kelewis

I've been riding road for around 2 years now. Recently, I visited the superdrome in frisco with a friend of mine. I live in San Antonio and attend Texas Tech in Lubbock. Both are around 5 hours away from Frisco. I race for Texas Tech on road, but am very interested in competing in Track as well.

My question is, will I be able to train on the road with a track bike while I'm in Lubbock?
Or does that sound like a bad idea and i should just stick with road cycling?

Any comments will be greatly appreciated.

TejanoTrackie 

You face the same situation as many racers in the USA in that you live too far from a velodrome to train there with any regularity. However, you can train on the road with a road bike for track racing by doing track-specific types of workouts. In fact, I live only 60 miles from the Superdrome, but still do some of my track type workouts on the road locally with my road bike. Basically, I do short interval type workouts that are highly aneorobic and well as big gear standing starts, little gear spin-outs etc. About the only thing you cannot simulate on the road is the track banking and skills. I rarely ride my track racing bike on the road, and mostly ride a street "fixie" with low gearing < 70gi for days when I want to recover with a lot of easy spinning.

Baby Puke

What Tejano says is valid- you can do a lot of training on a road bike that will help on the track. However, if you're new to track bikes and fixed gear bikes in general, it might be worthwhile spending some quality time on the road with your track bike. It's a very different feeling at first, and takes some getting used to. But don't be silly, please use a brake.

Actually, these days I only use the roadbike for recovery rides and longer rides where there might be hills or mountains. I do virtually all of my "track" training on the road on my second track bike. But this is certainly not necessary.

Ray R

I train and commute on a fixed gear road bike, mostly early in the season to build leg strength for climbing and develop spinning, since I'm over 50 now and starting to lose leg speed. The geometry is more relaxed and road-like than my track bikes and it has a front brake, although I try not to use it to develop the muscles used to slow the rear wheel. It also has a flip-flop hub so I can switch from an 81" gear to a 66" in case I need to climb a steeper gradient.

kelewis

Thanks for all the input guys. I guess I will work on acquiring a track bike now.

Can any one point me in the direction of a bike/frame that is suitable for the track and road friendly as well?

Dr. Banzai

I ride a Trek T1 on the street in the summer. When it starts raining the bike sees the indoor wooden velodrome. Working out for me so far.

*street being long flat straight roads with minimal traffic to I can spin and sprint without issue.

Ste_S

Apart from learning to ride fixed, I don't think there's any great advantage to training on a fixed on the road. Unless you live in a perfectly flat area, then your gear is always going to less than ideal.

On a road bike I have a selection of gears for what I want to do at any given point on a ride (namely threshold intervals for endurance, over-geared hill sprints for strength, downhill sprints or rollers for speed etc).

I probably wouldn't change from your road training to start with, especially if you want to keep up your road racing. You'll be fine, especially in the endurance events.