Episode 71
“We’ve spent a lot of time working with a lot of the prices and we’ve actually in a lot of ways made things more affordable for those users who do use the track a lot.”
Wondering what T-Town has in store for the 2023 season? This episode has you covered as Maura and Andrew sit down to discuss all T-Town has to offer this year! From programming to training to bierfests to international racing, there’s something for everyone! As always, more information is available on our website, thevelodrome.com!
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Transcript
Maura:
Broadcasting to you from the Valley Preferred Cycling Center, this is the Talk of the T-Town podcast where we discuss all things track cycling. Hello everyone. Welcome back to this week’s episode of Talk of the T-Town. Both hosts are here, Maura and Andrew, and we have a nice little season preview for you. So hi Andrew!
Andrew:
Hey Maura. How’s it going?
Maura:
Good, how are you?
Andrew:
Not too bad, not too bad. It’s nice to have a little conversation here between the two of us and a little bit of a different pace than our usual list of guests.
Maura:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s nice to actually have both people in the studio for once.
Andrew:
There we go.
Maura:
Yeah, so we’ve got a lot of exciting things coming up for this season.
Andrew:
We sure do.
Maura:
Super excited that we’ve had a pretty mild winter, which is good for the track after the resurfacing last summer. So no snow, no ice, no edge cycling, shoveling out feet of snow.
Andrew:
I was actually looking forward to seeing that, so I guess I was robbed of that privilege this year. But-
Maura:
Yeah, I know-
Andrew:
… it was nice to have a mild winter.
Maura:
Yeah, barely any snow, but that’s okay. It’s good for us. So it’s beautiful outside today. We’ve seen people here utilizing the track already on the nice days, which is good to see the community out, but it is the end of March and April’s coming and April means that the track is going to be open for programming.
Andrew:
That’s right.
Maura:
So we have programming officially starting on April 3rd between training and then we have some community programs starting later in the month. If you do recall, we had our community programs manager, Dave Underhill back on the podcast in January talking about some of the changes that we have made to programming and the fee structure and whatnot. So if you want to go into more detail on that, you can head back and listen to that pod or check out the page on the website. But we’ve been starting to field some questions about how things have changed. So the big thing is that we now have a membership.
Andrew:
That’s right. Yeah. So basically everybody who want to take part in the activity on the track will buy a membership to the VPCC Developed Preferred Cycling Center. It’s a low amount, it’s going to be $40, and that covers you for the entire season. And what that gets you is access to our training programs, both ones that are guided by our coaches and ones that are self-guided. And it also allows you to come to what we are now dubbing open member time. So if you go to the calendar and you see something called Open Member, that’s basically unprogrammed time that’s restricted to our membership. So it’s not open to the public, you have to be a member, but it’s basically open time for you to come and do pretty much whatever you want. So these are the kinds of things that you would’ve seen in the past, like let’s say between 1:00 PM and 4:00 PM on the afternoons or on the weekends.
So when you see open member, you’ll still have to sign in to that particular class, but it is available to members and that’s free of charge, basically just the one membership. So if that’s the kind of thing that you want to do and you want to drop in once a week or so, it’s become really affordable by saying, “Okay, it’s just $40 for you to come in and ride during those times.” Now if you want to do the other programs that are available from open training, open coach motor, and then you’ll see some things called structured training, different levels and whatnot, those will have an additional cost to it, and there’s multiple ways that you can go about paying for those things. We do offer them as an a la carte feature where you can just come and sign up for the one class and pay the one fee for that, or we do have different plans where you could pay basically for an unlimited access to all of these activities on either a 30 day basis, a monthly basis, or for the entire season.
So we’ve spent a lot of time working with a lot of the prices and we’ve actually in a lot of ways made things more affordable for those users who do use the track a lot. It might initially seem like the one-off fees have gone up a little bit, and that’s true they have, but a lot of that is actually to get to the lowest cost where we’re not actually losing money. Last year when we were charging $5 per session, it actually cost us $10 to take that $5. So we were losing money and that’s something that we don’t want to do anymore. So we have adjusted the prices a little bit, but if you are going to be a habitual user of the track, then we do absolutely recommend going for one of the monthly or season long packages that’s your best value.
Maura:
Well, that’s good to hear. I know certainly change is a lot and it’s overwhelming, but it does work out better in the long run. It’s more sustainable for us, it’s more sustainable for everyone coming and hey, we want to be here for a long time. We’re coming up on 50 years and we want to be here for another 50.
Andrew:
Mm-hmm. No, that’s for sure. And actually probably my favorite part, and I think Dave would agree with me on this one, is that we worked really hard to make the kids programs really accessible as well. So we think overall they have become sort of less expensive for the kids to go, especially when they’re entering into the system because that is one of our goals is really to sort of increase the number of kids who are coming to the track and falling in love with cycling and especially track cycling and staying with us for many years to come.
Maura:
Yeah, no, we certainly love to see that. And we have been getting out into some of the schools and we’re going to do some bike rodeos with the schools and the local townships. So I think it’s just going to be great to see lots of kids rolling around here this summer.
Andrew:
Absolutely.
Maura:
Going back to the membership question, because I’m sure we’re going to get a bunch of international athletes asking as we’re having a large international block in June, if I’m coming from outside the country and I’m mostly focusing on racing, do I have to buy membership?
Andrew:
So the short answer for that is no, if you’re not going to do anything other than the racing and then maybe the few times that we open the track up for training prior to a UCI race, let’s say for example, you could avoid that entirely. So you don’t need a membership to race. That whole system is completely separate and actually it’ll be on separate systems. As Maura mentioned, as you mentioned earlier in the episode that we are now live for taking our registration for the programs that’s on a new website. So we’re not doing that on BikeReg anymore. Racing will still take place on BikeReg, but all of the training programs and the membership stuff will be on a different website. So check out our website, thevelodrome.com and head over to community programs. And there you’ll find a link where you’ll be able to sign up for the membership, but more to your question, you could just come and just raise and not have a membership to the BPCC.
Now, if you wanted to ride throughout the week on the track through some of these open member sessions that we talked about or take part in any of the structured training or open training, then yes, you would need the membership. And that’s where that season’s pass or monthly pass comes into effect. So if you’re an international rider coming for let’s say just the month of June, then your best value there is to get the membership and then the $100 monthly pass. So for $140, you can basically ride the track whenever you want and join any of the programs for that month that you’re here.
Maura:
And just to clarify, racing and programs are on separate platforms, therefore your monthly pass theoretically, if that’s the option you decide to go for, does not include any of your racing fees.
Andrew:
That’s absolutely right. Racing fees are completely separate and unfortunately, I know in previous years I think there was the ability to purchase different Velo cards and whatnot to apply towards racing, that won’t be there this year. So in lieu of racing, racing prices, we wanted to keep racing prices the same, but we won’t be offering any special cards for that. So it’ll just be the same price for racing, say for one group, I can’t remember which one it is, but I think there might be a one $5 increase there. But overall the whole thing is the same, but there’s no special card for racing. It’s just a la carte for each race.
Maura:
Right. Yeah. So lots of new changes to how things are being run, and if this doesn’t clear up any questions for you, if our website doesn’t clear them up, feel free to reach out. We’re always happy to answer and talk to the community and explain things.
Andrew:
Absolutely. And the best way to do that is on the website, on the various pages you’ll see different contact forms, but of course hit the contact button and you’ll find a form where you can send a question and it’s usually fielded by one of us within a day or so.
Maura:
That pretty much covers the month of April, which I can’t believe it’s already April, but rolling into May, we have another busy month ahead of us. Of course we have Spring Velo Fest, which is on May 13th, and you can find more information about that on our website. If you have been a vendor in the past and you want to be a vendor, again, we’d love to have you. The Eventbrite registration link is open, so head on over there. And then of course for patrons that want to come by, just look around, have a great day outside, you can purchase tickets at the gate. And then the following weekend after that, we have our inaugural Breakaway Beer fest. So Andrew, if you want to tell us a little bit more about that.
Andrew:
Absolutely. We’re hoping that this is going to be sort of the crown jewel in the season. So it’s a great start off our season preview with this item I think. So it’s a beer festival, obviously in the name, we’re spelling it a bit differently. We’re giving it a bit of that European flair, so it’s B-I-E-R, but don’t worry if you’re typing in the website name we also registered the other one just in case you misspell it with the two E’s. But yeah, so we basically wanted to have our own kind of spring classic here in one way or another and we thought this would be a good way to do it. And beer and cycling go hand in hand. It’s not uncommon for group rides to end at a local coffee shop that has some beer or pub or whatnot, and there’s always chats about different Belgian beers and what’s great post ride and all this kind of stuff.
So we thought cycling and beer go hand in hand. Why don’t, we’ve got a great facility here, why don’t we have a beer festival? And we took the opportunity to partner with one of our sponsors, ese the Beer Authority. They’ve been helping us with the handle bar over the last number of years and we thought, hey, this would be a great opportunity to get up there and highlight some of the excellent beers that they carry at Shanghai’s, but not just the local beers, but also some of the national international beers that are available. So that’s one of the things that we’re hoping to set aside from your standard beer festival, which was usually made up of just sort of local craft companies. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We’re going to have quite a few of our favorite local crafts here as well, but we want it to have that really that big international feel.
Just like we bring international cyclists here and it’s an international velodrome, we want it to have an international beer festival. So that’s happening as you said on May 20th. And we’ve got tickets are open. You can find the link on our website under events, or you can go to Eventbrite and search for the Breakaway Beer Fest. And there’s two types of tickets. You can either go with general admission and there are for $50?
Maura:
$55.
Andrew:
$55 on the general admission. And then we have VIP tickets, which are $75.
Maura:
$75, yeah.
Andrew:
And that gets you some early access and there’ll be some special things that we’re still working on. There might be some exclusive beers that you’ll be able to try that no one else will. And also some things that will go in a grab bag to go away with. So there’s only a few of those left or not left, but only a few of those available.
So if you want to get the VIP experience head over there sooner rather than later because we’re only about 50 days away or so from the event and-
Maura:
Something like that. Yeah.
Andrew:
… we’re hoping to get quite a few people to come out to this. And really the other major reason for doing this is to expose more and different people to the velodrome. We’re hoping to bring in a lot of the different groups from the community that have never been here before and didn’t even know about the place and expose them to it and say, “Hey, this might be a great place to come and try to do some cycling at.”
Maura:
Right. One thing that we also are going to have tickets open for Bier Fest is our designated drivers, because that’s important. We want to make sure that everyone has a safe way to get to the venue and get home from the venue. So those tickets are going to be $5. You can come hang out. We’ve got a great list of food trucks coming. We have some other non-alcoholic craft vendors coming, so there will be stuff for you guys to do too.
Andrew:
On top of that, with the live music and some Plaza games and just really a great afternoon to come out at the end of May and start the season off.
Maura:
Yeah. And then the following week, we do have Tuesdays, super Tuesdays start up again on the 23rd, which is a great way to kick off the season. Saturdays are not starting until later in June just because we have the holiday weekend and then June the first three weeks were just one after the other, other of lots of big exciting things.
Andrew:
That’s right. It was a little unfortunate with that. I think there might have been one Saturday that we could have earlier in May, but then it would’ve been a large gap between them and we thought about maybe doing Sundays, but then it might’ve thrown things off a little bit. So the Saturday won’t start until June 10th, I believe that is. And we are starting off with a bang. It’ll be the time trial day, the timed event day. So that is happening there, but all the other Saturdays are booked with other cycling events or some other events. So for those of you looking for those Saturday morning races, unfortunately we’re not starting as early as we normally did. But of course we do have our Tuesdays, which are starting the last two Tuesdays in May, so that’s available.
Maura:
Right. So rolling into June and fresh off of the spring classic bier fest. We have a similar in Nature Spring Classic event with hosting the Hincapie Gran Fondo again, we’re super excited to welcome them back. And so that kicks off on our opening weekend, which opening night of Friday night racing is June 2nd, so you can come sign up for hin, copy, pick up your packet, head into the venue. We’re going to have a great night of racing because we first time in a couple years we’re kicking off with a UCI event again, UCI calendar changed a little bit, so we had to change our dates and we have a banger of an opening season with a C2 on opening night. The following Friday is another C2, and then the week after that, which starts on the 14th, we’re going to be running a giant C1 of a super week. So if you want to explain that a little bit, Andrew.
Andrew:
For sure. So there’s a lot to unpack there, Maura. So right, the opening night is going to be a bit of a banger, a lot going on with Hincapie there. Opening night. Of course, we have our normal fireworks happening at the end of the night and then it is going to be a C2, which is the sort of entry level international race that you had put on for the UCI and it will be running all day. So it will be starting in the morning on Friday, which is not normal for an opening night, at least for the last couple of years anyways, so there is racing available in the morning in case anybody’s off and they want to come by and watch some internationals, do some of the qualifying rounds for the events that will be happening later that evening. And then of course our standard ticketed opening night is available.
Normally we start racing at about 7:00. I don’t know how the schedule is going to look. Some of it might be affected by the number of athletes that show up, but we may have to start a bit earlier with the racing, which is good for some of the Hincapie folk as well, because we discovered last year that they were pretty serious about the ride they wanted to do the next morning and a lot of them headed off to bed fairly early while there were still some racing going on.
Maura:
Got to get a good night of sleep.
Andrew:
That’s right. Yeah. If you’re going to ride 80 miles out there, it’s going to be tough. So you better make sure you got your full eight hours there. So starting a bit earlier, for those that know that we normally start at 7:00. With the UCI races, I would say check the schedule, check the website if you want to make sure that you catch all the racing because sometimes just to do the way the schedule has to work, we’ll have to start a bit earlier so that we can make our 10:00 PM curfew that evening and make sure that we’re not blasting the sound and turning the lights off for the local area around here.
Maura:
We like to be good neighbors.
Andrew:
We like to be good neighbors. So the opening weekend will be pretty intense with the Hincapie Grand Fondo, if you haven’t tried it before, I recommend trying it this year. I know these are roads that you might may or may not have been on before if you’re a local resident, but they do put on a pretty good show and a lot of it has to do with the before and after activities that happen at the track. And you do get that kind of Paris-Roubaix experience where you get to finish on the track. So you get to say, I just like those big pro athletes. I finished my Fondo on the track, so-
Maura:
Heck yeah.
Andrew:
So it is a lot of fun. So with the rest of the UCI racing, normally we have done this on Friday nights over period of three to four weeks, and it’s usually either just the one night or we might do a two day event Friday, Saturday to accommodate our sort of standard Friday night schedule with that being the big night where everybody comes in to watch racing.
Unfortunately, well, I mean it’s not unfortunate, but it does create an interest interesting situation for us. The UCI has decided to run all their world championships in one place at one time this year as a trial run. They’ve already planned it for 2027 as well, but this is the first year it’s happening to see what… Normally all these different events or championships run in different locations at different times of the year for each of the different disciplines like road, mountain bike, track, cross and all that kind of stuff. This time in 2023, it’s going to be held in the first three weeks of August in Glasgow and it’s save for three of the championships, I don’t recall which ones all of them will take place at the same time. So how that affects us is normally one of the reasons that we have international riders come here is because UCI races offer points for them to qualify for certain things like different championships in the Olympics and all that kind of stuff.
So normally when they run world championships, they have to cut off a certain date, only your points up until this date will matter, and it’s usually six weeks before the championship. Now track championships is usually in the fall, September, October, and that’s normally fine for us. Well now that it’s in August, if you count back six weeks, the cutoff date is June 20th.
Maura:
Yeah. Oh crap.
Andrew:
Yeah. So if we had done the same thing we did last year, both of our C1 events would’ve been after that cutoff and there would’ve been less incentive for the international athletes to come here. So in an effort to accommodate for that and to make it still interesting to come to T-Town for this summer in June, and also to create kind of maybe a points of Palooza type of event where you might have some athletes who are just a little bit shy of the points they might need to enter into the championships this year, they can certainly come here and they’ll have plenty of opportunities to try their events, even more than once in some cases, as well as some timed events that aren’t normally offered on main calendar.
So if you’re an international athlete and you’re looking to get some last minute points, T-Town is the place to be this June.
Maura:
Yeah, I know we’re super excited to have everyone, and if you’re an international athlete listening to this or coach, we do have housing options, which is great. So all of that information is on our website under the rider forms and waivers, under the visiting athlete information. So we’ve had some interest already from Australia, Ireland, Egypt and South Africa I think are the four that are coming to mind.
Andrew:
And New Zealand just recently reached out as well. So yeah, a lot of the big teams are going to be coming out and bringing athletes. And I think it’s also, I forgot to mention earlier, it’s probably more attractive than it was in the past because from the second, so the C1, that big event will run from the 14th to the 19th, technically the 18th, the 19th is a rain day. We are an outdoor facility after all.? But from the second to the 19th, that’s that’s just shy of three weeks and there’s four races in those three weeks. Right. So in terms of international travel and planning and the cost, it is likely to be more cost effective for these teams to come because now they don’t have to stay here for five weeks or longer depending on the schedule. So I think this concentrated period will be really attractive for the teams to come and try that.
Maura:
And then things kind of work out the same way that they did last year with the Nation’s Cup being in Milton. And then we are not too long after that with our racing, right?
Andrew:
Yeah, it’s a bit further away than it was last year, but I guess it does offer the advantage for some teams if they want to come to the Nation’s Cup and then stay in North America after that. So that’s happening. This is being recorded on, what day is it today? March-
Maura:
27th.
Andrew:
March 27th. So I think this should be going live shortly so it’ll be fairly relevant, but the 2023 Nation’s Cup in Milton is in the middle of the month, the 14th, 16th area. So that’s a good six weeks away from our racing, so it’ll really depend on other teams. But yeah, last year that was really interesting how we had the Nation’s Cup in Cali, like basically-
Maura:
Yeah, the flow just worked out really nicely. You went Canada, T-Town, Cali. Yeah. So we already touched on the fact that our normal masters and rookies Saturdays begin on the 10th and that pretty much covers June
Andrew:
Even though the UCI racing does stop after I think the Friday there is the 16th, we basically roll back into our standard Friday night under the lights programming on Friday nights. So national racing, national level racing with hopefully still some of these internationals that might want to stick around for the rest of the summer and our local pros as well. So that’s available. So if you haven’t gotten your season ticket yet for that, they are available coming up soon on our website. So you’ll be able to buy those again and tickets are available there or at the door on any given Friday night. So we’ll be rounding out the rest of June with that. And of course our grassroots track programming on Tuesdays and Saturdays as well. Just one note for your Tuesday fans, the Tuesday of that C1 week, so I think it’s the 14th-
Maura:
13th.
Andrew:
13th?
Maura:
13th.
Andrew:
That will be the one we’re going to skip on the Tuesday nights because that’ll be prep for the UCI races there.
Maura:
Rider confirmation.
Andrew:
That’s right. So that’s that that’s going to be off, but then it will be racing for the rest of the month there. Yeah,
Maura:
Yeah. Good stuff. And then we roll into a pretty chill July compared to what we’ve had in the past with nationals, upon nationals, upon nationals. So we’ll just have our normal slate of Tuesday, Fridays and Saturdays as well as we are hosting regionals track regionals on the 15th and 16th of July.
Andrew:
Yeah, so we’re pretty excited about that. As you mentioned, we used to have a lot of nationals in July, so this year the Elite National Championships, elite and juniors are going to be heading back to the West coast. They’re going to be hosted in Carson in the indoor velodrome there. So that’s taking place in the early July.
We might see a bit of a dip in some of our pros that weekend as they head off to nationals, but we’re not hosting it there, as I’m sure we’ll talk about later in the episode. We still are hosting a national championships, but that’s later in the season. So yeah, it’s just our sort of standard programming standard Friday nights. And then as you mentioned, regional championships. So we didn’t run that last year.
Maura:
Correct.
Andrew:
But after chatting with Andy Taus, who’s been the gentleman who’s run it in the past here at the track, we’re going to try to put it together again this time the track will be responsible for running the event and we’re going to be reaching out to all the different local associations to see what kind of involvement they may or may not want to have in this.
So basically just another opportunity for local riders to get some prep, especially masters because we’re lining that up in the middle of June, so it’s a few weeks before Masters Nationals that I believe is taking place down in Rocky Hill, South Carolina at the beginning of August. So that’ll give you an opportunity to practice before you get there. Plus that’ll be our second timed event day. They’re basically going to be sort of mixed. So if you want, same as it was a few years ago, where if you just want to come in and do the timed events and not have any part in the regionals championship, then that’s fine, you can still do that. But then there’ll be athletes who are participating in that, and this will be available for masters and juniors. So if you’re just sort of regular Cat 1 or Cat 2 athlete, that won’t be available for you. But we do have to spread the love a little bit and give some events for other participants as well.
Maura:
Right. Yeah, going off of the whole category thing, that’s another little tidbit of a change that we made with we’re no longer having Cat 5 for racing.
Andrew:
That’s right. Yeah. So I think Dave mentioned it in his podcast and there’s probably some information on it on the website about it as well. But just for the listeners here today, we used to have Cat 4, 5 racing here at the track. Category 5 is really your novice entry level racing. This is the category you enter when you’ve never really done it before and you can get a few races under your belt or some courses are training and then you move up to Cat 4, and that should be the progression. I don’t think we’ve, in the last few years, held a separate Cat 5 field. It’s always been Cat 5 and 4, so you’re still racing with Cat 4s, right? So we made the decision to, from a, I guess a admin level to get rid of Cat 5 and encourage everybody to move into Cat 4 as soon as possible.
So if you’re still a Cat 5 and you want to race, reach out to Dave Underhill and talk to him. He’s basically got the ability to recommend upgrades to USAC from 5 to 4. And if you’ve got the experience and you’ve been here for a while, we can make that happen pretty quickly. Otherwise, for new participants, people who are coming into the track this year that we’re hoping to really get a lot of new faces out there, basically you would have to go through basically try the track program, which we’ve modified a bit this year as well.
We’ve added a third level to it. So it used to be two, two hour courses, now it’s three two hour courses and the back two, the ride the track and race, the track are, if you take part in those and successfully the program, you can get a recommendation to Cat 4 through that. It’s not a barrier per se to entry, it’s just a way to make things a lot more smooth. So again, if you’re a Cat 5 in the past, we’ll get you upgraded to Cat 4 if you’ve been around for a bit, and if not, then simply take the two courses. That will be one way to get into Cat 4 very quickly.
Maura:
Right. So I think that kind of covers it for, I don’t want to say older, but older people compared to our little juniors that come and race on Saturdays. If I’m a junior and I’m a Cat 5, can I still race?
Andrew:
No, you’d have to do the same thing and upgrade to Cat 4, but it’s no different than let’s say an adult would do it. But generally if you want to race on the Saturdays, we do have our junior racing, our sort of 10 to 15 age group kind of thing. And you would still race there-
Maura:
Right, yeah. So under that junior category, if I’m a Cat 5, theoretically I can still race under the junior category,
Andrew:
Just under the junior category. That’s right.
Maura:
Yes.
Andrew:
But if you wanted to race with the adults, then you’d have to be a Cat 4.
Maura:
Right. Because I know sometimes we have overlap of kids that race the junior category as well as wanting to race the four five. So if you’re a junior and you’re a Cat 5, you can only race in the junior category if you want to stay a Cat 5. But if you want to upgrade to a Cat 4, then you can again race both.
Andrew:
And that would be recommended for riders like 16 to 18. So that the true UCI junior group kind of thing.
Maura:
Yes. Good to clarify.
Andrew:
Absolutely.
Maura:
Yeah. So then after July comes August and standard Friday night, same as July with Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Our closing night will be on August 18th, so that we will have fireworks again.
Andrew:
Yeah, having fireworks open and close the two nights I think is a good way to punctuate the season of racing. And it is exciting because you do draw in some folks who are outside of the normal racing bubble or spectator bubble I suppose. So it does sort of change the crowd a little bit, does make it a bit larger. So it’s always exciting. But yeah, it does cap off a great season. We’ve a lot of the standard theme nights returning from previous years, you’re going to see the corporate challenge night again. So if anybody who works for a company that wants to field a corporate challenge team, by all means get in contact with us. We’re looking to get quite a few more teams than we’ve had in the past to make this made this an exciting night.
Maura:
Yeah Valley Preferred an LVHN needs some competition. They come out full force every year.
Andrew:
That’s right.
Maura:
And kick everybody’s butt.
Andrew:
Yep. And then you’re going to see things like the Nicole Reinhardt Open and the Madison Cup, Kirin Cup, Artie Greenberg Memorial, so all those races are coming back. So check the calendar for those dates and you’ll see them finishing up throughout August. Some of the other interesting things that are going to happen in August, well actually the big one for me is we’re going to be running a fairly large charity event on the first weekend in August. So basically we’re going to be running a 24 hour charity ride on the track and it’s going to be team based. And the idea is that you would find a team of any number of riders, it could be a team of one if you’re willing to ride your bike for 24 hours on the track.
Maura:
Hey, we had that last summer.
Andrew:
We had that last year. Yep. They were trying to set a record there. But the goal here isn’t to set a record, the goal is to raise money for the track and in support of helping improve this place and finding some really good opportunities, like possibly raising money for a new scoreboard or start gates or something that would be a nice to improve the facility on. So if you’re looking to come out and support a good, cause, you put together a team and over 24 hours from Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, you would have one of your teammates on the track at all times doing laps and will have timing sort of recording the number of laps. And we’ll have prizes for teams that have done the most number of lap or teamwork where they have the highest average number of laps per teammates kind of thing to encourage all your team to ride and stuff like that.
And then we would encourage you to go out just like any other sort of charity event, if it was a running charity event where you would go and raise donations to support the cause as your team, we would have some options where you could raise flat donations or you could go out and say, “Hey, sponsor me for a penny of lap or sponsor me for a nickle lap.” Because we figure even an average team could essentially do over 3000 laps in 24 hours at a moderate or even slow pace. And at a penny that’s $30, at a nickel, that’s $150 and that’s a reasonable thing for somebody to donate for a charity.
And of course we are a 501(c)(3), so we can offer those kinds of tax receipts as well for for those kinds of donations. And essentially we just want it to be this kind of mid-summer or end of summer party, 24 hour experience where you can come, we’ll let you set up tents in the infield and we’ll have music whenever we’re allowed to. Obviously at 3:00 in the morning we’re not going to be blasting music, but it’ll be an opportunity and you know, can sleep while one of your teammates are riding or everybody stays up or it’s a lot of fun. They do this lot in mountain biking and I thought we could move this over to the track and see if we can make some good out of it and raise some money for the track.
Maura:
Yeah, no, I think it’s great. Excited to see how that goes. Yeah, and then that kind of closes things up for August in September. Like Andrew mentioned, we are still hosting a national championship. It’s one I don’t believe we’ve hosted before
Andrew:
Maybe, but quite a long time ago. You’d have to ask the historians to find out when the last time was.
Maura:
Right. Back in my day. But we are very excited to host Collegiate Track Nationals from September 14th through the 17th. It’s definitely a more low-key event than elite junior para masters nationals all mashed together. We’re excited to have the kids out and just have a great time.
Andrew:
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s probably the big national event, but it is a fairly busy September, I think every weekend something is going on and it is the sort of last main month of the season. So it is exciting that we’re sort of filling it with a lot of activity. That’s one of them for sure that’s happening. I believe it’s the 14th to the 17th of September, and we’re hoping to see over 100 kids from different universities and colleges from around the nation come in and attempt to win some championships at the collegiate level. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a laid back atmosphere. I know last year the folks at USAC decided to have a little fun and they started this duck hunt kind of thing where they got these little-
Maura:
Rubber ducks.
Andrew:
… yellow rubber ducks and then hid them throughout the velodrome and the kids loved it.
Maura:
I love that.
Andrew:
The students were when they weren’t racing or warming up, they were running around looking for these things to win a small prize. That’s amazing. So I hope we can recreate that kind of atmosphere and looking forward to working with USAC on that event. But for the rest of the month, a lot of activities happening. We start the Labor Day weekend off with the annual donut derby presented by the Lehigh Wilman Association. That’s always a great event. If you haven’t done it before, you should check it out. Basically it’s a nice little kind of Fondo like group ride. It is a race, it will be timed, but it’s not that far. I believe the loops are pretty light, but what makes it unique is that they have obviously donuts there because it’s a donut derby and at the donut stations, for every donut that you eat, I think you lose something like three minutes or something like that.
Maura:
Time gets taken off from your [inaudible 00:33:56].
Andrew:
Time gets taken off. So if you think you can eat a lot of donuts, you could potentially finish the race in negative time if-
Maura:
I don’t know how great you’d be feeling after that though.
Andrew:
No, no, for sure. I’m not sure what the times are, I’d have to look at them, but if you could do a 30 or 40 minute time and then eat 15 donuts, you would certainly be in negative territory there, but-
Maura:
My stomach hurts just thinking about that.
Andrew:
Yeah, yeah. It’s not an easy task, but certainly it’s a lot of fun. They draw hundreds of riders out to this and it’s a great event for them to put on. We’re happy to have them here and also be a part of the group here at the VPCC. So following that, the next weekend we’re partnering with Upper Macungie to do a movie night. Just like last year we had our movie night. This time we partnered with Upper Macungie. They moved their movie night around different parks in the area. So the last one is going to be here at the Velodrome, and I believe the movie is going to be Turning Red. So if you have a lot of young kids and you want to come out to a great movie night in the park or in the Velodrome, come on out, bring your chairs, blankets, we’ll have full service concessions running and the movie will run as soon as it gets dark that time of year.
So that’ll be a fun opportunity. Also that’s in partnership with the local fire hall. So the firetrucks will be out for the kids to take a look at and that’s always fun. Kids love firetrucks and-
Maura:
That’s always a crowd favorite.
Andrew:
That’s the whole theme, firetruck red, firetruck turning red, that sort of thing. That’s where they were going with that. So we’re happy to host Upper Macungie’s movie, movie in the park here on the Friday eighth or 9th of September. I’m terrible with dates. And then of course, as we already mentioned, we have our collegiate championship happen in the following weekend and then the weekend after that be-
Maura:
The fall Fondo.
Andrew:
The fall Fondo. So this will be the second year that we’re running a Fondo like style ride here out of the Velodrome run by the Velodrome. And this is kind of like a year end nice ride where we’re basically coordinating a bunch of group rides where we start from the Velodrome, we’ll have rest stops and come back to the Velodrome for a nice meal and sit around and chat about how great the season was and some good memories and whatnot as we’re closing the month of September down.
Speaking of closing the month of September, the final thing of course is our Fall Velo Fest. So if you didn’t find anything that you wanted to buy in the spring one or you didn’t sell everything you wanted to sell the spring one, by all means please sign up for the Fall Velo Fest and come out and give it another shot for the year.
Maura:
So we’ll work on getting a date for that and then we will have that posted after we finish Spring Velo Fest of course, one before the other.
Andrew:
Right. No, for sure. Yeah, of course the date may or may not change depending on how things work out so that the Fall Fondo on the Velo Fest might flip on a weekend, or it might be a weekend later, but that’ll come shortly. So always check back to the website. The website’s, the velodrome.com, and usually all of our events and updates are posted there. If you haven’t joined any of our social media yet, please do so. We’re available on Facebook, on Instagram, I believe we even have a TikTok account.
Maura:
We do have a TikTok. We haven’t been super active because we’ve been in off season and there’s not really much to make content out in our lovely office trailer.
Andrew:
But that’ll change when the season starts and-
Maura:
That will most certainly change.
Andrew:
And I’m looking forward to more elimination game videos. So that’ll be fun. So if you’re into TikTok, be sure to check this out there. And of course the best way to stay in touch with us in terms of what’s happening at the track is to sign up with our newsletter that goes out on average about twice a month, and we try to include the sort of most pertinent items in there so you can follow along and find out what’s happening.
Maura:
Yes. So that just about wraps it up for the season, of course, through out the fall, as long as weather permits and hopefully it’s a nice mild warm, sunny fall. We’ll keep the track open and programming as long as possible.
Andrew:
Absolutely. Yeah, if we have a repeat of this past winter, then we may not even stop. We’ll just keep the track open for everyone to ride on as much as they want. But yeah, you’re right. So we stop programming in sort of early to mid, mid-October. And then it reverts back to sort of a public park where you can just come and ride your bikes and as weather permits of course, that kind of thing. So hopefully this has been informative and given you guys a nice preview of the season and answered some of the questions that have come through about some of the new changes we’ve made.
Of course, if you have any other questions, always feel free to come by the office anytime. Shoot us an email through the website on the contact form, or we are looking to possibly do kind of like an open house thing later this spring with the board when the board of the VPCC meets. Then we will turn around and maybe have like an open house town hall kind of meet and greet and mixer date TBC. So if you’re interested in coming to that and you have any questions lingering after having heard this podcast and then over the website, please feel free to come out to that. So check the website or the newsletter as we mentioned for dates on that, and hopefully we’ll see you there.
Maura:
Yeah, all the places for all of the information.
Andrew:
That’s right.
Maura:
Yeah. Well, thanks so much for listening and we will catch you on next week’s episode of The Talk of the T-Town. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Talk the T-Town Podcast. If you like what you heard, please rate us and leave a comment on wherever you consume your podcasts. To find out more on this week’s guest, head on over to our website, the velodrome.com to check out the show notes and subscribe so you never miss an episode.