xengravity

The people there were awesome and so friendly which always makes the experience much better.

I wanted to check out their "Fast Twitch Friday's" where they hold Match Sprints and Keirins every Friday which is generally unheard of anywhere else in the US.

Had about 7 hours of driving that day but completely worth it.


The track is a 1/6th mile track (268M) with 43 banked turns. The shape of the track is "abnormally" elongated which makes the turns very sharp.

On my first attempt at a hard effort I had my rear wheel go airborne into turn one completely changing the path of the bike which scared the hell out of me. That's never happened before.



The next attempt I had my front wheel go airborne out of turn two.

And every subsequent race seemed to get a bit smoother each time.

It's an interesting track to say the least, which makes it very fun. It will take more than a day to get used to it.

TrackMonkey7

I feel like every track has that atmosphere. Londonderry had it, and so did Kissena which I visited this past Wednesday. And great racing on your part! Those were some really well judged match sprints, and sitting on the front like that during the keirin was really impressive. Why do you suppose your wheels kept grabbing airtime? I should imagine Carleton will be along to explain...

Kayce

Stand up while going down a steep corner takes some practice to get used to. Push down on the bars, going down hill, and pulling the pedals all lead to an unweighted back wheel.

Brian Ratliff

Hey, you left out a race from your video...

Nice meeting you out there. Hopefully see you out there at AVC.

Brian Ratliff

Our track is constructed of two true semicircles and two true straights connected with "transitions". The straights are of one angle banking and the turns are another angle banking with the transitions smoothing the change between the two. Contrast this to an Olympic track where the banking is continuously changing. With Alpenrose, you are basically going from one plateau to another, which means the wheel skips as it goes over the ramp connecting the two. At an Olympic track, there are no plateaus; the banking continuously increases as you go from the pursuit line to the middle of the turn, and continuously decreases as you go from the middle of the turn to the pursuit line.

The key to not skipping your wheel is anticipating the ramp and shifting your weight and steering accordingly to keep the wheel on the ground. The line taken in the second video is the hardest to keep solid.

xengravity

I was seated in the saddle on that animated gif. It's not from standing up as i've been on steeper tracks without issue; rather it's exactly what Brian is describing in post 5.

I didn't have the time to properly get that line down, but it's the first track where there are two completely different lines people regularly take for a flying 200. I found that really interesting.

I'm not sure what I should do the next time I go to Alpenrose: try the same line again and try to fix the hop or go the "local" route which I think avoids it all together.

xengravity

Hey Brian! You were one of the reasons why it was so great. Thanks for being so welcoming.

Unfortunately the videos were shot on my cell phone and the memory filled up on the last match sprint and it only got the first lap :/

My Fiance had to stop and delete previous videos to make room for the last keirin.

But you taught me a good lesson that I can't overtake on turn 4

Brian Ratliff

Believe it or not, it used to be worse prior to the late '90s when the transitions were rebuilt. Before, if you were up towards the top of the track at speed, it was common to catch air coming out of turns 2 and 4. During mass start events, there would be a big push every lap going into turns 1 and 3 to get down towards the sprinters lane to avoid this.