First, the picture below. The track is very tight, and the geometry sometimes makes it hard to hold the line you want. There was a crash, and two riders went down. I got to witness the one in the picture actually go over the top of the railing (such as it is). It looks bad, but apparently he only hurt his elbow.
This track is not a trivial thing to ride. Understandably, the guy running it, Paul, is giving some sort of certification of fitness to ride. You can either get into an instruction session, or, if you have a track category 2 on your USAC license, you may take the fast track certification. This approach bit me a little today, as my license shows category 3, but I heartily agree with this approach especially after witnessing today's crash. (I was able to get someone he trusts to vouch for me, and also get a telephone call from an authoritative source. otherwise, I had missed today's instructional session and would have been out of luck.)
The track looks steep and scary, but the steepness is not a problem. It actually might be better if it were steeper than it is. The turns are pretty tight and the faster you go, the harder it is to hold a straight line. Also, turn 3 has this nice sort of dip that makes you feel like you're getting airborne right at a critical moment.
At speed, you have to do more countersteering than you might expect as you go into the turns, and you also have to fight the urge to relax once you have entered the turn.You have to keep driving the bike downward in order not to be tossed upward. I believe this was the problem at play in today's crash: three riders stacked up, with the bottom one lurching upward at the wrong moment. Normally, this wouldn't be a huge problem, but there's not a lot of room for error on this track. And, uh, also this track has no rail or safety net between you and The Void. (I don't know what will happen when someone goes over the railing in one of the turns on the back side.)
I rode in an 81-inch gear (48x16) and was completely happy with it. Unless you plan ahead and bring rollers, you won't get a lot of warmup. At least today, everyone seemed to want to get on and start riding fairly hard right away. So the smaller gear helped mitigate my not getting much warmup.
Once on the track, you get a few OMG laps, and then you start noticing the sensation of speed and flying. It's really nice. Larger tracks don't give you quite this same feeling, but this track makes you pay for it by not letting you ever stop paying attention. You can't really go slow on this track, and always you are either in a turn or coming up on a turn. More than a dozen riders starts to make it feel crowded, so there's no snoozing allowed ever. Even getting off the track can feel like a challenge.
I hope that this track does well. The Boulder track is close to a huge population of competitive cyclists, so I think it will bring in many people to track racing and that can only help competition. For those who want a little more real estate to work with, there is always the USOTC track in Colorado Springs. But this gives us something to ride in the winter, and Paul has a fresh viewpoint on running things. I am curious to see what happens in the summertime.
Update: Here's a crappy cellphone video of David riding laps.
The mural is on the backside of the track (turns 2+3), and the wall with the window is on the homestretch (turns 4+1).
Turn 3 has a little hop as you enter it, which distracts you more than anything else. Keeping focussed is important, as you need to maintain the downward pressure on, or you will drift out of the sprinter's lane as you exit the next turn. You can see that happen to most of the riders, although David holds a pretty good line.
