Love this pic:
Ride Bikes
real bike tales from someone not even trying to be a pro
Tagged with track …
The Keiran @ Dick Lane Velodrome 5/8/2010
Saturday evening Graham said “come to DLV and get yourself in a better mood”, so I packed up a cooler full of cold ones and headed that way. The final rounds of their first pro racing series were due to start about 6ish. Waaaay rad poster for the events this year:
The weather was fairly cool which made it a great evening to take in some racing. Bonus level: hottie NPR interview babe-tron Graham was recorded by last time was spacing around again with her headphones on. I love her so much.
The racing was great! We got there in time to catch some of the young riders from Bicycle Little League doing their thing. Those kids really have the spirit and it is great to see people that young already into the racing scene. My only other experience seeing young riders like that was BMX racing at Oregon Ridge Park in Baltimore circa like 1983 or something.
The adult riders were caning it proper. I took my camera but for some reason the only shots I got of any racing were on the iPhone:
Speeds were HIGH and there were a few spills. Track racing is just freakin sick when you are there in person to witness it. My favorite rider of the day was this dude Spiderman, who was all kitted out as the web slinger. He might have gotten discounted for the novelty gear and considered an also-ran if he would have just brought up the rear every race, but he was riding fairly aggressively which made the wacky kit seem all the more wicked.
The whole evening (and I suppose a bunch of qualifying earlier in the day but I could be wrong) lead up to a really kick ass final. Here is a little vid of the final laps:
Please excuse my vertically oriented iPhone vid quality, I did the best I could. What I really want you to see if the energy of the crowd. People were hanging over the rail banging on the boards cheering on the riders…the whole mess coming to a huge crescendo with the that song from ROCKY running in the background.
While I was spacing around I grabbed a couple of snaps of this really interesting vehicle, which is used to motor pace the starts of the Kieran races.
Can’t help but wonder if it came with the Rock Shox or if someone did a little -upgrade-. I noticed that the driver was pedaling the entire time even though the motor seemed to be delivering the power. You think you can push a gear this tall?
One other thing I noticed was that the speed this thing would travel at seemed remarkable consistent. It may be diferent when you are actually on the thing, but from the bleachers it looked like there was almost no variation in speed once it got going, which is probably important when leading out a pace line of bikes that cannot stop or slow down quickly.
All in all it was huge fun, and Graham was right…it did get me into a better mood.
add me on twitter @RobertAshton 
holes
The pics of this bike have been going around the track bikey blogs for a few days now…
Yeah its a cool bike and all that blah blah blah. But that is not why I am re-posting the pics. What I want to know is, WTF is the deal with the gigantic holes where thye pedal shafts would screw into the crank arms? They are def not the standard 9/16″ holes, they are WAY larger.
Anyone?
wait, what?
From Velo News
“Thirty-two-year-old Chris Hoy won three gold medals on the velodrome at this summer’s Beijing Olympics and 23-year-old Lewis Hamilton is the youngest-ever world champion in Formula 1 auto racing.
Despite their reliance on different tools of the trade, promoters of the upcoming Race of Champions have concluded that the two might be able to match their respective skills in a head-to-head race over the course of a twisting one-kilometer route to be constructed on the field of London’s Wembley Stadium next month.”
Apparantly, this is not a joke…read about it here
Festival of Speed
Saturday I made the trek to East Point to meet up with Graham and check out the Festival of Speed at Dick Lane Velodrome. It was probably the biggest crowd I have seen there yet, although I will admit I haven’t been to every FOS. I walked in the gate just as the Natty Anthem was being wrapped up, and the racing started with the quickness.
My favorite type of race is the “Miss and Out”, in which the last rider to cross the line every lap is dropped from the race. This format makes every lap exciting.
Of course, the track is a total haven for bikespotting. One of my fave rides on the night was this BREW…
I’m a big fan of BREW ever since I looked into places I could learn to build a frame, and found out that they custom build BMX frames as well as track, road and mountain! I would LOVE to go to their frame building class.
While watching the younger aged girls race, we kept seeing this one bike that looked different from the others…the bottom bracket was really high and it just had a different stance than all the other bikes. We weren’t sitting close enough to really figure out what the deal was on it, so after the race I headed over to scope it out…
Turns out it was an MCS 24″ frame hooked up with fixed rear hub and drops! I thought that was just freakin awesome. Interesting application. She was running Bulletproof cranks, and I don’t know how long they were, but with that high BB surely she had no problem with pedal strike.
As evening settled in there were some Keiran races. I kind of thought the Keirans were not that exciting. What they lacked in action they made up for in speed though. Trailing behind a motorbike to draft for the first few laps = high danger level and high mph.
There was a brief intermission before the final race so I tried to grab a pic where you could see the whole track, but I couldn’t get high enough or far away enough to get the effect I really wanted. Still, isn’t it awesome that this track is right in the middle of a neighborhood?
The last race was a gigantic 60 lap Madison. The Madison is pretty wicked because the riders work as pairs and when they switch places, one rider grabs onto the other and slings him ahead to give him some momentum. This was the race I was most interested to check out.
Unfortunately, it was kind of tough to keep track of this race. My hat is off to the announcer who seemed to stay up to speed on who was where and what battles were taking place, because after a while the track was just filled with riders all over the place.
Overall it was totally worth the trip. I love the sound the track bikes make when there are like 30 of them blazing past you in a pack. Great Job Festival of Speed organizers.
Go Fast, Turn Left
The Festival of Speed at Dick Lane Velodrome is always fun, and the third and final for the year is coming up next weekend. There’s everyone from local kids (Bicycle Little League) to big-time pros racing. Looks like there’s a fierce showdown shaping up between Team Type 1 and Jittery Joe’s. Be there!
Click the pic for the full PDF flier.
