Velodrome

So as mentioned in my previous post, for my Birthday my Girlfriend booked me an hour in the Newport Velodrome with one of the Welsh National Coaches.

Seriously excited at the time as I had never done anything like that before. I had only ever done road cycling, also never experienced a fixed wheel bike before... when the day came I was a little more nervous, slightly worried I would make a fool of myself or crash out in a spectacular mess of metal and skin.

Luckily my trapped nerve had cleared enough to not cause my any problems. My only problems would be caused by the lack of fitness and a cold was recovering from.

So we arrived at the track, and collected a bike and made our way to the centre of the track. We were early enough to see the under 17s Welsh Elite Squad flying around the track in pursuit formation making it all look very very easy.

Surprisingly by this time my nerves had eased and I was looking forward to getting out there again. The elite squad cleared the track and my coach arrived and I was ready to go, the whole track to myself which felt a bit odd but gave me a chance to have some fun.

The coach was great, we broke the progression down into simple steps increasing my confidence gradually over the first half an hour of the hours lesson.

We started by getting used to starting and stopping on the fixed wheel, mainly stopping as the bikes obviously have no breaks. So I spent a few laps in the warm up section of the track, below the actual wood, speeding up and slowing down on the straights. speeding up is obviously easy, but slowing took a few laps to get used to, essentially its forcing the pedals to stop turning in a controlled manner. If you try to stamp back on the pedals to stop, the force of the wheels will throw you off the bike, which I nearly discovered for myself on one try.

I soon got used to it though, and surprisingly didn't try to free wheel at any point in the session. Which would have probably led to a crash!

Next I moved onto the actual track, just on the lowest point doing a few laps getting used to holding the speed throughout the lap. This was something that took my mind a while to get used to, reaching the middle of the corner my "road mentality" was trying to make me slow down for the corner, where you don't have to on the track, you can carry the speed right through the corner. This took my brain a few laps to become accustom to.

The confidence by this point was growing more and more, and obviously as I spent more time on the track the speed was also increasing. next I completed about 10 laps moving between the black, red and blue lines on the track on instruction from the coach. This was the point I started to have a lot of fun, once up on the blue line (around the middle of the track) I was holding speed well into the corners, learning that any lost speed would cause you to drop down the track.

 

 

 

 

 

After a short drink break, I was raring to go again, this time told to get as high on the track as I felt comfortable with. After a few laps getting my speed back up I moved to the top of the track, this was hard on my legs, on the straight was fine but as soon as I was in the corner I couldn't keep the speed to stay high enough. but only dropped slightly down the track towards the end of the corner.

Getting Higher!

Before I started I didn't think I would have the confidence to be high on the track, but I was enjoying it too much to worry about it, for about 10 laps I was left to my own devises, moving around the track as I wanted to and getting used to the different speeds at different points on the track.

On the next break I was offered the chance to see how fast I could be doing a Time Trail. The racer in me obviously wanted to give this a try. The coach talked through gaining the most speed from the track being high up on the straights and using the down hill to the corners to get free speed.

So the plan was to cycle one warm up lap to get speed, and then 2 laps at full speed that would be timed. The coach said anything below 40 seconds for a beginner would be good so I started high on the track to get some speed and gave it a go.

 

One lap of swooping up and down, followed by 2 laps on the black line (on the track, red line of my lungs/heart/legs!!) and I could barely breathe or focus, so that was the best I could do at that fitness level..... 39 seconds... I'll take that, although I would love to see what I could have done at full fitness.

After getting my breath back and stopped my legs shaking I still had almost 10 minutes of my hour left. So again I was left to my own fun on the track, although I only lasted about 5 minutes of the 10, my legs didn't have much left!!

Time Trial Instructions

And we are off!

First Lap... not that painful

Second Lap.... Painful!

 

So overall I had a great hour lesson, the coach was great at increasing confidence on the bike and track and I really enjoyed it, really thinking about going back when I am fully fit to see what sort of times I can do then. But that wasn't my main hope or aim for this lesson, just wanted to see what it was like and enjoy it, which I did!

 

Thanks to Holly for the present and for taking the pictures!

 

Maybe I will be back on the Velodrome soon?