Last night I headed out to Dunc Gray Velodrome, built for the Sydney Olympics, to try racong on the velodrome for the first time. I have to admit that I was a bit nervous for a number of reasons;

• I’d never ridden a track bike before, and since they have no brakes slowing down could be a problem if there’s a crash or something
• they also have a fixed hub, so you can’t freewheel and if you stop pedalling, well the pedals keep going around taking your legs with them and you get bumped out of the saddle
• the corners at each end of the lap are banked at 45° (see photo!) so I wasn’t sure how to ride them properly, or how fast you need to go so you don’t slide off!

I arrived with about half an hour of the warm-up to go, registered, paid and showed my Cycling Australia race licence, picked up my race number and signed on in the Novice category. I figured I’d just get on the bike and get out there. In all my years on a bike, whether commuting, road riding or MTBing, I’ve only crashed once, and that was while doing jumps on the MTB, so I figured I should be OK.

After a couple of laps around the skirt (the flat bit just on the inside of the track proper) I bit the bullet and went up on to the boards, accelerating hard to carry a bit of speed into the first turn. It was a little nerve-wracking at first as my natural instinct was to turn the bike but that just felt like the bike was going to fall off the slope, so in the end I just relaxed and let the bike do what it wanted and all was well. The secret is not to actively turn the bike but to let speed, the banking and the laws of physics guide you around the turn. After a few laps I was fine, though I still wasn’t comfortable riding close to other riders, a hangover of not having any brakes!

The first race was a 6-lapper (each lap is 250m) and there was only myself and a friend Kylee in the novices. Two more experienced riders went out with us to get us up to speed and get us swapping off turns at the front, then with 500m to go they pull out and it’s mano-a-mano between myself and Kylee. I knew that I could punch out more power than Kylee, but she was fitter than I was, so I just stayed behind her until 100m to go and put the hammer down around the last bend. First race, first win!

The second race was a 4-lap handicap, and this time they gave Kylee a 40m head start. I caught her with about a lap to go and came around her again on the last bend for the win.

The final race was an 8-lap handicap and this time we each had a more experienced rider to pace us for the first four laps and then we were on our own. Kylee was given a 125m head start this time and I had to chase her down. My chaperone was Gary Mandy, who I found out later, rode for Zimbabwe in the 1988 Olympics, so he quickly got me up to speed and while we were catching Kylee slowly but surely, my lack of fitness was making itself felt and my legs were already toast just following Gary! He swung off and while I continued to catch Kylee I just wasn’t fit enough to close the full gap and she won by about 40m.

All in all a bloody good night’s racing! Next time I’ll move up to Division 5 where there are a lot more people, as I’m comfortable enough riding the banking now and need to get used to having other people near me whilst riding at pace. Unfortunately I will no longer have a weight & power advantage, so there won’t be any more wins for a while!