4. What are the Benefits of Velodrome Racing?
Did you ever race on track?
Track or velodrome racing can be very beneficial for other types of cycling like road cycling, cyclocross or mountain biking.
Beside Time Trials, cycling is never steady like long-distance running where you need to keep the same high pace for whole duration or race. In cycling, we can see constantly changing speed, smaller and bigger accelerations which many times knock you off the race.
Track cycling is mostly about extremely hard accelerations and being able to repeat them as many times as possible. We are talking about hitting your sub-maximal, maximal watts multiply times.
We always see track cyclists with big hips and looking more like bodybuilders then cyclists. And that is true that track cyclists spend more time at the gym then riding their bikes.
But it doesn’t mean that you can’t benefit from track cycling! Actually, this explosive power can help you in many situations on-road or off-road.
Think when you are riding in the group and someone created gap in front of him, and now you need to close this gap, you can spend a few minutes to try to close it very steadily with group of riders on your wheel or you can accelerate for 6-8s lose the “tail” and catch up with the group in the front.
You need those accelerations in cyclocross when someone blocks you and you need to slow down, coming out of the slower turns or during longer straits where you can pass riders.
Take advantage of track cycling and if you have a chance and even put it into your weekly training plan, and remember one most important rule of track cycling “you go as hard as possible or as easy as possible”.