Geeky Yet Waterproof

The one in the orange is yours truly.

Last Friday, my dad and I made our triumphant return to the Alpenrose Velodrome, which I hadn’t seen since track season last summer. Alpenrose is one of the steepest velodromes in the country, with banks sloped at 43°. It was scary going around the track for the first time in so long, but I quickly got used to it.
This was also the first time I was able to try out my new track bike, which I got last December for Christmas, but hadn’t been able to ride until now! Track season lasts only in the summer, so I’ve been eagerly waiting to try it for five months.
The bike is amazingly light, and I can accelerate really fast. Part of the reason for this is the pedals we put on: your shoes lock in like with any normal clip pedals, but to release your foot, you have to pull a little lever on the back of the pedal. Now, remember that this is a fixed-gear bike — so you can’t stop pedaling to pull said lever! It takes some getting used to, but after a while I could do it without any trouble.

I had three races: a ten lap scratch race (which is just a regular race), a 15 lap point-a-lap race (where the winner of each lap gets one point, but nobody else does), and a 15 lap points race (every fifth lap, the top four people get points).
Having been away from the track since last year, the best way to describe my first two races is with the word “pwned”. The last one went a little better though… I didn’t get any points, but then again most of the racers didn’t, and I finished in the middle of the pack, even though most of them were fast 30 year-olds. I probably would have come in a few places farther ahead, but somewhere in the middle of the race a guy wiped out directly in front of me — all I saw was him cartwheeling in the air and his bike flying, but he miraculously landed on his feet, and the race continued. He was surrounded by other riders when it happened, but somehow nobody hit him, although I had to swerve up-track to avoid the crash, which cost me some speed.

It was fun racing at Alpenrose again and getting back into the track culture. And I didn’t even have to face my worst fear: not being able to clip out, and tipping over in the grass!