides unattached as he doesn’t race because he likes to come and watch me and the team race.
I first got introduced to John Anderson Bicycle Works owner about a year and a half ago and have been in his team ever since, and now with the new U25 team I hope it can help lead me to bigger things.
The races I most enjoy are road races with hills in them like the Lammermuirs Road Race. I also like crit racing and last year at the Junior Tour of Wales I got my best result in the crit which was 15th that was a great race, but so hard and I hope to go back this year and finish higher up on my overall position than last year’s 33rd.
I’m coached by James McCallum (no relation), the Rapha Condor Sharp pro, which is an enormous help my development as a young rider.
This winter my training has been going well, James has been training most days with me.
The way my training works with him is that he will give me my programme for the month and I keep a record of how things are going and how I am feeling so James can see what’s working and what’s not, but to be honest everything he has given me thus far I feel good with.
This winter I have also been on a few Scottish Cycling camps in Castle Douglas, just outside Dumfries. These are always good fun and very beneficial as we do some ‘race effort’ drills as well as getting in the hours. We also help with the cooking for each other which is helping our personal development as young athletes.
My next race is going to be the ‘Dick Longdragon’ in Aberdeen. The BicycleWorks U25 Race Team will have six riders (out of our total roster of seven) so we hope to go there and pull off a better result than we did at Gifford a couple of weeks ago, where we never really showed up as a team.
The following week on the 25th of March I’ll be riding the Cadence Road Race in Wales with the Scottish Junior Team. Thanks to Alan Denman getting us all together over the winter on various training camps, we’ve done a lot of training together as a team so we’ll be going to Wales looking to get a good result.
I’ll let you know how it goes soon! ‘Till then,
Dale