Webcor/Alto Velo - Getting Started

What do you want to do?

New to the area? New to riding? Here are a few tips to get you started.

I want to...

Find a Group Ride
Know How High I Climbed
Ride the Track
Road Race!
Become a Pro-Cycling Fan

Find a Group Ride

There are lots of group rides almost every day of the week in the Bay Area. For new riders, you might want to try the Alto Velo B ride on Saturdays. There are also touring clubs that offer daily rides and can be a fun way to get into the sport. Touring clubs that ride on the Peninsula include Western Wheelers and the Almaden Cycle-Touring Club. If you're looking for faster-paced rides, you might check out some of the rides on our Ride Calendar.

Know How High I Climbed

If you want to plan routes or don't want to shell out for the altimeter, an excellent resource is the Klimb application, on which you can draw your route and get total altitude gains and mileage. It's very handy! Go to the Klimb web site.

Ride the Track

We're lucky to have an outdoor velodrome right here in the Bay Area – the Hellyer Park Velodrome, conveniently located in South San Jose. If you live in San Francisco or the East Bay, it can be a bit of a pain to get to the evening races in rush hour traffic, but just convince a friend to go with you and you can at least take the carpool lane. (Photo at right courtesy of Garrett Lau.)

What's It Like? Riding a track bike is like riding the Big Wheel you had as a kid. Once you get pedaling, you can't really stop very fast because the pedals take on a life of their own. Also, theoretically if you pedaled backward you'd ride backward, but this isn't really recommended! It's impossible to slow quickly on the track but since everyone you're riding with has the same limitation, the races tend to be more smooth than races on the road.

All tracks have some banking (Hellyer is not very steep compared to most tracks), and this can be a little intimidating at first. Hellyer is easy to get used to, but some tracks are so steep you can hit your right pedal on the banking if you are not going fast enough!

Where Do I Start? If you've never ridden on a track before, you'll want to go to the Saturday morning beginner's clinics at 8:30. Hellyer has about 20 track bikes that can be rented for this session, and they do tend to run out of the popular sizes. But don't show up before 8:30 thinking you'll get a head start on the bike rental line, because no one will be there to let you in. Make sure to BRING YOUR OWN PEDALS! Also, they won't let you on the track without a helmet.

Enough Beginner Stuff, When's The Racing? Hellyer has two racing series that run during the spring and summer months -- one on Wednesday nights and one on Fridays. The Friday series is more advanced and requires completion of three Wednesday evening omniums before you can compete. In order to race at all, you need to have completed three Saturday clinics. See the Hellyer web site for more details. Usually both evenings are conducted as four-event omniums, with participants broken up into A, B, and C categories. In general, A=Cat 1/2 men, B=Cat 3 men/Cat 1/2 women, and C=Cat 4/5 men/Cat 3/4 women. But there's a little fudging here and there. Each group does four different races and the rest of the time you hang out and chat. It's fun! Make sure to bring warm clothes because it can get cold once the sun goes down, especially in the spring and fall.

But I Don't Want To Just Do Points Races: If you don't like riding around at high speed in an unruly pack, there are other types of races that are only contested a few times a year at Hellyer (like at the District Championships). These races include the individual events, such as the pursuits (2000-4000 meters), the time trials (500-1000 meters), and the sprint events (usually 2-up sprints). There are also some fun team races such as team time trials and Olympic sprints. Most of the timed events are done from a standing start, where the starter just lets go of your saddle. This can be challenging if you're starting in a high gear, and sometimes people just fall over! It's useful to practice these starts a few times if you're planning on doing one of these races.

What Kind Of Gear Do I Need? In order to race on the track, you need to have your own track bike (or borrow one from a trusting friend). Hellyer won't allow its rental bikes to be used in races. Track bikes can be pretty inexpensive (compared to your road bike) and you should be able to find one new for about $500-600. A used one is probably an even better way to go. Other than that, you don't need much gear to start out at the track, although if you do the individual events, you may want a pair of time trial bars.Whose Ear Can I Bend? There are some very decorated, experienced trackies in Alto Velo. If you want to know more, talk to Linelle Northcott, Mark Rodamaker, Jill Giannetoni, Leo Menestrina.

Road Race!

So you'd like to try a race. Racing is fun! Here are a couple of things you might want to do before you show up on race day.

Fitness: Get in shape. If you already are, great! If you'd like some ideas for planning your season, check out the training articles section of this site.

Pack Riding: Make sure you've done some reasonable- to hard-paced group rides that involve some real pack riding. You don't need to be riding off the front of the group to be in race shape (unless it's a really slow group!), but you should be able to hang in, at least for a while. It's good to be comfortable in a pack before you race, or you'll be in for a treat when twenty racers yell at you the first time you hit your brakes in a corner.

Licenses: Races in the Bay Area are run under the auspices of the United States Cycling Federation (USCF). If it's your first race, you may want to buy a one-day license ($5) instead of joining for the year ($50/adults, $35/juniors) – just show up at the race to purchase your one-day license. You should know that the Northern California/Nevada Cycling Association (NCNCA) sort of serves as our district representative and runs most of the day-to-day operations of bicycle racing in Northern California. To obtain license information and just about any other information you need to know about bicycle racing in the Bay Area, visit the NCNCA website.

Clinics: There are various clinics offered throughout the Bay Area. These can be very helpful for new (and experienced) racers. The best place to find out about these is on the NCNCA web site or in the monthly NCNCA newsletter.

Find a Race: Assuming you live in the Bay Area, NCNCA's web site lists information and results for most races in our vicinity. They also have archived results from several past years. You'll probably want to choose a race that's well suited for new racers. If you're starting out at the beginning of the season, the Early Bird criteriums in January are specifically designed for new racers. They have several mentors for each race and it's a good way to try out cornering at high speed and a few race tactics. If you're more of a climber than a flat-lander, you may want to try some of the hill climbs, such as the Mt. Tam climb in September, or the San Bruno hill climb on January 1st. Most of the early-season road races are good for beginning racers, but they also tend to fill up quickly!

Preregister: If you want to do any sort of racing in the early season, you almost certainly will need to pre-register for the race, or you risk driving two hours only to turn around and drive home again. The other benefit of pre-registering, aside from the guaranteed start, is that you usually get about $5 off what you would pay on race day. Most race fliers include information on how to preregister.

Become a Pro-Cycling Fan

There's no better way to become a knowledgeable cycling fan than to read everything you can find on the sport! Luckily, there are many ways to waste time at work if you have internet access. Here are a few great news sites you should check out:

Cyclingnews -- news and results for just about everything bike-related
Velonews (the web site has different content from the print magazine)
Bike.com

Then there are professional riders' sites, some of which have their own news and journals. These aren't updated as often, but the journals can be really interesting: