A Few Laps At The Boulder Velodrome

I was planning to follow my training plan for today, really, I was. but I let myself get talked into going to the new Boulder velodrome by David Williams. I wanted to lounge around a bit more while Kimberly and our girls are out of town, but David was not listening. So, on this beautiful day, we went to ride indoors.

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.

Quadrilla Mania

Francesca got more parts for her Quadrilla set. we've been spending the morning of a perfectly beautiful day inside goofing around and trying not to get into any fights.

The girls and I at a Hanukkah party.

Using The Strap-On In Public

I started cycling back in the day when toestraps were the only pedal retention system in existence. When Look came out with their clipless pedals, I saw a good thing and jumped on it. I had my shoes drilled to accept the three-hole cleats, since I could find no shoes pre-drilled. I'm old, I know.

I race at the velodrome. I rode clipless pedals there for a few years, but never felt entirely confident. I've seen people get bumped (read: slammed), and get one foot unclipped. With no freewheeling and no brakes, it takes intestinal fortitude and a bit of luck in order to stay upright. So I always thought that toestraps still had value for track riding. Additionally, I have a hard time keeping my feet from wiggling when I do a standing start in a time trial and I sometimes pop out of clipless pedals.

So I rode with toestraps on the track for the safety, but always wished that I could ride clipless pedals for the convenience (and the need for fewer pairs of shoes).

This last spring, I had a brainwave. I ride Speedplay Zero Track pedals on the road. (Even though I preferred the high retention force of my old Looks, my cleats always squeaked and drove me nuts, so I switched. The Zero's retention force barely cuts the mustard, but they're quiet and they work.) I have a pile of old junk in the bike room and cobbled together a setup that allows me to have toestraps with my Speedplays when I want them.

Here's what I did. I got an old set of cleats, including all the mounting screws, and some inserts that come with my Sidi shoes. (I don't use the inserts because they are for Look cleats.) I found some old SPD mounting inserts, cut them in half, and used them with some screws to sandwich a set of toestraps. It's harder to understand from my words than it is to examine the pictures closely.

So now this setup allows me to use toestraps with my road pedal/shoe setup, and I can take them off when I don't want to futz with toestraps. It's nice to be able to just hop on the bike, do a warmup, and then later attach the straps when I think I need them. I just clip the Strap-Ons to one side of the pedals, clip my shoes in the the other side, tighten down the straps, and go. I even use them on the road sometimes. It's nice to have the option when doing certain workouts.

It's important to note that there is no modification to the pedal or shoe, so I can use this on any bike that has a Zero pedal. My wife and I once did a workout together where we traded back and forth, with one of us resting while the other did a standing start using this setup.

There are two things that I got from sheer luck.

First, the cleat of the Strap-On does not interfere with the cleat on my shoe. There appears to be about two millimeters of clearance between the cleats sandwiching the pedal, and this allows me to unclick my shoes like normal.


Second, the Strap-On keeps my foot from clicking out of the pedal in two ways. The Speedplay cleat (in normal usage) allows the heel to move outward in order to release from the pedal. But you can't move your heel inward (toward the crank), as the cleat has a stop in that direction. The cleat in the Strap-On is upside down, and is working in a direction opposite to that of the shoe's cleat. This means that, when I move my heel outward (and the straps cause the Strap-On to move with it), the Strap-On cleat hits that stop, and it's harder for me to unclip from the pedals. Plus, the shoe's cleat cannot come up off the top of the pedal. So even when the straps aren't strangling-tight, when I move my heel back toward center, the straps pull my shoe's cleat back onto the pedal.

Theoretically, this can work with any pedal system that's two-sided. Shimano's SPD is an example. However, the design of the Speedplay cleats seems to lend itself nicely, not requiring significant modifications to any of the parts used to make the Strap-on.

Yes, there's a slight decrease in cornering clearance. On the track, I've brushed the Strap-On in the banking when doing the cat-and-mouse routine in a sprint, but it wasn't enough to cause a problem. (Colorado Springs has 33 degree banking.) But at any speed above a walking pace and on flatter tracks, I haven't noticed this problem. Of course, you can coast through turns on the road. If these weren't simply recycled parts, it would be easy to overcome this problem by designing the Strap-On with a lower profile.

Here's a couple of more pictures.