Blood on the Track(s)

Now, Bob Dylan; I reckon he might be the kind of guy who would ride a bike (Elvis is Alive... And Cycling.). But he doesn’t ride with me on the hamster wheel. No, cerebral lyrics and a nasal folky twang is not what is needed when your eyes are popping out and you’re chewing your handlebars. I need something a little bit more up beat for that.

Glasgow has recently opened up a velodrome and it is an absolutely superb facility. A sinuous curve of beautiful Siberian pine, like an ocean swell frozen in perpetuity. If you have never ridden a ‘drome then I would heartily recommend it. Particularly at this time of year. Whilst there are Buckets of Rain outside the 'drome offers you the chance to take Shelter from the Storm in the air-conditioned comfort of a world-class facility. The ‘drome is a 250m wooden track with vertiginously banked corners. Not unlike the Wall of Death that you would see at fair grounds. The corners are banked at 46 deg and are about 3 stories high. You would not believe just quite how steep they are. If you didn’t know otherwise, you would insist that it would not be possible to ride round the outside of the track. It is certainly not possible to walk up the track. On the occasions when the track needs to be repaired, the ‘ground keeper’ has to tie a rope onto a rail running round the top and abseil down.

Track bikes are also different from road bikes, in two important ways. Firstly the bikes have no freewheel, which means that if you pedal backwards, you go backwards, if you slow down your cadence your speed slows down, if you stop pedalling… you fall off.

Secondly there are no brakes. Let me just run that by you one more time just in case you didn’t get it the first time. There are no breaks. So how do you slow down I hear you bellow in over wrought tones? Well, you stop pedalling, in which case you fall off… or you can slow down your cadence and slow down in a more controlled fashion, but you don’t slow down fast. When I say ‘controlled’ you slow down in much the same way was a glacier slows down. Unless you have thighs like a track cyclist, but none of us in the Glasgow Wednesday night Track Meet C League are anything like track cyclists and neither are our thighs.

Cycling on a track is different than cycling on a road in one important way. Remember those 3 story high 46 deg steep banks? Well you don’t get them on the road. They are pretty scary, and best way to make sure you don’t fall off is to make sure you are going fast. Speed is your friend. The centripetal force welds you to the side of the track, much in the same way as if you were to birl a bucket of water round your head.

The problem with the track is that there is no rest. You are either battering round the track accelerating as fast as you can, or working against your hard won momentum and trying to slow down.  Your thighs burn constantly as you accelerate and decelerate, your lungs burn constantly as you try and hold the wheel of the guy in front, your eyes burn as the wind rushes past you. Everything hurts. But it’s fast, it’s furious and it’s fantastic.

It’s also bloody dangerous. I guess accidents are always going to happen. It's not just you on the track but about 30 other guys all straining every sinew to try and force their bike over the line first. 30 guys, none of whom have had more than a couple of months experience riding on a track, 30 guys on bikes with no brakes, with nothing to protect them but a stupid wee hat and 1mm of lycra. It's no wonder accidents happen, they’re bloody inevitable. A Simple Twist of Fate and you’re eating teeth and picking shards of Siberian pine out of your arse.

I saw it coming. I saw it coming a mile off. I saw the eejit in the blue looking backwards, slowing down and weaving over the track as a herd of 30 guys with no breaks piled headlong into a corner. All of them subconsciously speeding up so they don’t slide off the bank that was rapidly hoving into view. I remember thinking ‘What an eejit, if I were getting chased by a heard of elephants on bikes with no brakes, the last thing on my mind would be looking round to admire the view’. I saw the snot green jersey of the Velo Club Glasgow rider swerve to avoid the blue eejit but in doing so their wheels touched. I saw the eejit in the blue hit the deck and slide out down the track in front of the luminous Day-Glo green of the Johnston Wheeler who was in front of me. I saw the VC Glasgow rider career into the back wheel of the eejit and heroically try and summersault over the prone eejit whilst still attached to his bike. I saw him try and I saw him miserably fail. Not deterred by the gymnastic ineptitude of the VC Glasgow rider, the Johnston Wheeler not only tried to emulate him, but better him, except he came off his bike early on in the manoeuvre, his bike catapulting into the peloton ahead and rapping one of my fellow Gales across the knuckles. I remember hitting the VC Glasgow rider just after he failed to land his double salko, bumping up over his wheel and across his ankle, before my bike thought it was missing out on the action and decided to get airborne. I remember looking up and where I thought I would see sky I saw my shoes attached to my bike a sure sign that the universe is somewhat misaligned. Then I landed on my VC Glasgow compadre, my bike coming down on top of me a split second later. I didn’t see anything after that. Chiefly as I had curled up into a ball and closed my eyes in the infantile belief that if I couldn’t see the danger then the danger didn’t exist. I was wrong.  I think a bike ran over my hip and somebody else used my ankle to break his fall.

Amazingly after I had checked my limbs, my fingers and my toes I realised that every thing was present and correct. Other than being winded and a few bruises, scrapes and splinters and a dead leg I was in the rudest of health and fit enough to get into the next race.

So Elvis might be ever present on the hamster wheel, but last week at the Velodrome, when there was Blood on the Track(s) – Bob was my man.

From the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome,

n

Thats me on the left of the picture, cowered up into a little ball. Bracing myself before someone runs over me.

Nice 'lounge pants' huh? I got them cheap. 50% off. Cant think why. Id take them back, but I dont think I'd have a leg to stand on. I'm here all week.