'You don't appreciate it until you get here': Dan Bigham training with British Cycling and eyeing more success

Three-time national track champion Dan Bigham says that recent sessions spent training with the Great Britain team will help move on to more success in 2018.

Bigham and Team KGF team-mate Charlie Tanfield were invited to train with the national squad at British Cycling headquarters at the Manchester velodrome after impressing with fourth place at the Track World Cup last month, and says that he has been impressed with the level of support on offer.

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"It’s been really good – really positive,” the 26-year-old said. "We had a few conversations with British Cycling at the World Cup in Poland, then a more conversations here in Manchester which led to Iain [Dyer, Great Britain Cycling Team head coach] inviting me and Charlie here for a few training blocks, which is amazingly helpful.

"You don’t appreciate the facilities until you get here and realise all the little things that go on, such as the instantaneous lap feedback, the video analysis and things like that. It’s world class, which you’d expect.

"To be able to come here has been really cool and Iain’s been really open to it – to seeing where we fit into the squad, where our strengths and weaknesses lie and even just giving us feedback on what we’re doing and what he thinks we should be doing."

Bigham and his Team KGF team-mates will now be targetting the final Track World Cup event of the season in Belarus, as well as defending three national titles at the National Championships in Manchester from January 26 to 28.

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"As a team, we have targets we want to achieve, one of those being winning the team pursuit at a word cup. We showed what we can do in Manchester, so now we want to go to Minsk and try to win it," Bigham continued.

"Nationals are still at the forefront of my mind, though – I want to go there and defend those titles, to shine and show what I can do. There are challenges coming from every direction – I know I’m a lot quicker than last year but it’s about balancing my training to make sure I hit all the events."