Track Cycling in Portland, OR
 

My question is for any track riders from the Portland area, or any intermediate to experienced riders who are familiar with the Portland area and the outdoor velodrome there.

I am thinking about moving to Portland in the next year or so after I save money. I am getting more into track cycling and want to focus solely on this type of racing. I am currently being coached and have begun to take training for race season seriously.

If I am trying to take training seriously, would Portland be a good decision? I know it rains there pretty often so I wasn't sure if it would be a waste of time. I love the area but really want a good amount of time dedicated to riding the track and training. I was told LA would be a better choice for track focus, but I just don't like the Carson/Long Beach area all that much. I'm currently in the San Jose, CA area, riding at Hellyer park.

Thank you to anyone who has any feedback!

Based on experiences my friends and other racers have had, if you want to be serious about training, you should move to LA . ADT is unquestionably the premier velodrome in the US and has the most comprehensive system of coaches and trainers available. I don't doubt that one could become a premier track cyclist in Portland, but the facilities don't exist there like they do in LA.

It doesn't rain much in LA, and when it does you can still ride the track...

Whether you like LA or not all depends on whether you like your neighborhood (and there are plenty of decent ones to live in that are all fairly different in feel) and can avoid having to spend a lot of time on the freeway commuting.

That's kind of a stretch. If portland is your dream town no matter where you live in LA it's not going to come close.

portland sucks. the bike scene here sucks too. you would probably be better off moving to la.

It's all a matter of opinion...

thus, giving mine.

Thanks for everyones replies. Good advice, well taken.

This is second hand, as I've never ridden there, but I'm told Alpenrose is a very difficult track to ride. Natives can correct or comment.

GO TO PORTLAND....L.A. SUCKS!!!!!!!!!
The Govenator just raised our income taxes, doubled our already expensive car registration and raised the sales tax by 1%, putting the sales tax in L.A. at 9.25%-10.25% depending on the city. The highest in the country. Also our unemployment is at 10%, the highest in the nation.

That isn't a huge difference from where you are, but if I had the option to go somewhere else...I would.

Portland is a super cool town, the bike scene overall is pretty good from my understanding and experience. Alpenrose is a real fun track with nice steep banks. Portland does not suck...

this...

then...

I lol'd. Sounds like someone is a little bitter to me.

People are bitter about the wave of transplants moving into Portland over the past 5 or 10 years. As a born and raised native, I don't really blame them honestly. Enough Californians move in and we're going to lose a lot of what makes the city a good place to live (which is mostly to say, you're upping our cost of living).

Alpenrose is a great local scene but it's not national caliber. ADT is. The cream of the crop at Alpenrose go to ADT to race Nationals when our track season ends. Actually, the most national caliber racing we have in Portland would be CX.

That's not how the OP phrased things--he doesn't like Carson/LB. There's a lot more LA than that without being to inconvenient to Carson. It wasn't "Portland is my dream town, do you think I can stand LA".

For most people I've met here the big determinants are a) do you like your neighborhood, and b) can you tolerate your commute. I live a few hundred yards from a rather large national forest, ride my bike to work on days that I'm not going to carson afterward, have two tracks within a 40 minute drive, and some pretty nice road and mountain bike rides out my door with as much or little climbing (minimum of about 1500 ft on a ride though...) as I want. This time of year I can usually ride to snow within an hour or two of my door (sometimes a lot less than that...)

And my car registration is still pretty cheap, but I drive a cheap car...

I have a question about LA that may make some of you laugh: Is it possible to get to ADT or Encino velodrome by public transport? I have to ask. Thinking about where I want to live after Tokyo, and LA's relative proliferation of tracks is attractive, but driving a car is out of the question for me (hate 'em too much). Taking the train to the track here (three of them) is spoiling me for the States, quite possibly.

You can get close to ADT on the train, but still have to pedal a few miles. We had a guy who rode his track bike from home in pasadena to the train station, took the train, and pedaled a couple miles to the track. There are probably buses that get you closer, since it's in a big sports complex. I think it's buses only to encino.

When I was in Minnesota we just kept our track bikes at the track and rode our road bikes there and back, which is an option for either track depending on where you live. It would be a pain if you rode them both regularly, but not much different what people with lockers at ADT deal with.

My point exactly!! Even our Governor is a freakin transplant.......GO HOME! YOU PEOPLE HAVE RUINED MY STATE. Yea, yea, I know, 99.9999999% of the people in the U.S. are from somewhere else. Including me and I'm a 6th generation Californian.

the only good thing about the portland bike scene is that you can get tons of used track parts on CL from all the stupid wannabe messengers.

Like that andre nickatina guy

I hear Phomma got the hook up on cheap and/or free GT's.

Obra list

:rolleyes::innocent::roflmao2:

Stuff like this makes me laugh.

I've lived in Seattle and Portland areas my whole life and if you want to ride year round it sucks, not too mention the weather freakin blows and is depressing and the women are just as dull,, the lack of sunshine is near debillatating, I try to stay in shape through the winter but every track season I feel like I'm starting over... there's plenty of fixsters in both towns but the track scenes are kinda weak and yuppie,, I've been getting ready to move to norcal so I can ride road year round and travel to race track in the summers,,

Hahaha!

Yeah, Portland never seemed like a dream city to me. The SF Bay Area (SF, Oakland, San Jose) might have the best cycling/weather/lifestyle mix of the cities that have velodromes. When I lived out that way I didn't race bikes, but it rained maybe 10-14 days the whole year and the summer and winter temperatures were very moderate. Jeans and tshirts in summer, jeans and sweatshirts in winter.

And there's a group of people trying to get an indoor velodrome built in the bay area (east bay specifically) so things are looking up for us cycling wise.