Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - Kenosha Velodrome - TUESDAY 8/31

It's the final tuesday night of the season in Kenosha (then, the following weekend is a 3 day tournament). Ventura and Carney have been convinced by local shop owner to throw down in a best-of-3 round of Match Sprints! Awesome! They're both great sprinters and this is destined to be a good show! They're both talking about retiring as well, so it might be the last track race of their professional carreers. It's a great opportunity to see racing at it's best at the coolest velodrome within 500 miles of Chicago!
Racing starts at 7pm

The big names are during the weekend or the 31st?

The 31st. Thanks for correcting this.
Wanna go? I will probably leave for there after work Tuesday

']The 31st. Thanks for correcting this.
Wanna go? I will probably leave for there after work Tuesday

Already promised my old soccer kids that I would play with them. Don't wanna ditch them after not returning as coach this year. Take lots o'pics?

will do

Too far away... :( Too bad, I would have loved to have seen Ventura race one last time! It was a damn shame he had to crash out in the DG Crit in the eighth (and final) turn in the FINAL lap headed to the finish... like just over 100 meters. :( Just heartbreaking. I know how badly he wanted to win that one.

Koffee

']It's the final tuesday night of the season in Kenosha (then, the following weekend is a 3 day tournament). Ventura and Carney have been convinced by local shop owner to throw down in a best-of-3 round of Match Sprints! Awesome! They're both great sprinters and this is destined to be a good show! They're both talking about retiring as well, so it might be the last track race of their professional carreers. It's a great opportunity to see racing at it's best at the coolest velodrome within 500 miles of Chicago!
Racing starts at 7pm

Tonight was the season finale here at the Marymoor Velodrome. The two top racers are Kenny Williams and Ryan Miller. Kenny and his girlfriend Annette Hanson recently returned from the Master's Nationals in LA. Kenny one 6 national titles and Annette won 7! Both received best all-around gold medals. BTW Annette races and wins alot of the cat 3 MEN's races.

Jim

EDIT: Oh Jeez... I can't resist ... Here's Kenny Williams edging out the one and only Marty Nothstein at the Alpenrose Challenge last year. They were pretty evenly matched:

4K Men's
1 Kenny Williams (Saturn for Seattle) 4:58.41
2 Marty Nothstein (Navigators) 4:59.28

1K Men's
1 Marty Nothstein (Navigators) 1:10.04
2 Kenny Williams (Saturn for Seattle) 1:11.38

Nice add! Thanks for the pic too!

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Okay, I'm pretty dumb when it comes to velodromes (never been to one), but aren't most of them indoors? Why don't they function year round? Do they at least let people ride them in the winter?

Sorry if it's a stupid question....

Okay, I'm pretty dumb when it comes to velodromes (never been to one), but aren't most of them indoors? Why don't they function year round? Do they at least let people ride them in the winter?


The shorter tracks (200-250m) are usually indoor and made of wood, while the longer ones (400m) tend to be outdoor and made from concrete. I think most tracks are seasonal for the same reason that most sports are; to give the racers an opportunity to rest and recover. Many track racers participate in other forms of racing too. The season isn't as strongly defined as other sports though. The local velodrome here (Marymoor) is outdoor and racing occurs in the summer. The Burnaby Velodrome (BC, Canada), is smaller, indoor and has a race schedule that runs through the winter.

Here's a decent intro to track racing and velodromes:

If you ever have the opportunity to go to a velodrome .... do it. If you have one in your vicinity then support it if you can. There aren't many them and those of us who live near one are fortunate indeed.

http://www.burnabyvelodrome.ca/overview.html

Hope this helps...

Jim

Thanks for the info. There's one near me, but it's 40 miles away. Or maybe that was 40 there and back. Still more than I wanted to ride. One of the problems with being completly carless... Last time I looked, they only had events through the beginning of sept...

Maybe next year...

All of the wooden dromes that I know of are inside. But Washington Bowl in Kenosha is outside and gets pretty nasty in winter, thus the short season. I'd guess it would cost too much to keep the track clean in winter, and/or not enough people would be up for racing in the cold. I dunno about other tracks, but the bowl is in a county park 'open to the public' so you could ride it anytime year round. Ice on banked turns isn't pretty though.

Thanks for the info. There's one near me, but it's 40 miles away. Or maybe that was 40 there and back. Still more than I wanted to ride. One of the problems with being completly carless... Last time I looked, they only had events through the beginning of sept...

Maybe next year...

40 miles there and back isn't so bad. We still have a couple days to make a trip there.

The only events still listed on the Blaine velo's site are for Thurs the 2nd (King of the Sprint) and Thurs the 9th ('black jack' points race). Both would be complete and utter hell for me. Tues and wed are now 10-12 hour days for me, and I have to work on Thurs. Since I already took the 12th off (gotta make that bar crawl), no chance of getting either off now. Gonna have to be spring...

If anyone wants to know, this is our velo out here :

http://www.nscsports.org/velo/

I dunno about other tracks, but the bowl is in a county park 'open to the public' so you could ride it anytime year round. Ice on banked turns isn't pretty though.

At Marymoor, the rule is: If there are no brakeless track bikes on the track then the public is free to try it out. I tried it one sunday afternoon and my level of respect for track racers went up another 20 knotches.... 3 fast-ish laps on the 400m track and I was looking for an iron lung. ;-) My friend James has just started racing in the Monday night series so now I go twice a week ;-)

I don't own a car either but my girlfriend and one of my friends do so I've always managed to find a ride. By bicycle, it's 56 miles round trip.....really nice ride too.

Jim