An introduction to the boards

Over the Christmas period the conversation on the WhatsApp group that constitutes my cycling club turned to track riding. Several of the guys are making their way through the accreditation process to get qualified for proper track sessions. I’m lucky to have the Olympic Velodrome a 20-minute ride from my home so it was inevitable that I’d be giving it a try at some point, but the conversation spurred me into finally booking a Stage 1 Track Accreditation session.

I’d poked my head into the velodrome once before, while a taster session was underway, so I’d already seen the banking from the outside. It looks steeper still from the inside, but I was much more apprehensive about the fixed-gear track bikes we’d be riding. The fixed wheel means if the bike is moving then your legs are too. There’s no coasting and no brakes. If you want to slow down you do it gradually, but if you need to slow down in a hurry then you have to apply some heavy legs and resist the cranks as they rotate. When I tried my first spin class on a static spin bike a few weeks ago I was caught out by trying to freewheel. The kick as the cranks make their protest was quite violent and felt quite bad on the knees, so I was nervous of this as I clipped into the track bike for the first time.

We rode our first laps at a relaxed pace with two bike lengths between riders and we stayed on the apron; the dark blue area inside the track. Even at this gentle pace there was a lot of surging and easing from the different riders within the group as everybody had their first taste of speeding up and slowing down. Initially any attempt at scrubbing speed felt very jerky, applying resistance to the upstroke of the pedals, which didn’t do much for confidence in my ability to manage the speed. In reality, this was as hard as it was ever going to get, with riders concertina’ing fairly dramatically. Now it was time to move out on to the track itself.

Velodromes are built to different lengths but a modern Olympic-standard velodrome, like London’s Lee Valley, is 250m in length with two straights joined by two steeply banked curves (but considered to be four corners). The straights are banked by around 12° and the corners incline to 42°, which is steeper than it sounds. They look a lot more like walls than corners when you first approach them.

There are some standard markings that delineate different regions of the track. The Apron is the flat interior perimeter which is used for getting up to speed and for final slowing down and stopping. Above that is the Côte d’Azur – so named for the way its sea-blue colour meets the sandy coloured Siberian pine boards – which marks the transition zone between the Apron and the track. 20cm above that is the Black Line. The inner circumference of this black line serves as the measure of the track (250m in the case of London’s Olympic Velodrome) and during racing or time trials this marks the boundary of the track. 90cm from the inside of the track is the outer edge of the red Sprinters’ Line and the area between the red and black lines is known as the Sprinters’ Lane. During competition, if a rider is in the Sprinters’ Lane then other riders have to overtake around the outside and can only move into the Lane once they’ve cleared the passed rider. The final line is the blue Stayers’ Line, sitting 2.5m up the track. In the Madison races resting riders will stay above this line as the action continues below.

“The sensation of speed is amplified, being indoors, and it’s addictive”

So, with some explanation out of the way we formed a long line and lapped on the black line and then the red and finally the blue, learning to trust the banking and experiencing the nuances of what happens to your speed as you hit the curves. The banking is designed so that at racing speeds the centripetal force that makes you lean into a cornering bicycle is matched and you remain broadly perpendicular to the surface. There’s some slack designed into it so that it’s comfortable to ride at a wider variety of speeds but that’s the principle. At our slow novice speed it was a little jittery but it never felt unsafe. To round off the session we practiced speeding up and slowing down in a line of riders. Accelerate out of the corners and then slowing down from about half way down the straights. Again, the variety of riders made this quite interesting and a few times I caught myself needing to drop the anchors quite suddenly. The sensation of speed is amplified, being indoors, and it’s addictive. I found myself desperate to open the taps up but this wasn’t the opportunity to do that.

I got lucky and found myself in a talented group of riders who picked everything up very quickly.

All 16 riders in the group were signed off to Stage 1 Accreditation and then we were given the news that there was a rare opportunity to continue straight into the Stage 2 that followed our session. It turned out that only one rider had signed up for it so the normal waiting period was waived and every rider that could spare the time jumped at the chance.

Stage 2 began with changes. This is where the front rider swings high up into the banking to take the longer line as the rest of the riders sweep through below him. Executed perfectly the lead rider then swoops back down and seamlessly rejoins the line at the back with millimetres between him and the wheel in front. I was up first. We rolled our way up to a comfortable speed and then the call came to start the changes. As I reach the curve I push hard into the pedals and ignore corner, instead pointing the bike straight up the steep banking and then smoothing the corner to take a high line. The ramp is steep and saps speed very quickly, so I compensate by pushing more power along the middle part of the bend to regain my speed. I look for the penultimate rider in the line as my cue and then begin to curve back down to the black line, only the line back is steep in the other direction and I end up with too much speed, overlapping the wheel of the last rider. It needs a wide line for the next half lap before I bring my speed under control and slot back into the line. The second change was much better and I got a small taste of the satisfaction that comes with a cleanly executed manoeuvre. It’s the same sensation as taking the perfect corner in a car or perfectly smoothing the curves of a fast descent on the bike.

“The second change was much better and I got a small taste of the satisfaction that comes with a cleanly executed manoeuvre”

By now everybody had settled into a confident, smooth and predictable rhythm and this gave everybody the confidence to close the gaps up to around half a bike length. We stopped looking at the guy in front and were looking two or three riders ahead. Crucially, people had stopped thinking and were just riding, which meant everything flowed that much more smoothly. We moved on to pair drills; riding two abreast and swapping positions each lap. Then we closed the gaps and ran in a double line, in close formation. Even as a novice I could tell the standard was fairly high but the coaches made a point of mentioning this a few times. I’m sure it helped that we’d also had three hours riding together by this point and enjoyed the confidence in each other that comes with that. By the end of the session we were functioning as a pretty strong team with two or three guys taking the lead on communication and keeping everything flowing smoothly.

Pair drills, alternating positions each lap.

I signed up for the session thinking I could use the velodrome for my threshold and interval sessions. That didn’t really pan out today as I now realise the accreditation sessions are about skills and not a workout. The coach suggests we were cruising at around 32kph on average laps, which under those conditions meant I was able to stay within zones 1-2. If I can pass Stage 4 and gain my track accreditation then I can join the Structured Quality Training (SQT) sessions where things should get much faster, including the heart rate! I’ve been bitten by the bug and signed up for Stage 3 on my way out.

My wife will be very pleased to hear I’m now also coveting track bikes. Their simplicity and purity has real appeal as a piece of design work, though I doubt she’ll share my appreciation of their beauty and how critical it is that I now introduce a third bike to our small apartment. I’m a man in need of a man cave.

*Huge thanks to John for the great photos