Just saw one of these events pop up locally as a fundraiser for the pump track they are building in my city. Hosted at a local brewery in a few weeks, bike event at a brewery who can say no? Just confirmed we have nothing going on that day and will be signing up shortly.
Anyone done one of these and have any insight?
From what I gather for those who have not heard of this, after watching a few youtube videos, fixed gear bikes on fork stand type rollers with a speed sensor and you race head to head first to X distance. This event happens to be a 32 person bracket. Races seem to be 15-20 seconds all out sprints. Everyone on the same bikes, I did see some where people were swapping out pedals but mostly it seems like toe clips or exercise bike type velcro strap pedals.
I’m built for racing where kg part of the w/kg calculation isn’t a factor so other than my training never really has any focus on 15-30 second power I might do okay there. I’m more of a masher than a spinner and lately my cadence has been on the low side, so that might be good for getting up to speed but not sure I can hold it.
I have 2 weeks, training tips? I don’t expect to win, just want to make it at least 1 round.
What was your experience with this? Also curious what the format was for fundraising (how much did they charge for entry, etc)?
Just looked it up, the cost was 32 bucks. Not 100% sure how that worked out for like what the group got fundraising wise vs equipment costs. They had an raffle as well and I think the bar gave them a cut where it was held. The raffle was lots of donations some bike related some not and you just bought tickets and dropped them in a cup near an item and they would draw them between races. I would guess the raffle brought in the most.
The racing was fun, out of my element but fun. There was a big window of time before the actual race to come in and try it out, you also did your qualifying run, which was a shorter distance. I thought I did decent, but apparently was near the bottom. After seeing things progress the guys that were good at it were VERY good at it. The final few guys were all BMX racers other than one dude with a life cycle shirt on, which makes sense its a single speed bike you just spin all out on so BMX and possibly a spin guy were used to that. I can’t recall how slow I was or how fast they were but for scale if I was 30 seconds, they were taking 20.
The final two were a bmx guy with a broken collar bone? (arm was in a sling) and the life cycle guy. I think the BMX guy won.
Glad I did it and would do it again, maybe go to a few spin classes ahead of time.
(in the shorts)
#FunFact, pre-TrainerRoad days, Coach Chad would often win our local GoldSprints that would rotate through random bars in town. This was when he owned the indoor cycling studio that eventually led Nate and him to develop TrainerRoad.
A lot of it back then, not sure about now, wasn’t necessarily about power, but cadence, as they were done on fixed gear bikes on a trainer. Essentially if you could hold 130rpm for 20+ seconds, you’d be pretty set.
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