Thursday 28 November 2019 - A Taster Session at the Velodrome

 

A long awaited trip to Manchester's Velodrome finally came to fruition today. Sue and I joined eight others for a taster session.

 

Andy, who we could have encountered at last Saturday's Alexandra parkrun - he finished in under 18 minutes, gave us a safety briefing after we'd been fitted with bikes, toe straps, etc, whilst the bikes hung on to the railings.

 

 

Basically, we had to 'Keep Pedalling', and look back over either our right or left shoulder, depending on where we were on the track, to avoid turning into passing traffic. Keeping pedalling is quite important, as failure to do so jolts you off the bike, and as these bikes are fixed wheel bikes with no brakes there's a learning curve.

 

I was helped by the knowledge that I spent a short period cycling to and fro to Manchester from Bury when I was taking my University finals for the second time and living with Jim and Cath - back in 1971. I was pleased not to have brakes this time; Jim's old bike had a front brake only, and that kept trying (and succeeding) to throw me over the handlebars.

 

I couldn't take the camera onto the track, so I only managed to get a picture of Sue as she was finishing, having been granted an extra lap due to a puncture, and narrowly avoiding being trashed by the GB peleton.

 

 

We started on dark blue, moved to light blue for a few laps, then graduated to the rest of the track. The idea was to stay above the advertising patches, but that was quite hard work. You have to pedal harder around the corners to maintain height on the steep banking.

 

I reckon we did about 40 to 50 laps of the 250 metre circuit - maybe 10km during the hour's session. Here is our group of ten at the end of the session.

 

 

Andy took this photo for us.

 

 

This is the National Cycling Centre, home of British Cycling. Many members of the team were engaged in exercises in the central area, and as soon as we had finished they were practising all manner of things, from starts to sprints, on the track.

 

 

This was all great fun, after which we enjoyed lunch in the excellent café, before waving goodbye to one of the resident bees.

 

 

We commend anyone to book a taster session, it really was most enjoyable. We'll be back.