Last night Yvette, Bill, and I spent the evening at the Alpenrose Velodrome learning how to ride a bike on the track. We had a lot of fun. Alpenrose is a local dairy here in Portland. They have a large property right in the middle of southwest Portland. Along with the dairy processing plant, they have several little league baseball fields and, oddly enough, a world class velodrome. Just two weeks ago a national championship 6-day race was held here. The Alpenrose velodrome is one of the steepest and shortest velodromes in the world. Each bank average 43 degrees and the track length is 1/6 mile. The banks do not gradually increase slope. They very abruptly go from flat on the inner apron to 43 degrees on the track surface. The track surface proper is painted cement.
Every Wednesday night during the summer the track gurus invite beginners out to the track for a class in track riding. For $5/person they will spend close to three hours teaching you how to ride. For $5/person more, you can rent a track bike. Quite a deal. Rented bikes don’t come with pedals. We had to bring our own pedals which the track mechanic installed on each bike. This evening there were probably 30 people riding. A larger group than normal we were told.
Track bikes are fixed gear bikes. That means that these bikes don’t coast. If the bike is moving, then the pedals are moving. You can’t not pedal unless the bike is stopped. For those of us that are used to riding regular free wheel bikes on the street, riding a fixed gear is a very strange experience. And they do not have any brakes. The only way to slow down is to exert backforce on the pedals. It can also be dangerous. If you exert too much backforce and try to stop too fast you can easily send yourself head over heals over the front of the bike. As a result of the nature of these bikes, there are many rules that must be followed when riding on the track to ensure a safe environment for all the riders.
Yvette, and, to be honest, myself, were both a bit nervous at the beginning.
Bill’s good friend Mark also showed up unexpectedly. Here’s Mark having a good time (and me wrestling my rented track bike!)
After a bit of instruction, the instructors took us out on the track. Riding on the banked corners definitely takes some getting used to. It takes a bit of commitments to ride into that first turn…and a bit of perseverance to continue riding into the next turns. Your mind is telling you that it’s not right riding on the 43 degree banks. You have to keep your speed up. The minimum safe speed on the banks is 12mph. Any slower and the bike will slide out from underneath you. Fortunately 12mph is not that fast. At first we stayed pretty low on the turns. Here a shot of Yvette out on the track.
Several women showed up for the class which worked out quite well. There was even a female instructor. They all got to ride together as a group.
Here I am on the track with my group.
Eventually, after a bit more practice, we were riding higher on the corners. When riding a pace line on the track the lead rider will ride high on the track and let the following riders pass on the low part of the track. Here’s Yvette executing a sweet pace line exchange.
Since there were usually two or three groups on the track, every once in a while a faster group will need to pass a slower group. The faster group will usually passes on the top at least when you’re a beginner. In acutal racing, the rules are a lot less well defined. Here’s my group passing another group.
Bill, Mark, and I shared an instructor for the evening. We’re all in pretty good riding shape and I think we surprised our instructor, Ken, with how well we adapted and how fast we were able to go and keep up with him. I’m absolutely sure that Ken is much faster than any of us on the track, but he was working too and commented that he should have warmed up more beforehand.
In the end we all survived and had a great time. We worked hard and were quite tired, but we’ll go back and do this again. There’s a lot to learn about racing on a velodrome and we barely scratched the surface.
Good times!
Meg, Bill’s fiancee, took all the pictures featured on this post, except the title picture that I took two weeks ago at the 6-day race.
