Rhik Samadder tries … track cycling: ‘It’s like being overtaken by lorries on a motorway designed by Escher’

Rhik Samadder tries … track cycling: ‘It’s like being overtaken by lorries on a motorway designed by Escher’:

I am clamped into a razor-thin perineum-mashing machine with no brakes. What could possibly go wrong?

This is hardly the place to admit it, but I hate cyclists. I never know if they are going to stop at traffic lights or plough through; they’re often very shouty due to always being in danger; and the worst thing is, they’re right. We should all be cyclists as it’s good for the planet. I hate being around people who are right but, to my credit, I am always willing to have my rabid road prejudices punctured, so I have agreed to give track cycling a go.

Track cycling is like cycling squared, but in an oval. You’ve seen it at the Olympics: supercharged, smooth, oddly soothing – until a collision takes out half the cyclists because they’re riding mere millimetres apart. I am surprised anyone is able to have a go at whipping around the London 2012 velodrome on a two-dimensional bike that looks like it weighs less than a toaster. The Lee Valley VeloPark, in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, east London, is huge and engulfing. On the main floor, other people trying today’s taster session sit in three-sided metal pens, spaced apart like we’re at a sheep auction. I feel as if I’m in the hive where they make cyclists. I scan around for a giant alien ovipositor. Where is the Queen?

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