The Velodrome Suisse opened in June this year, and since then various groups of cyclists from Basel have been making the short 1 hour journey through the Jura to Grenchen. Today was the long awaited session organised by Klaus from Novartis. 17 of us, maybe only half from Novartis, had the track to ourselves for 3 hours. Firstly the track virgins (myself very much included here) circled around the flat area within the oval, we got used to the single fixed geared bikes while we waited for our instructors to arrive. Eventually one guy turned up speaking strong Swiss-German, I only managed to pick out a few important parts from his intro like "no brakes" and "no gear" but we knew that. Later a more skilled English speaker arrived and was able to answer more questions about the track riding.
Then onto the track, following closely behind our guide. We were travelling at a steady pace, but at first I felt like we weren't going fast enough and the bikes would slide down the steep incline. I was gripping the bars too tightly, it took a rest and another set of laps climbing higher and higher up the banks before I could relax and have faith that the wheels wouldn't slip down the bank.Our final set of guidance was a team pursuit style practise, where after each lap the lead rider would ride to the right up the bank, then drop to last place in the line. This worked surprisingly well, and was the most fun part of the group riding.
We then mostly rode our own style for a while, and finished with a timed lap of the velodrome (250m) One lap to start rolling, one lap getting into position then the bell sounded and we had our own individual lap timed. Quite a luxury to have a velodrome to ourselves for individual racing I think, and all those whose were track virgins had come along way today.
Great facilities, great rental bikes at only 25chf for the 3 hours (30chf) (though the restaurant closes at 4pm) would be nice to come back a few more times this winter.
