Bloomington · Guide

Two hundred laps on a cinder track is not a bike ride

The Little 500 is the largest collegiate bike race in the United States. The men's race is two hundred laps, fifty miles, on a quarter mile cinder track at Bill Armstrong Stadium; the women's is one hundred laps. More than twenty five thousand people come to Bloomington for it. It has been running for seventy five years and there is an Academy Award winning film about it.

Training for a race like that is not the same as training to ride fifty miles.

A quarter mile track is a turn every fifteen seconds

On an oval you are never actually going straight for long. That means a continuous lean, a continuous asymmetric load, and a neck held at a slight angle to see the line, for the whole race. Riders train for the distance and the exchanges. The thing that catches people out is the sustained one sided loading.

The tell is that one side of your lower back or neck is worse than the other after a long session, and it is always the same side.

• Ride the other direction sometimes in training. Nobody wants to and it balances the load.
• Between efforts, spend a minute in the opposite shape to the one you were just in.
• On the track bike, a position that is fine for twenty minutes is not automatically fine for two hours.

Cinder is not tarmac

A loose surface means constant small corrections through your arms, shoulders and lower back. Two hours of micro corrections is real work that does not show up in your power numbers, and it is a large part of why riders are wrecked afterwards in a way the mileage does not explain.

Exchanges

A bike exchange is a sprint, a stop, a twist and a handoff, repeated. It is the most explosive and most awkward thing in the race, and it is worth rehearsing as a movement rather than only as a drill.

When it is worth talking to somebody

Soreness that eases over a few days is training. Worth a conversation with a qualified provider: pain clearly on one side that is not improving after a week, anything travelling down an arm or leg, numbness or tingling in the hands, or a fall that left something still swollen days later.

If you actually went down on the cinder, get it looked at even if you finished.

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