On The Boards
Thank you to Doug Tincello for organising the club’s trip to Derby velodrome last Saturday and to Amanda McPherson for this splendid report and the photos.
The velodrome was promoted as ‘something every cyclist should try once’, so I thought I better sign up!
On arrival I was assigned my bike and given a pair of shoes, the experienced group were on the track while we were given some brief instruction on riding a fixed wheel, and starting and stopping. We were then off to practice doing laps on the flat part of the track. Having to clip-in and hold the rail, and then plan a lap in advance of when you wanted to stop by ‘relaxing the legs’ to slow down as there are no brakes, then stop by pulling in and holding the rail was quite daunting but we all got the hang of it very quickly.
We kept alternating track time with the experienced group every 20 minutes, when the coach was happy that we could all stop and start safely we started to go around the bottom of the track. I had not seen a track before and it really is steep on the corners, but levels off on the straights. As we went round the coach shouted instructions and kept sending us increasingly higher up the track on the straights and then dropping back down on the corners.
At the start of the session I was most worried about being able to stop but by the end of the session I was flying round half way up the track!
The coaches do a brilliant job of building you up and increasing confidence very quickly. I absolutely loved it and would recommend it to anyone, I cant wait to go again!
As an extra treat it was great to see Pro, Charlie Tanfield, on the track after us to do some aero testing.
 
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