The Velodrome

I’m on vacation this week in Ft Lauderdale Florida. This mostly a sit on the beach and relax vacation with my wife. Although I enjoy spending time on the beach with my wife I always looks for some diversions to get me off the beach for a couple of hours. In last months Bicycling Magazine they had an article about all the velodromes in the US and I noticed there was one close to Ft Lauderdale.

I always wondered what it would feel like to ride on a velodrome so I decided to give it a try. The velodrome is in Brian Piccolo Park about 20 miles from where I’m staying. It is an outdoor cement track with 30 degree banking.

There were a couple of problems I had to overcome to ride on the track. The first was the bike. It was a track bike which meant it was a fixed gear with no brakes. Basically if the wheel was moving so were the pedals. If you wanted to stop you had to use your legs to push backwards on the pedal. The other problem was the banked turns. For my entire life I have rode my bike perpendicular to the road with gravity firmly holding me to it. Yes I do lean the bike a little while turning but riding 30 degrees away from vertical while gravity was trying push the wheels out from under me was going to feel really wrong.

Luckily the track was empty with only one other rider so I didn’t have to worry about getting in anybodies way. Matt, the other rider was a former racer and had recently got into track riding. He gave me a couple of tips to help me get started and make sure I won’t fall. He also said it was going to be cool.

Starting on a track is not easy you can’t just push off and clip in like my road bike because you can’t coast. The technique Matt recommended was to walk the bike to the top of the straightaway grab the rail on top of the wail, clip in then push off down hill.  It sounded reasonable so I gave it a try. Although it took me a couple of strokes to get my balance I got going with no problem.

One of the nice features of the Brian Piccolo velodrome is that it has two tracks. The inner track only has 5 degree backing and is used for warming up. The outer one has the 30 degree banks.

I did a 3 or 4 laps around the inner track to get a feel for the bike. It was mostly familiar except for the fact that there were no brakes lever on the handle bars and every time I tried to coast the pedals pushed back. Then there was the whole problem as to how to actually stop.

To stop on a regular bike you hit the brakes click out of one of the pedals and put your foot down. Since I needed to push back on the pedals to stop that wasn’t going to work here so I reversed what I did to get started. I slowly push back on the pedals until I was going really slow then road up by the wall and grabbed the bar on top of the wall. I was still going too fast to stop so as my hand slid along the bar I tighten my grip on the rail to slow me to the point where I could stop and unclip. I’m sure it looked uncoordinated but at least I had a way to start and stop with out killing myself.

After a brief stop to adjust the height of the seat it was on to the outer track. I started as I did on the inner track by holding on to the bar on the wall on the straightaway. I then spent a couple of laps on the flat part building up some speed. The next two laps I swung up to the banked track on the straightaway then back down to the flat part in the corners. At this point it was time to go for it.

I swung up to the track in the straightaway and tried to keep my speed up. The track has two painted lane in it an orange one at the bottom of the banking and a blue on about 3 feet above that. I decided to follow the blue lane.

When I hit the corner things really started to feel wrong. I was on pavement that was banked at 30 degrees but I was not perpendicular to the pavement. I was leaning uphill so that the tire was hitting the road on the right side and I felt like I was riding on the side wall. I expect at any second for the wheels to slip out from under me and slide down to the bottom of the track.

But that didn’t happen. I made it through the corner and headed down the straightaway to the next corner. This corner felt just as wrong but I knew it would be OK. I stepped up my cadence and when I went through the corners again it felt a little more stable. After 5 or 6 more laps I was getting use to it and starting to really enjoy it. As Matt went by me I told him he was right this was really cool.

Now that I was getting more comfortable with the track it was time to climb the wall I spent the next 5 laps moving higher and higher up the banking and learned that higher up you went the better if felt.

After a break for some water I went out again and started trying some of the moves I have seen on TV where you start up high on the bank then swing down to gain speed. At this point I felt in total control and could go anywhere on the track. I also realized this was awesome.

Matt suggested we do some pace lining so I felt what it was like. So he would lead for a lap then swing up and around me and I would lead a lap and would swing up and around him. This was much more fun then on the road. Lastly we simulated the end of a race where we rode high on the track and swung down quickly in the last two corners. Matt said to hold it as low in the track as I could. I was sprinting as hard as I could and when I swung down I really felt the g-force trying to push me up the banking. Way cool.

I had been on the track for a little over an hour at this point and was tired and thirsty so I decided I had had enough. I’m really glad I decided to do this. It wasn’t as hard as I had thought and a lot of fun. There aren’t many velodromes that allow the public to run on then so if you get a chance you should give it a try.