I’ve lived five minutes cycle away from the Herne Hill Velodrome for years, but never been until I went to a track cycling induction session tonight.
I took my teen daughter along to the session which was for women only. My daughter has been cycling on the road since the start of lockdown so I thought she’d find it fun to give a different kind of bike a go. We were all on fixed gear bikes that have no brakes or gears. We strapped out feet tightly into the pedals, balanced with one hand on the fence and then pushed off for a wobbly start as we did a first lap of the track.
To slow down we would start dropping our speed at the last turn of the oval until we can grab the fence to come to a stop as braking isn’t an option. This took a bit of getting used to as did building speed to go up the 45 degree bank. The session was around 90 minutes and covered the basics of track cycling to allow moving on to the regular weekly sessions. They have sessions for over 40s that I might investigate soon if I can handle laps in the freezing cold!
Check out www.hernehillvelodrome.com for more info.
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