Lanterne Rouge

Is a brake really necessary on a bicycle?

This blog entry features Hot Velodrome Action, in Hampshire, including pics kindly loaned by Bree*.

It had been planned for several weeks, so I’d been getting more and more excited about my first turn on a real live velodrome, part of Calshot Activities Centre near Southampton. Staying with the wonderful and gracious Lindsey, who battled through the crappiest of colds to look after her three guests, we trooped over to the ‘drome first thing Sunday morning for an Introductory Session.

In the pic above, we’re being given our initial instruction by lovely Rose. Perspective’s a bit tricky here (for comparison, the white lines in the middle are badminton courts), but this is in fact the world’s smallest velodrome still in use, only 142 metres around and, therefore, with the tightest turns so it’s the hardest to ride on. Go us!

As most of you know, I ride a fixed-wheel bike in London, hipster twat that I am, so at least I found it second nature. No-one else seemed to struggle too badly, though - and in truth it’s fine when you have a clear, smooth circuit ahead of you instead of traffic jams and idiot peds and potholes and central London to deal with. The bikes, for anyone who’s interesed, were mostly aluminium Dolans, decent and straightforward.

As the session was merely to introduce us to track riding, we didn’t actually get that long on the track. A quick pootle on the inside (the non-banked green and grey strips in the pic above), before individually having a go at the banking, first on the black line, then the red, then the blue (worth having a look at that pic if I haven’t showed it to you already - dunno how Bree captured the shadow but it looks ace). At the end, we each got to complete 7 laps (one kilometre total) streaming round the banks almost parallel to the floor.

It was fantastic - the tightness of the curves makes the technique involved quite specific, and experiencing a 45-degree surface angle and G-forces you’d never feel on the road was briefly unsettling, but then hugely invigorating. It felt amazing to reach the end of the straight and almost throw yourself into the turn, left shoulder down, head low, and let the banking carry you, almost with a will of its own, until it flattens out once again.

It was over too soon, of course, and we’d done less than 2 miles actual riding each. We all left gagging for more - and the velodrome is hireable, for a surprisingly reasonable sum, so perhaps we’ll have to get together with a select group of chums and hire it out just for us sometime in the nearish future…

*if you search Twitter for ‘breekom’ it asks “did you mean ‘freedom’?”