Back to talking about and doing velodrome track racing
Summer of 2025, potentially the last season for me to compete in Velodrome, aka track bike racing. If you have viewed or read this blog you know that recently I was in Colorado Springs participating in what I posted as my last National Championships, hosted this year at the US Training Center cement surface velodrome. You can look back in this blog and see how all that went, I won’t be reminiscing here about it. What I will say is the first week I was in CO training prior to the champ’s week, I really didn’t have my past fire. In fact, during that week I pulled my prescheduled week at World Champs off my calendar. I was enjoying my training time on the Boulder/Erie track, meeting up with past friends and getting to ride a velodrome again but the excitement about the entire event was lagging.
Just a reminder, MN had a velodrome from 1990 through 2019 in Blaine. The only outdoor, uncovered wood strip, Olympic style and size velodrome in the USA. I rode, trained and raced on it from about 2005 through the last season, 2019 when, in my opinion, some short-sighted management let it be destroyed. I loved the adventure of it, the community of people participating, the time I spent training, learning, working on and discovering part of me that I didn’t know existed. It was a marvelous 15 years of my life and because of the time I spent there, I was able to participate in National and World Masters track champs most years from 2009 through 2019. A great way to travel the USA and parts of the non-USA world.
After a week of training in August acclimating to the altitude, I moved from the Longmont area to Colorado Springs and participated in the National Champs hosted there. Lots of rekindled friendships and while there I learned that I really could race in my age group at that level and with encouragement from an LA friend as well as a bunch of Mpls friends, one who commented in the simplest way possible when I said it was time to quit. He just looked at me and asked: WHY! I didn’t have a great answer to the why. I still had the ability, I’ve been training for over a year to participate, and I really found most of the excitement again.
Back in MN, after gaining some awards at Nationals, I put Worlds back on my calendar and re committed. Nationals were the first part of August, Worlds the first week of October. A good amount of time to recover and freshen my training to be fit for a trip to Roubaix France for maybe my last World Master track champs. These races match everyone in 5-year age groups, so the competition is fair and balanced.
If you have been on this blog before, you know I can rattle on and on about my cycling and other adventures. I plan to post a variety of detailed day by day reports soon as I have in the past that will be findable under the MENU to the right on the main blog page plus pictures and maybe a video or two.
For now, here is a reasonably quick summary of the overall two-week adventure. You can always check the menu if you need the crazy details of the trip and the challenges, but it will be a week or so before those pages are done.
The travel and race plan was to be gone for about 2 weeks. With very little chance for me to train on a velodrome, only March of 2025 in CO and the July/Aug 2025 back to CO, I flew to France a week early, scheduling an hour of training each of three days prior to the official start of competition. Each track has its own characteristics, and I was hoping to just get a feel for the Roubaix track and remind myself again what riding a fixed gear bike on a 43-degree angle banked 250-meter velodrome was like. The saying goes; it’s just riding a bike. Well yes and no at this level.
Travel is always a challenge for events like this. Bringing a bike, spare wheel sets, tools, spares, extra gearing sets, special bike clothing (commonly called kit). It’s a challenge. A big bike box, plus another bag at max weight need to be checked and then a stuffed carry-on backpack is what I had to manage.
A Monday flight out with an arrival in France early Tuesday morning into Charles De Gaulle airport, a massive place, all booked. Arrived and then find luggage, excellent, it all arrived. (Some years it hasn’t) Now find the rental car, and a 2 plus hour drive to Roubaix Airbnb with a check in time after 5 P.M. I’m there early so a trip to the velodrome to drop the bike and bike gear, some essential shopping and finally check in. Settle in after 30 hours awake, time to sleep. Night all!
Tuesday, after a 13-hour sleep, I panic because I’m about to be late for my first training session. No worries, I made it barely as the track was only a 10-minute drive from my lodging. Wednesday and Thursday are mostly uneventful, two more training sessions, all enjoyable and going to plan. One snag, my LA buddy sends me a text and asks if I decided not to attend as my name is not on the official start and rider list. Now that is a new quirk I haven’t had to deal with. Not like adding some stress that I don’t need. I am already a bit stressed adjusting to a 7-hour time change (France is 7 hours later than MN time, noon here, 7 P.M. there, etc.) the language fun and just getting used to traffic and a ton of other changes to habits. I’m not sleeping all that great, waking middle of the night, reading some and then trying to sleep again. By Saturday morning, the official first day of registration I get approved to be a racer and get my entry badge and race numbers, I am very happy to clear that stress off my plate. I can now relax a bit more and focus on my 3 upcoming races.
Three race days on the calendar, one race per day, all the events later in the day and sometimes almost end of day. Monday, a 5K, 20 lap Scratch Race, a race I have done well in the past, Tuesday a 500 meter, 2 lap Individual Time Trial, not really a race for me, just an event that helps make coming here worthwhile, I am only hoping not to be last in my age group and then Wednesday, a 10K, 40 lap Points race that is won by gaining points on each of 4 sprints every 10 laps.
The summary version of the results is, 6th overall in a chaotic Scratch race that had two crashes, one involving me, numerous extra neutral laps because of foolish rider actions. The 500TT, I have no place to train for the technical nature of it so I did what I could, not last but 12th out of 16 signed up to race it. The Points race, mixed feelings with a 4th place overall getting 1 point on the second sprint and 4 points on the last sprint finishing 3rd across the finish line at the end. The Points race was a small field, one DNS due to injury from the Monday crash and one DNS due to some illness.
Overall, I have mixed emotions, disappointed to have crashed, first time ever at a World champ event out of 10 or 11 events I’ve attended over the years. A poorly executed 500TT due to no place to adequately train for a track 500. Slightly disappointed in the points race, where I felt fit. On hind sight, I picked the wrong gearing to be up to podium level, another one of those wish I had a velodrome to train on as I did prior to 2019.
Thursday was an off day to visit a wonderful town in Belgium, Ypres (also named Leper depending on which language you speak I believe) It’s only about 1.5-hour drive from Roubaix, wonderful casual day off. Friday was a pack up the car and get back to an overnight stay hotel very close to the airport so that I could avoid any early Saturday morning chaos. My shuttle van got me to the airport in plenty of time even with massive traffic delays, the airline check in with oversized and weight baggage was relatively successful and easy, then a wait on the plane for an hour take off delay which contributed to a missed connection in Cincinnati, rebook to Detroit, 1.5 hour take off delay in Detroit, arrive in Mpls about 10:30 P.M. instead of 5:30 P.M. and now I have been awake for about 27 hours, drive home, no unpacking and into bed for a comfy 10 plus hour sleep.
Whew!! I survived another trip to Europe, air flight craziness, oversized and heavy baggage management, enjoying the challenge of a world where I am the one searching for language skills, Bonjour being the first word out of your mouth to start ANY conversation. Learning even what seems like the easy stuff, how cc’s work, how to make gas station pumps work, understanding the world of round abouts, unusual looking street signs and pavement markings, narrow streets, lots of one-way streets, aggressive, yet courteous drivers, plus all the things I am already forgetting after being back only a week, feels like forever ago!
Some Pictures you say? Here ya go click this link.https://pjwracingadventures.com/worlds-track-championships/2025-world-masters-track-championships/roubaix-2025/
Looking for the next chapter in this adventure, you can click here. https://pjwracingadventures.com/worlds-track-championships/2025-world-masters-track-championships/and-so-it-begins/
Or get there the long way via the MENU, scroll all the way to the bottom of a long list of pages and look for “And So it Begins”
Amazing adventure! So happy you survived it ❤️