The Cyclist's Wife: The Velodrome - Tax Day Match Sprints

We took a trip to the Hellyer Park Velodrome last Sunday for the Tax Day Match Sprints event.

For those of you not familiar with a velodrome, it is an arena for track cycling. This one is 330 meters, so slightly smaller than a regular running track.

With his success at Savage Sprints (and sprinting skills in general), The Cyclist was encouraged by many of our local cycling community to try out the track. He went a few times before this event in order to get his track license in order and we headed down to San Jose for the event on Sunday.
Spectating track cycling is a whole different medium. The races are much faster and you can see the entire event, as opposed to watching the pack pass by on multiple occasions.
They started the day off with a time trial in order to seed the competitors into brackets.(You go girl, the only lady in the pack racing all the dudes!)

Once the tt's were done, the Match Sprints started. I'm explaning this with my limited track cycling knowledge here, so it's probably not perfect, but, essentially two riders go head to head for two laps.
They line up holding on to the wall, and put their left hand in the drop when they're ready.

The first lap they ride very slow. Like almost stopping slow. It is like watching a game of cat and mouse. "You go....no YOU go...".

The rider in front is constantly looking back to make sure they don't get sneak-attacked by the rider behind.

And then, somewhere between the start and middle of the second lap, they GO! And from there it's a straight up sprint to the finish.

This was really exciting to watch. There are many different other types of races which I have yet to learn, but I'm looking forward to spending some more time at the track.....I just wish it wasn't 2 hours away. :(
Here I think, is my best shot of the day....