Adventures in the Velodrome

There are lots of different ways to enjoy cycling. Thank you to Doug for this piece about track cycling, thrilling to watch and even more thrilling to participate in.

I have been riding on the track since Autumn 2018 (really that long!?) when a friend organised a corporate experience for work clients and had some spaces left over. I have slowly become faster and more confident and this year I rode in the Tuesday track league for the first time, and won my first ever bike race!

Back in 2018 I had often watched track racing on the TV during the Olympics so I was keen to try it out when the offer came, and I was immediately hooked! Several of you have tried it out at one of the sessions the club has arranged so you will be familiar with the sense of dread when you first see the steepness of the banking, and realise you will be on a bike with a fixed gear and no brakes! However, the coaching staff at Derby are so good, that my anxieties soon melted away during that session as I gained confidence in managing a fixed wheel bike and the contours of the track. I immediately signed up for accreditation and by the end of the year I was all set and ready to roll, with my first track bike.

I completed accreditation thinking that I knew all I needed to know, but boy, how wrong I was! Derby Arena run coach-led training sessions (called Structured Quality Training, or SQT) which I was most interested in at first. These are two hour sessions which include 10-20 minute blocks of various drills to learn and improve your endurance and sprinting skills, alongside building confidence to ride in a close group at pace. It’s a steep learning curve! The hire bikes on which you learn accreditation are lightly geared so there is a big jump in speed when you first join an SQT, plus there are more riders on the track and they are all going quite fast!

Don’t be put off, though! The SQT is a wonderful environment to learn, with excellent coaches, and one rapidly learns how to ride close behind the wheel in front, while building confidence and track craft. For context, the riding is more closely packed than a brisk club ride or a Thursday night chaingang! And often faster: it’s not unusual during a 20 min endurance exercise to average over 40kph/25mph.

For me, the pleasure was threefold: finding a way to train and ride during the winter without getting cold and wet, or just cold (2018 was before Zwift etc became popular); having a mildly competitive environment where that distracted me from the fact I was spending a lot of time riding at threshold or above at an intensity I would never do on my own, and lastly the pure thrill of dropping off the banking to slot seamlessly onto the pack of a paceline of riders pushing on at the bottom of the track.

For anyone who has tried a taster and wants to push on with accreditation, or who is wondering about whether the track is for them I wonder offer the following thoughts:

• Riding the track will certainly improve your bunch riding skills and your on-bike awareness
• It will improve your pedalling technique and efficiency
• If you enjoy riding fast, then do it! If your thing is a gentle roll on a sunny day, then maybe it’s not for you
• If you enjoy pushing (=hurting) yourself in training then it’s definitely for you! If you have no idea what threshold is, then maybe less so
• You will need a reasonable base fitness to embark on a track career; one has to be able to ride at 15mph even when fatigued to avoid gravity taking control on the banking
• You will definitely get faster, fitter and stronger
• Track bikes are relatively inexpensive!

The track community at Derby is very friendly and welcoming. There is a core of riders who regularly attend the SQT sessions, as well as a large group who ride track league and everyone is happy to share advice, tips and stories so there is excellent camaraderie.

For anyone who is competitive there are many options for racing, including bunch races, sprint competitions and individual or team pursuit competitions. Derby runs a 20 week track league each year and there is a healthy and active British Masters track scene.

This year, I have started racing a little. Two highlights have been a series of British Masters Derny racing, and the Tuesday track league.

The Derny racing is mental and also brilliant fun: 8 riders on the track, each riding close behind a derny bike (basically a two stroke moped which the driver also pedals). Each race is a 20 or 30 lap scratch race, but the derny provides such huge shelter from the wind that you can achieve crazy speeds. Even for a moderate cyclist like me, I reached a maximum speed of 55.6kph (35mph) in one race!

In track league, each session has four ability groups and each will race three or four races- a mix of scratch, points race, tempo race and elimination. I have enjoyed it immensely, translating my experience from SQTs into a race environment where you have to ride faster, while also trying to think about tactics! The highlight for me was winning my first ever race, a 32 lap points race. This had a sprint every 8 laps where the first four riders gain 5, 3, 2, an 1 point, with double points on the final lap. I don’t really have a good sprint but my endurance pace is quite good so I launched a long effort for three laps each time win the first two sprints, and then hung on for third in the third. Then I had the novel experience of trying to do mental maths while hypoxic/fatigued/riding at threshold to work out what I had to do on the final sprint to win the race. After failing to add 12+ 6 and 11+10 I realised all I had to do was finish just behind the guy in second place on points to win the race, and this I managed to do.

To conclude, these days the track is my happy place and I would strongly encourage people to give it a go! I am very happy to share advice, experience and tips. New Year, new you?

 

Don’t know how well this will work, but here’s a film showing derny racing