This last weekend I went to Denver to meet my new national teammates on Treads.com/DFT. As part of the group activities, the track at Boulder Indoor Cycling was rented for part of Saturday and we all got to learn how to ride the track bikes and then a few of us did some “efforts.” It was a blast.

When we got our initial tour around the track, I confess I was a little stunned at 45 degree banking. I kept having to remind myself physics were on  my side so long as I kept my speed up. Our instructor said the minimum speed required was 15 mph, which isn’t hard to maintain at all on the track bikes, which are fixed gears. If you aren’t familiar with those, it’s a set-up whereby you have a single ring and a single cog – like a single speed, but no freewheel. If you were to pedal backwards, your bike would move in reverse. There are no brakes. You can only stop be exerting backwards force with your legs. Thus, once up to speed on this little track, I think it takes 2-4 laps to safely bring speed down to a point where one can reach the sprint line and then come off the track at the target location.

The "efforts": Group lines up at endurance-tempo pace. Leader drops to sprint line for hot laps until catching back on to the line end.

If you get into the area, you should really take an hour and try this out. It’s super fun. Imagine the day you felt fastest. This is what it’s like. No wind but that which you make as you fly round the track. This particular track seemed awfully fun b/c there was really no time to ever get bored. If you weren’t whipping round the ends, you were going down then up and into the end turn.

If you do go, take your pedals. They have bikes, but you’ll want your own pedals. And, throw in your mountain bike. They’ve got this whole MTB course in the center of the track area. Looked like great practice for those of you who like going over wobbly bridges and all sorts of weird, skin your shin looking stuff.

They even have a course outside the main area for itty bitty kids whose bikes don’t even have pedals yet. Great place to take the family and you should definitely stop in if you’re in the area.

Oh, and those closed roller skating rinks we have around? This is what at least one of them ought to be turned into. When we were there, they were setting up for a birthday party. Kids were hauling in their mtb and bmx bikes and it was looking to be a good time.