The Superdrome

As you get older, I've found it takes more of an effort to physically challenge yourself, push your comfort zone, in that in way where the front of your brain says "You can do this. Lots of people do this." while the back of your brain is saying, "OH CRAP! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING????" Bungee jumping certainly falls into this category, but I've just never seen the point behind it. If I want to challenge myself, I at least want to get something out of it. Then there's the Superdrome.

Literally 10 minutes' drive from my house, the Frisco Superdrome has beckoned me for 10 years. The Superdrome is a world class bicycle racing track, a velodrome, 250 meters in circumference. In its heyday it was the fastest outdoor low-altitute track in the world. People come from all over the country to train on it. It's open to the public once you've taken an orientation class. 10 minutes away, and I'd never ridden it.

I'm not completely inexperienced on a bicycle track. About thirty years ago a wooden "portable" indoor track was set up at Michigan State University; I used to ride it on one of the stock bikes they provided with tennis shoes and toe clips & straps. I still remember how tired my legs were, and how cool it was to ride at the top of the curve, then peel off like a fighter plane into the sprinter's lane at the very bottom of the track. The Superdrome would be like this, only...bigger.

I've finally been riding a respectable amount - at least considering how much traveling I've been doing - and felt like I was doing well enough to not embarrass myself at one of the Frisco Cycling Club's Superdrome's development classes. Plus, I hoped my MSU experience - done when I was young and fearless - would remind the back of my brain that it can be done.

So today, on a sunny and beautiful (though windy) 80 degree fall day I took the orientation class. If you aren't familiar with bicycle track racing (It's more popular than curling, I imagine, but probably not much), there are plenty of things in it to push your comfort zone.

First, any bike track is an intimidating place, and the Superdrome is more than most. To get bicycles around a 250 meter ellipse at speed, the turns at each end are banked. Sharply. They are 25 feet tall and banked at a 44 degree angle. You have no idea how steep that is until you see it, let alone ride on it. I don't think you can even scramble up it on foot. I'm supposed to ride on that?? ("Oh crap, oh crap...") Even the straightaways are banked at a 17 degree angle.

Second, you ride on a fixed gear track bike. No road bikes allowed. That means when the wheels move the pedals move just like the Big Wheel you had as a kid - no coasting.

Third, no brakes. No, I'm not kidding. You speed up by riding harder, and slow down by pushing back on the pedals on the upstroke. On the track, the combination of fixed gears and no brakes is actually safer than a road bike because it means it's much harder for riders to suddenly speed up and slow down ("brake check") and cause the riders behind them to pile up and crash. And you don't want to crash on a bike track. Every rider there comes from the road, and is familiar with a road crash. Now imagine plywood instead of concrete, plywood covered with a sticky kind of paint to help your tires stick on the banks. This means that if you you're really lucky in a crash, you only get a serious case of road rash from the sticky paint and sliding down the track and don't get injected with splinters as well. And it may well be a three-dimensional crash; I don't even want to think of the consequences of riding too slow, catching a pedal, or bumping into someone high up on those banks.

Fourth, you ride tucked over with your hands on the bottom of the handlebars all the time, bent way over compared even to most racing bikes. No brakes means no brake hoods to put your hands on; most track bike handlebars aren't even shaped to allow you to your hands comfortably anywhere but on the hooks. It feels like your chin is a hood ornament, way more than that sensation on a road bike.

Fifth, there are a lot of rules, meant to keep everyone safe on a relatively small riding area with potentially a lot of riders. Stay above the blue line unless you're "doing an effort" on the sprinter's lane. Stay out of no man's land (the middle third of the track width) unless you're crossing into or out of the sprinter's lane. Always pass to the right (up track), never to the left. Tell the rider you're passing to "stay!" so they know you're coming by and they should hold their line. Keep up a minimum speed of at least 15 MPH on the turns if you want to remain on them (see "crashing" above). Oh, and keep looking over your shoulders while bent over and zooming around those 44 degree banks so you can see those fast riders are and don't cross into someone barreling down the track at 35 MPH in the sprinter's lane. While riding your lungs and legs out, by the way.

But walking into the Superdrome infield for the first time is very cool, especially if you're used to watching races in the grandstands. You enter through a tunnel that goes under the track and up into a rider's area with canopies, benches and a LOT of bike racks. And all around you cyclists are moving around the track, or around the apron, or in the small warmup ring. It's a little like walking out onto a football field...if the football players were constantly circling around the stands at 20 MPH. I imagine it's kinda like a slow-speed, quiet NASCAR. Without the RVs. And beer. And...well, okay, not much like NASCAR.

In the class, the instructors first get you riding around the infield to get used to the bikes and gearing. Then they have you play "follow the leader" as they ride on the apron, then up onto and down off the track on the straightaways, avoiding the turns. After a few of these, he speeds up and heads straight into the turn in the sprinter's lane (about 3 feet above the flat apron.

This is where the rear-brain OH CRAP! hits me full bore. My heart rate is about 30% higher than it normally would be (and I'm already riding fairly hard), I'm talking to yourself ("you can do this, you have done this before...") and I'm trying to steer in a "straight" line by following the painted lines and the cyclist in front of me. My eyes tell you it can't work...but it does. Though having the panicky cyclist in front of me slow down doesn't help things any (see "advantages of no brakes" above). After a few laps of that I start to relax, slightly, and release the death grip I have on the handlebars. We all come off the track and high-five each other on surviving our first few laps.

The next time we get onto the track, we start low on the sprinters lane, then work up to the blue line about halfway up the track. Now we have the fear of falling compounded by the fact we're about 12 feet in the air. Finally, he takes us around the very top of the track where we're WAY up there - plus we peek out of the velodrome's protection and batted around by the wind a little.

I finished up the sessions with some high circuits and some efforts down in the sprinter's lane. A great day! Re-capturing some of my old skills, challenging myself both physically and mentally...and most importantly, not crashing :).

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