I’ve been commuting on a racer since 1999. I have cleats, and make that self-righteous clicking-in noise when I push off at traffic lights. I have bum-padded shorts, a helmet (OK, it’s in the shape of R2-D2). I’m not especially quick but I never fall off. What could possibly go wrong when I try track cycling for the first time? It’ll be just like going to the shops, except a little bit faster.
Ah hubris, thy name is later-life fitness columnist. I showed up one morning at Herne Hill Velodrome, where I used to go to watch the Easter meets, in my 20s. I remember it for baking hot bank holidays and handsome Cubans in powder-blue Lycra. I do not remember it being raked like the inside of a steel drum. I did not bank on having to use a special bike, which I was fitted out with by a gentleman no older than 12. All the way through his adjusting my seat to an impossible height, the only thing I wanted to say was, “Why aren’t you at school?” It was an introductory session for women and the over-45s. I didn’t stop to think what it might mean if you were both. I didn’t stop to think at all.
You can never stop pedalling on a track bike. You want to go faster, you pedal faster; you want to go slower, you pedal more slowly, until you are at walking speed, then you grab the side railing. You can’t coast, you can’t brake; you have no way of knowing if you can stop at all until you’ve tried it. I found this terrifying. There’s a track like a hard shoulder round the inside of the course, and our first exercise was just to cycle round that. I can’t even begin to explain how afraid I was.
“I’ve got the heebie-jeebies,” I said. “I’ll just wait till the others have gone.” “No, you’re fine,” said coach Peter, grabbing my handlebars and setting me off. It was the bike equivalent of slapping a horse’s arse. This was fine; I was moving. I got round the track. I figured we would just carry on doing that, for an hour and a half. We did that once.
Next, you have to practise staying on a lane. “It doesn’t get steeper the higher you go – it’s not a banana shape,” Peter said. Try telling that to my stupid brain. Even in the lowest lane, I felt as if I was at right angles to the ground. Two lanes higher, I couldn’t figure out how I was staying upright. We moved immediately on to staying on each other’s wheel.
Look, I’ve seen it done, staying a wheel’s distance from the person ahead, and I am relatively happy about it, when I have brakes. Without them, I can’t even comprehend the depth of trust I would need when I have no idea what the other rider might do next. I dropped miles behind, ruining it for everyone. They, meanwhile, got really good. Whoever would have guessed that the person in the R2-D2 helmet would be the one with no backbone? I felt fabulous afterwards, of course: raw fright is great for the spirits. But I won’t be rushing back to the track.
What I learned
When you overtake, you should say “stay” to the person you’re overtaking. When five people overtake you, it’s like being a bad dog in a pub.
