Heather and I went to Los Angeles this weekend for the SoCal/Nevada track championships. Heather’s getting back into track riding and will be riding at Track nationals in a couple weeks. So this weekend was basically “practice” as she hadn’t been on a velodrome in over three years. We had already shipped Heather’s track bike to the hotel so it was nice to fly without a bike. We stayed in Carson only minutes away form the Home Depot Center where the LA Velodrome is located.

This is the only indoor velodrome in North America and is a 250 meter wooden track with 45° banking. When I first got there I was amazed at how steep the banking was. You really don’t get an idea for the steepness until you’re standing on the infield looking up at it. I’ve been on the 7-11 velodrome in Colorado Springs, but that was 333.3 meters, with less banking. This track is intimidating! While I got Heather’s bike setup, I had to take it out for a spin around the “boards”. I made sure I got plenty of speed while on the straights before moving up track on the corners. On this track you have to be going 16 MPH on the banking or you’ll slide out.

Once I moved up I was reluctant to go real high as it was scary! Without a cyclo-computer I wasn’t sure how fast I was going so I played it safe and went fast! I wound it up and took a few laps at good speed and it was a rush! You can really feel the G-forces on the corners. I managed to remember to not stop pedaling and slowed down onto the apron. It was so fun that at that point I became really excited for the Idaho Velodrome and Cycling Park to open this spring.

But after that short ride, I mainly played a support role to Heather as she raced. One aspect about track racing is that there’s a lot of waiting around. There are a lot of events and there’s an order to them, but there’s no exact schedule because all the TT events and even number of heats for mass-start races are determined by how many people register. So while you may have an idea when you’re racing, it’s best to just plan on being there all day. Heather did the pursuit, points and scratch races. I’ll let her race reports detail them out, but I will say coming here for practice was a really good thing. This is the first mass-start track race Heather has done since her horrific crash back in 2004. It was obvious in the points race in that Heather was staying way clear of everyone else. It was like there was a “bubble” around here that she wouldn’t dare let anyone in. By the scratch race she was doing a little better, but still was reacquainting herself with track navigation.

I also got to watch some of the men’s races and that was cool. Their packs were bigger and Rock Racing brought their whole squad so they were just dominating the mass-start events. The keirin was also interesting as there’s an electric bike that was the pacing vehicle. It paced the riders up to a certain speed, for a given number of laps. Then it pulled off and the riders have three laps left to race. Watching all this track stuff really got me thinking that maybe my focus next year will be on track cycling!