While I was trying to finish my master’s thesis, I had almost no time for cycling. It was extremely disappointing, but I just had to take a few months off to finish up. Between that and moving (I don’t have access to any bikes right now), I’ve really been missing cycling. I guess I’ll be using this as my over-long break for the year.

I did get a chance to ride a bit in late July, however, when I did the intro to track riding class at Marymoor Group Health Velodrome. I got to ride a fixed gear bike for the first time, which was a blast. I was surprised both by how difficult it was to slow down (by applying backpressure), and how much up and down there was on the track. When you’re really rolling, it feels sort of like a roller coaster.

All in all, it was a great time - I’ll be trying to get out to a Thursday night session as a gateway to Monday night racing, so I can really get rolling. The only part that sucked was that the gearing on the rental bikes was somewhat ridiculously easy.