Posts tagged with “cycling” and “Velodrome”

September 26
HHvelodrome.jpeg
Last night I took advantage of the last night of the year when I could take my road bike to [[Herne Hill Velodrome]] for a spell on the track. I arrived early in the foolish hope that I'd be able to get more time on the track, only to find a school session with track bikes was beginning, so since road and track bikes simply do not mix I had to wait my turn. When I did take to the track it took a while to find my stride, I was immediately disappointed to find I could not really "pull the big one" in top gear, settling for one or two down. I had to pull over after a few minutes to divvy up my fiver (goes towards upkeep and insurance, so can't really grumble), sign the sheet with contact details, don the numbered elastic band (so they know who I am if unconscious!) and surrender my water bottle (made sense, don't want the distraction on a track). Then back to the track, this time with a few more riders. It turns out Herne Hill is perfect for taking a turn with a road bike, the circuit is wider than the modern Velodrome and the banking a good ten degrees less steep, this gleaned from Wikipedia. I was determined to try an put in a decent average and tried to pace myself whilst making the odd burst and experimenting with an odd half lap here and there slipstreaming form the odd rider. At the end of the session I had put in 54 odd minute ride time and averaged 20.97 mph, which feels OK. I will certainly be extremely proud if I ever turn in stats like that on the open road! It was quite something to discover the amount of effort slipstreaming cuts out of the ride, especially as it was a very windy day and one side of the circuit much harder work than the other. But I always chose to drop out of any group or rider I was following, wanting the personal challenge and not knowing any of the others. There was one pair of gents quite my senior whom I never could catch despite going many turns of the track - now I can see that since they were pairing they'd have an easier time keeping up a good speed! So to catch them would actually have been a big ask, even if I were fitter than I am. The odd full on carbon bike whizzed past me from time to time, and not sure I'd ever get on with the peculiar acoustics of those in operation, sounds too much like an airfix kit on wheels for my liking. I struggled to cope with seeing the young teenager in the track class also, because he had a dreamy Pinarello road bike, full Cinelli "designer" riding gear, and clearly a far younger fitter body than I'll ever have again - felt like he had the world handed to him on a plate, and here I am aged 52 with my first decent road bike.... hard not to acknowledge some degree of envy. My most significant consolation is, of course, our magnificent tandem and the best stoker in the world home I shall be marrying next year, God willing!
05:02 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: , , ,
June 16

A salutary tale

I have developed [a coping strategy](http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php/819878-A-coping-strategy-that-seems-to-help-me "forum post that explains this strategy") for my cycling... well for the times when I feel danger has been inflicted upon me, for want of a better expression. My normal experiences of this are depressingly abusive towards myself - for example recently I was cut up by a driver, quite badly as she turned left despite my loud proclamation, "Please do not cut me up!" an don drawing level with her at the traffic lights she discarded a fag butt in my general direction and told me to "F**K Off" before I could even ask if she knew she had cut me up (obviously it was intentional). I was left feeling shitty despite my best efforts to drop her aura of shittiness all over me..... But then a couple of days ago things turned out with a most expected outcome... I was travelling up the first hill on my commute and a car seemed to whizz by about 18 inches off my elbow, which is enough to get my ire up... I managed to get a wriggle on and catch him in a queue of traffic on the other side of the hill... at first the driver appeared to be your usual, and showed no signs of hearing my complaint of less than three feet clearance on overtaking. Things seemed promising when he volunteered to pull over to discuss. We continued to dispute reasonably and I thanked him for taking the time to pull over. Not long after that he said "You don't know who I am do you?" and proceeded to reveal he was manager of [[Herne Hill Velodrome]]! He explained an oncoming car had been signalling left and then come straight on, combined with my perhaps not "keeping my line" and he had thought I was downshifting with my bike being a tourer etc. My mind was already thrown into turmoil and I sort of almost offered a salute. He asked if I had taken part in the recent "night ride" and I said not this year, but did it last year on our tandem. Before long we were comparing tandem tales, it turned out he once managed a 30 miles in a sub hour time and held a record on a day when that particular record was broken six times! Sadly his wife sold the tandem after apparently throwing up behind him, which I can imagine would be a pretty off-putting experience all round. But the tale is salutary in more ways than my involuntary salute I think... Given we one day hope to plan a tandem club ride involving a Velodrome stop for the café I am sure this could actually be the first time a positive new contact has been made in such apparently adverse circumstances.
08:49 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: , , , , ,