New England Track Cycling & The Northeast Velodrome

In this episode we explore New England Track Cycling and the Northeast Velodrome with Dave LaFond, President, and Jed Kornbluh, Board Member.  They discuss the differences between track and road cycling, the formation of the New England Track Cycling organization, and the significance of the Northeast Velodrome. The conversation delves into the various events held at the velodrome, including Omnium racing, and the challenges faced in maintaining and promoting the facility. 

The episode highlights the community aspect of cycling and the efforts to make the sport more accessible to all riders. In this conversation, we discuss the various aspects of track cycling at the Northeast Velodrome and outline their goals for expanding youth engagement and improving facilities. The conversation also touches on the need for more velodromes in New England and the importance of community support and fundraising for the future of track cycling.

Key Takeaways:

• Track cycling features fixed gear bikes with no brakes.
• Gear choice is crucial in track racing strategy.
• New England Track Cycling was formed to manage the Northeast Velodrome.
• The Northeast Velodrome has historical significance in New England cycling.
• The track is 333 meters with a 14-degree banking.
• Low banking makes the track beginner-friendly.
• Omnium racing consists of multiple events scored cumulatively.
• Safety and etiquette are prioritized in track cycling training.
• Rentals are available for those without gear.
• Certification is necessary for safety on the track.
• Unique races like the Belgian Win-N-Out add excitement.
• Youth programs are essential for growing the sport.
• The Northeast Velodrome aims to expand its offerings.
• Indoor facilities are needed to support year-round cycling.
• Everyone is welcome to try track cycling, regardless of experience.

Art & Eric embark on a journey to showcase and celebrate the endurance sports community in New England.

Transcript

Art Trapotsis (00:02)
Welcome back to the New England Endurance Podcast. Our purpose here is to showcase the stories and organizations and events that make up the endurance sports scene around the region. And I'm Art Tripotsis and today we're diving into the world of track cycling here in New England. And we're chatting with two folks from the New England track cycling and also the Northeast VeloDrome based out of New Hampshire. And today we've got Dave LaFond, the president of New England track cycling and Jed Kornbluh, board member at large. Welcome, guys.

David Lafond (00:36)
Thanks, Art.

Jed Kornbluh (00:37)
Thanks, Art. Thanks for having us.

Art Trapotsis (00:38)
So Dave, so first I want to do some intro. So Dave is from New Hampshire. He and I are both New Hampshire boys. We've been racing since the late 90s. Dave and I used to race on NEBC. And Dave co founded the New England track cycling in 2024. It's a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting track cycling in the region. I'm really excited to hear what they're up to.

And interestingly, he did his capstone MBA project on maintaining a velodrome in New England. So this guy is like a resident expert. We also have Jed Kornbluh who's he's also a big cyclist. He's originally from New Jersey. He was born into a cycling family. His parents were event and race promoters in the 70s and 80s. And they own a tandem bike shop called Tandems East. That's very cool, Jed.

And he was a racer himself. He started racing back in 99 at Trekseltown, Pennsylvania, where they have a track otherwise known as T-Town. And now he works in a nonprofit sector. So these two gentlemen, you know, they're working to take on the operations at the Northeast Velodrome with the shared goal of making the sport more accessible for all levels of riders and welcoming a cycling community. So I'm really excited. But let's kick it off with the basics. Jed, I'll start with you.

How would you say track cycling differs from road cycling aside from racing or riding on a track?

Jed Kornbluh (02:04)
How much time do we have? think the primary difference is a track bike and a road bike look very similar, but you can take a bunch of components off the road bike. A track bike is a fixed gear, so there's no freewheeling. So when you backpedal, you go backwards, and it has no brakes. So gear selection, yeah, yeah, no brakes. So you pedal forward, you go forward, you pedal slower.

Art Trapotsis (02:06)
you

Ooh.

Jed Kornbluh (02:31)
slower, your speed decreases. So you use your legs and use the banking of the track to modulate your speed. But the great thing about track racing is that everyone else is in the same position. And the one bit of equipment strategy that you have going into a track race is the gear choice. that's the one thing that most, you're stuck in one gear. That's right. No shifting, no changing mid-race. You pick your gear based on the event and based on your ability to spin that gear up.

Art Trapotsis (02:47)
So you're stuck in one gear.

So how do you slow down after the event?

Jed Kornbluh (02:59)
Everyone just sort of eases off the gas, to speak. can lower the cadence, take a lap, or just basically stop putting pressure on the drivetrain. And the bike will slow itself down, then you glide onto the apron or the interior of the track and head to the infield. Or in our case with the Northeast Velodrome, we'll spin around and head back up to the top of the track where we've got our in and out area.

Art Trapotsis (03:04)
Lower the cadence.

Very cool. So Dave, how did you first get involved with track cycling and what drew you to the sport? I knew you as a roadie back in the late 90s, so how did you get into track?

David Lafond (03:32)
Yep. Well,

I had always been interested in writing in a velodrome and Tony Eberhardt had started the, I guess, original incarnation of the velodrome at the site we use in Londonderry. And my kids were probably five, six years old. And I brought them down for the junior's program that

he would run there. And then they kind of got me back. So I had taken a break from cycling because the kids were young and they had got me back kind of cycling. So I kind of got back into my cycling career with my kids. So they participated at the Valodrome until kind of it stopped. It had stopped operations late 2000s, I think. So

Art Trapotsis (04:29)
So what exactly is the New England Track Cycling Organization? And tell us why you decided to form that this past year.

David Lafond (04:39)
So we formed the organization essentially to take over operations of the Northeast Velodrome. think, know, Catherine Snell had been managing and operating that on pretty much on her own. And over the last few years, there's been a group of us volunteering to help her, you know, keep operations going. And she's been wanting to step down.

And so we decided to form a nonprofit. So wasn't the responsibility of one person. Like she ran it under an LLC, so it was her social for a bank account and all that stuff. So it's truly a run by the cycling community, not by one person. And there's some advantages with being a nonprofit. You might be aware in New Hampshire nonprofits get

the opportunity to get funds through the Charitable Gaming New Hampshire. So eventually once we've been established for a while, we'll have the potential to tap into that and help pay for the operations of the Velodrome

Art Trapotsis (05:47)
very good. So the nonprofit is essentially a vehicle to be able to raise funds and to basically operate the velodrome. So you guys are sort of one in the same. So Jed, can you tell us about the Northeast Velodrome? It's based out of London, London, Derry, New Hampshire. I've known about it for over 20 years. Like, what's the significance of this velodrome to New England? you know, just what's it like? I know it's not a banked

David Lafond (05:52)
Yep. Yep.

Pretty much, yeah.

Art Trapotsis (06:13)
track but could you tell the listeners what this place is like?

Jed Kornbluh (06:16)
Well, we do have a bit of banking. The track was built originally as a midget car racing track, I believe in the 1950s, and it's been used by various groups. I moved up here, I think going on nine years ago. And when I moved up here, I'd actually sold all my track equipment because I thought, well, I'm in New England. There's no track here. I should just get rid of all my track stuff. And then about a year later, I heard about this track and got curious and came up. Dave, correct me if I'm wrong. It's a 14 degree banking.

Art Trapotsis (06:18)
Okay.

David Lafond (06:39)
Yes.

Jed Kornbluh (06:40)
at its steepest, which is think a continuous banking all the way around. So it is a 333. There's a couple different ways that we can measure the track, we've got it down to, we've got our measuring line so we can actually run real events there.

Art Trapotsis (06:52)
And when you

say 333, is that meters?

Jed Kornbluh (06:56)
That's 333 meters. So most velodromes that are being built now are between 200 and 250 meters. Most modern tracks are indoors and built with boards. This track is an asphalt track. So we have to deal with New Hampshire frost heaves when we get out there in the spring and have to do some track repair. But an asphalt track has got some advantages and a low bank track has got some advantages, especially for beginner riders.

Art Trapotsis (07:11)
hehe

Jed Kornbluh (07:21)
The only limitations that we have on the track are really maximum speed. Because the banking is low, a track that's got a very steep banking is designed in a way for speed control. So we can, on a track like at Bromont, which is a 250 meter up in Quebec, that's fairly steep. It's over 40 degrees in the bank. So as you're coming through the corners, through the turns, you can feel the G-forces at speed pushing you into the track.

It's incredible, it's-

Art Trapotsis (07:45)
And

how fast are you typically going when you feel those G-forces?

Jed Kornbluh (07:50)
You're going you're going close to 40 miles an hour You connect you actually if you actually feel them when you're in your in the in the high 20s in mid 30s Yeah It's it's it's an experience like none other

Art Trapotsis (07:52)
You're kidding.

Wow.

even the amateur cyclists of the world. Folks that are, let's say, 50 plus years old will get up there.

Jed Kornbluh (08:03)
Yes, even the amateur cyclists. Dave and

I were up there a couple of weeks ago doing a training weekend and it was my first time there and I was just blown away by the quality of that facility, which is something we'd love to have here New England. Now our track, while we don't have the banking and we don't have the concessions and the beauty of the indoor facility, we still have a great track. Our limitations are the banking and the weather.

We're out there, we now have a lease that's 365 days a year upgraded from just being operating during the warmer months of the year, which means we've got complete control of that place seven days a week and can run events beyond just the few that we were running when we were sharing it with a group of carters. As it was originally a track for midget car racing, it was very attractive to carters.

Art Trapotsis (08:37)
wow.

Jed Kornbluh (08:52)
And when I say Carter's I mean high-performance go-karts And so we would we had a we had a fairly good relationship with the carding groups over the years But this was we decided to make make the move to to have the track for for the majority for the whole year now And that's allowing us to expand our programming So the let me get back to the low banking one of the advantage of the low banking is it's very beginner friendly anyone can show up at the track and

Art Trapotsis (08:55)
Got it. Okay.

Jed Kornbluh (09:18)
go through our simple certification process where we essentially assess you, teach you how to ride a fixed gear because it's different from riding a bike with a freewheel, standard road bike, and teach you the rules of a track, what the different lines on the track mean, and how to use the track's banking as shallow as it is to your advantage when you're training and racing.

Art Trapotsis (09:21)
Mm-hmm.

So let's break that down a bit. So what events do you run for cyclists when the season starts and when does the season typically start?

Jed Kornbluh (09:45)
Dave, you want to take that one?

David Lafond (09:46)
Yeah, I can take that. So typically we've run races from May through end of August. And like Jed said, we've expanded our lease over there. So we'll probably start this year with some events in April, including the certification classes that Jed was just talking about. And we'll probably go through into September.

And then maybe some fun events like a Halloween race or like a Thanksgiving event just for fun later in the fall in 25.

Art Trapotsis (10:17)
You

Is

the track open seven days a week?

David Lafond (10:25)
It can be we have membership levels that. We haven't we haven't finalized this, but historically we have different membership levels, so you could become a full member and get access to the track whenever it's. Yep, yep, you can go up and train. You'll get you'll get key to the track to the facility so can let yourself in. Yeah.

Art Trapotsis (10:28)
tell me about that.

So you could practice on the track? Okay.

That sounds interesting.

David Lafond (10:50)
So typically the events that we run on Sunday, probably the most formal events that we have, it's Omnium Racing.

which means there's probably four or five different events and you get points depending on how you place in each event and the winner for the day. Yeah, sure.

Art Trapotsis (11:05)
Yeah, let's break that down. So

let's take this kind of slowly here. So Sundays, what time are folks showing up?

David Lafond (11:12)
Racing has in the past started at 10 o'clock, so gates open at 9. Racing starts at 10.

Art Trapotsis (11:21)
All right, so you show up at nine, you get your bike ready, warm up. And Jed, what's the first race that goes off at 10?

David Lafond (11:24)
Mm-hmm.

Jed Kornbluh (11:28)
Well, depends on the week. Because we're volunteer run, we rotate responsibility for the race program based on the member who's going to run the race. let's say we were to do just a standard international Omnium, there will be a points race where there's a set number of laps. And depending on the number of laps at a certain interval, whether it's 5 or 10 on the 5th or the 10th lap of, 40, we'll have

David Lafond (11:30)
You

Jed Kornbluh (11:56)
will have points spread out. So the first three riders cross the line get those points and then there's point spread for the final sprint. That's a great endurance race. So the Omnium is the combination of all of the events. Each event is scored. So if I win the points race, but I don't win the elimination race where the last rider of each lap gets pulled, and I don't win the following race, I move down the order of the Omnium scoring.

Art Trapotsis (12:02)
So what's an Omnium? Omnium.

Jed Kornbluh (12:21)
So it's, folks will use the, we'll look at the schedule. We try to post it ahead of time and maybe it may not be in your best interest to go out and try and win all of the events. You may want to be a little bit cagier and reserve some of your energy so that, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Art Trapotsis (12:22)
Got it.

You got to be strategic. So, okay, so Sunday,

there's an Omnium and that's consisted of five races.

Jed Kornbluh (12:42)
Generally four. We'll do four races and we'll break it up depending on who show up into categories. So we generally run an A and a B. If we have enough folks, can run, we can do even more. can run a masters only race, although most of us are masters. We could run a juniors only race. That's what we're trying to get to with our programming, build it up so we have more variety for people.

Art Trapotsis (12:43)
Okay, four races and

Okay, so if I'm going to show up and let's say do the B race, I've got to be prepared to do four races. And how long approximately is each race?

Jed Kornbluh (13:13)
probably no more than 20 minutes. the longest race we have is the points race. Or if we do a scratch race, which is what you would consider a criterion, there's a set number of laps and the first rider across the line wins that event. We could do a 20 or 30 or 40 lap scratch race. It's really, it depends on the weather. If it's really hot, riders may not want to do longer events. We may want to do four relatively mid-level or shorter events as far as laps are concerned.

But we expect, there's an expectation that everyone's gonna do all the events in their category so they get the most out of their day.

Art Trapotsis (13:45)
That actually sounds like a lot of fun. Dave, I was watching the Olympics this summer and my entire family got sucked into watching the elimination race, which is basically this group goes out and I think every lap or two, if you are the last place rider, you get yanked and you end up, you know, basically whittling it down to the last man standing. And I was just curious, you know, is that is that that's an event you guys run, but what's one of your favorite events in the Omnium?

David Lafond (13:53)
Ha

Correct.

My personal favorite is the points race. So it's hard.

Art Trapotsis (14:16)
And what's that like?

Is it basically like it's like a criterion where they're ringing the bell every other lap? Or how does that work?

David Lafond (14:25)
Not every other lap. Every other lap would be, well, every lap there's a race similar to a points race. It's called a tempo race and they use that in the Olympic Omnium or International Omnium. And the first person across the line gets a point and the most point wins the race after certain number of laps. The points race is, they'll be set number, a set number of laps.

And like Jed said, there's this easily sprint after four or five laps. And then points are distributed based on first, second, third, and fourth. It's usually like five, three, two, And sometimes the last, the final sprint, the points are doubled to make it more interesting. And...

Art Trapotsis (15:07)
And are people just sort of resting or out between the sprints?

David Lafond (15:10)
It depends. There's all sorts of strategies, right? You can choose what if you, like Jen's saying, you can try to sprint for every single one, but you might be toasted by the last sprint. Some folks might just sit in, skip a sprint, then try to win every other sprint. So it depends on your strategy, how you feel, how you think you're.

Art Trapotsis (15:26)
Mm-hmm.

David Lafond (15:30)
Opposition is sometimes folks will break away or there'll be a couple guys that break away and scoop up most of the points. So there's different strategies depending on who's racing,

Art Trapotsis (15:41)
folks want to show up, should there be any concern? I know it's a bike race, but like how many times are you guys crashing? Is this a concern at all for folks?

David Lafond (15:50)
I don't think we had any incidents last year that I can recall of. So safe. Like the training we provide people, like the number one thing is safety. There's etiquette to make sure people are riding and racing safely. It is different. There are no brakes on the bikes, but like Jed said, we're all in that situation. So nobody's going to break check in front of you or anything like that.

Art Trapotsis (16:14)
Okay, so Jed, that was Sunday. What happens the other six days of the week up at the track?

Jed Kornbluh (16:20)
We've got Tuesday night racing, and this is all based on our 2024 calendar. We're still finalizing the 2025 calendar and we can talk about some of the things we'll be doing this coming year. So Tuesday nights are a little bit more casual. it's sort of whoever shows up, we build a program and folks race. That's at 6 PM. Is that right, Dave? I live in Connecticut, so I skipped the midweek races. I only show up on the weekends. It's a little far for me.

Art Trapotsis (16:38)
What time is that at typically?

So 6 p.m. Tuesdays, okay.

Jed Kornbluh (16:47)
And Thursday nights we do timed events, so time trials and sprint practice. So Thursdays are more for time trial training for the folks that are interested in doing the 500 meter or the kilometer, is what would be considered the standard individual time trial for track racing or the... Yeah, those are fun and require a lot of discipline. And a lot of the practices in how you start those, because having a clean start

Art Trapotsis (17:04)
I think I'd like those the best.

Jed Kornbluh (17:14)
When you only have a lap and a half or two laps to really race and get on top of your gear, that start is crucial. You can lose a lot of time with a poor start.

Art Trapotsis (17:22)
We've got Tuesday, we've got Thursday, we've got Sunday. Those are the three days of the week. The track is open. Is that it? Am I missing anything?

Jed Kornbluh (17:30)
That's it for now, but we are building the schedule for 2025 and we are hoping to do Mondays and Wednesdays as well for informal training as well as try the track clinics for folks to come out, especially in the early part of the season. We want to try and get people as comfortable with the track, especially beginners in the early part of the season. When I say early, mean April and May so that we have more riders coming out in the later months in July and August when

We have a lot of open spots on the calendar as far as road racing is concerned. Traditionally in New England, you guys probably know this, we haven't had a whole lot of road racing in July and August. One of the things that we're going to try this year is all of our racing is run unsanctioned, meaning we don't use USA Cycling officials or sanctioning for our races. Our insurance is through ATRA, American Track Racing Association, which is...

Art Trapotsis (18:22)
Hmm, okay.

Jed Kornbluh (18:24)
which is what a lot of tracks in this country use. But we are going to test a couple of events this summer with USA Cycling licensing and officials. We'll have a warmup event for sometime in July to sort of test it. And then we're going to host a New England Championships in August. Yeah.

Art Trapotsis (18:39)
interesting. Wow.

Do you guys collaborate at all with the New England Bike Racing Association? Do you use any of their services or anything?

Jed Kornbluh (18:47)
Well, we're we are a member of NEBRA or at least they advertise our events. We've got some Alan Atwood is one of their board president. He's on our board as well. So we we try to push out as much information to NEBRA as possible, try and spread the word about what we're doing.

Art Trapotsis (19:02)
Excellent. So Dave, what are some of the challenges of maintaining and promoting a velodrome in today's world?

David Lafond (19:10)
I think for us, it's getting the word out and getting folks to come up.

I think Jed mentioned that, you know, in springtime comes, we will go through and assess the condition of the surface. We'll go through and make some improvements there, depending on the condition. We are planning to do some more maintenance for upcoming season.

There's no running water. It's pretty primitive, unfortunately. We do have porta potties and stuff like that,

Art Trapotsis (19:38)
Okay.

Jed Kornbluh (19:41)
we do set up racks and pop-up tents, so there is shade. There's actually a nice shady spot that we're going to improve this coming spring so that we've got another place for people to hang out. It's actually the only spot that gets real natural shade along the track, and it's a really great place right between turns three and four to watch racing. So that's one of the improvements we're hoping to make.

David Lafond (19:42)
Yeah. Yeah.

Art Trapotsis (19:58)
Awesome.

What would you say to a cyclist, and I'm sure we both, we all have a lot of mutual friends who are cyclists and athletes who have never tried track cycling. What would you say to them to get them to come up and try this?

Jed Kornbluh (20:13)
I think that track racing is, I say this all the time, that every bike racer should try track racing. It will improve your race craft.

Art Trapotsis (20:21)
But I don't have the gear, Jed.

Jed Kornbluh (20:22)
You don't have to, we've got rentals. Come on up. We've got a whole, we've got a whole container of bikes. So we've got, we've got bikes in most, in most sizes. Obviously we lack some, some of the really small or really large sizes, but if you're anywhere from, if you ride anywhere from a 52 to a 58 centimeter bike, we've got bikes for you. And I believe we have a couple of small and big ones that we can, we can loan out. We're working on getting some smaller ones for kids. So we, we maintain the fleet. We go through each spring and make sure the bikes are, the chains are waxed. The hubs are,

Art Trapotsis (20:25)
Tell me, so tell me about that.

Wow.

Jed Kornbluh (20:51)
greased in good shape. We've got a pile of chainrings and cogs to change up the gearing. But we'll size you up at the track on a set of rollers with a fork stand and make sure that your bike is size appropriate before we send you out.

Art Trapotsis (20:57)
interesting.

So do I bring up my shoes and pedals?

Jed Kornbluh (21:08)
Yes, so you bring your shoes, pedals, helmet, and whatever you're going to wear for the day and we provide the rest.

Art Trapotsis (21:14)
that's fantastic. So, okay, so you're taking down the barriers here. So, so Tuesday night, the race starts at six. You know, how much does it cost? What time should I show up if I need to rent a track bike?

Jed Kornbluh (21:26)
Well, we want to give you about an hour ahead of time. So we'll open the gates around five. If you're renting a bike, we'll need to know ahead of time so we can make sure that bike is available. It usually is, unless we have, we're running a clinic that night as well, which we try not to do. But we'll come out ahead of time. One of our volunteers will help you get sized up. Hopefully you've already gone through our certification process. We're going to be more, more strict about that this coming season. We want to make sure that everyone who's racing on our track,

has all the tools that they need to have a safe evening for themselves and for the other participants.

Art Trapotsis (21:55)
So how do I let

someone know that I need a track bike? Is there a registration page? Is this on BikeReg?

Jed Kornbluh (21:59)
There is, yeah,

you can register right on BikeReg for that evening's event and select BikeRental when you're filling out your registration form.

Art Trapotsis (22:08)
With regards to the certification, so that's something we should, a cyclist should do before they show up on race day, is that what you're saying?

Jed Kornbluh (22:16)
Yeah, that's right. Every Velodrome has their own process and the registrations are generally, or the certifications are generally not portable because each track has a different surface, a different degree of banking. And really there are regional, usually the dialect that we use on the track is the same all over the place, but they're just regional taste. Dave actually worked pretty hard on developing a curriculum for track certification with Mark Lamary and one of our other volunteers. And we've been refining that.

Art Trapotsis (22:19)
Okay.

Jed Kornbluh (22:43)
Maybe Dave can talk a little bit more about some of the clinics that we ran in 2024 and the success that we had.

Art Trapotsis (22:48)
Yeah.

David Lafond (22:49)
Sure. So we do have a curriculum together. Part of the curriculum, it's kind of split into two pieces. So part of the curriculum is getting folks just a quick introduction on a track bike like we talked, maybe a little bit more in depth than what we talked about here. And then just getting folks on the bike themselves. One of the challenges some people find is

just clipping in the bike, just getting started because you can't coast.

Art Trapotsis (23:13)
while the crank is turning.

David Lafond (23:15)
I think it's about an hour and a half, two hours. It depends on the group of folks. If folks pick things up quickly, we can run through the curriculum quickly. If it takes a while, the folks are having trouble getting used to riding the bike, may take more time. And by the end of the class, we kind of put...

I don't want to call it a mock race, but we will put a race or two together so folks get used to, you know, riding closely with other people. And, you know, that's what we want them to do is feel, have some level of comfort doing that before they show up at a race where everybody's going, you know, 100%.

Art Trapotsis (23:53)
So just to really spell this out, you have events from May to September

David Lafond (23:57)
like Jed mentioned, we're putting a calendar together. The plan is to do one a month on Saturdays. So this is tentative still. And then try to do the same thing on a Monday once a month and a Wednesday once a month to try to accommodate folks where, you know, Saturday might not be a good day. They can come on a weeknight.

Art Trapotsis (24:19)
Yeah, I was just thinking like, from a training perspective, you know, this might be something

Do you have any fun or memorable races or moments from the track days? Anything interesting happen?

David Lafond (24:32)
We've got some non-traditional races that we have. There's a race called the Belgian Win-N-Out that we do and the way it works,

Art Trapotsis (24:35)
yeah, like what?

David Lafond (24:45)
So if you win the first sprint, you're done. You come in first place and you don't have to race anymore. So Belgian win and out is a little different where the first bell, there's four bells. The first bell, if you win that sprint, you come in fourth. And then the next, the next, the next bell, you come in third, second, and then the final sprint, you either win the race or you come in fifth.

Art Trapotsis (24:46)
Okay.

David Lafond (25:11)
so we were racing in the Belgian winning out and you're kind of sizing up. Am I going to come in third? Am I going to come in second? And me and another rider got, got away in the breakaway and we were pretty clear of the field and it got to the sprint lap and it almost turned into a track stand because we were trying not to cross the finish line so we could get, we could get a higher placing.

Art Trapotsis (25:32)
comments.

David Lafond (25:36)
to fall over almost, but not quite.

Art Trapotsis (25:36)
What about you, Jed? Any moments of interesting?

Jed Kornbluh (25:39)
Yeah, I, I, I

enjoy torturing my, my fellow members a couple of times this past summer. the points race like Dave is my favorite event. and one of the tricks with the points race is that if you lap the field, you gain 20 points. So everyone else is basically riding in a deficit. so what I like to do is jump early and see if I can take someone with me. So the will trade polls will gobble up points.

Art Trapotsis (26:02)
You

Jed Kornbluh (26:05)
until we catch the field and then I'll sit right behind the field so that I'm still in the first position and gobble up those points until we're maybe one or two to go and then I'll connect with the field, get my 20 points and lock in my win. And it's incredibly frustrating to the riders that are in the field because they're looking back, looking back and we're just, having a great time. We're working really, really hard but we're really frustrating the rest of the field. So I end up becoming a not very popular guy in those days but I just can't help myself. It's too much fun.

Art Trapotsis (26:20)
Wow.

I know

who's wheel to follow when I show up. So are you guys aware that we have a local gold medalist in Kristen Faulkner? You know, she won the track pursuit event this past summer and she's she's actually from the area. I've been seeing we went and met her at the Andover Academy and she gave a talk there and I realized that she's been training sort of south of Boston. Isn't that kind of cool? We got to get her up to the track.

Jed Kornbluh (26:36)
Ha

We do, that would be great.

Art Trapotsis (27:04)
Awesome. So back to the logistics of the track. So anyone can show up. What is the cost?

David Lafond (27:06)
yeah, it would for sure.

Jed Kornbluh (27:10)
It ranges. So I think we were $20 or $25 last season for a drop-in race and $15 for a rental. As Dave said, we're still working at our pricing for this coming season. We'll probably have that decision made in the next few weeks. But our pricing for full membership this past year was $500, which got you access to the track whenever you wanted. So if you're a

Art Trapotsis (27:23)
Okay.

This all

sounds very reasonable to me.

Jed Kornbluh (27:33)
It is, especially when you break down the fact that we have currently the track schedule is open three days per week. And if you're a full member, you can show up at any time and, you know, it's up to you to make sure the track is clear of debris. We've got a leaf blower there. You can use that and do a few laps around the track. And you can go and train at your, you know, at your leisure. it's no, no, no.

Art Trapotsis (27:51)
Okay, can I bring like 10 of my friends with me or is that not

okay?

Jed Kornbluh (27:55)
No,

we want everyone to be a member because everyone's got to have a waiver signed. We want to know who's at the track and we want to make sure that you're insured so that we're protected and so are you.

Art Trapotsis (28:04)
Makes sense. So here's something we like to ask folks who are in the endurance community. Are you guys doing anything or is it part of your vision to do something that supports or helps grow the cycling with our youth? Any programs in development or anything like that?

Jed Kornbluh (28:21)
Yeah, so I spent a lot of time, I'm the former director of the Connecticut Cycling Advancement Program, and I know you interviewed Brian and Ben not long ago, but I was between Dave Hoyle and Brian. So I was there from 2019 to 2022 and left to stay in the nonprofit world, but to basically step out and enjoy cycling again and continue coaching kids.

Art Trapotsis (28:29)
Yes, C-cap.

Jed Kornbluh (28:45)
The reason I'm saying this is some of us have a good background in youth development, whether it's fundraising or coaching. And we would like to try and bring more young riders in. This past season, I believe we had three juniors throughout the summer show up. One came out on a pretty regular basis, who's actually a local from the Boston area, Lex Picciolo, discovered track racing and had just a killer season with us.

Art Trapotsis (29:07)
That's fantastic.

Jed Kornbluh (29:07)
and became

sort of our mascot. He was one of the gang for the summer and along with his mother Francesca who's a big supporter of what we do.

Art Trapotsis (29:12)
Yeah.

Well, here's a crazy

idea. There's one of the interviews we did with Community Rowing. They're based on the Charles River, and they collaborated with some of the Boston public schools to basically add rowing to their curriculum as sort of an extracurricular. And I just thought, what if you took some schools from London Dairy, Dairy, Pelham, wherever it might be around there, and maybe you had like a track day or, I don't know, just spitballing here, but that would be really cool to get some.

some younger folks aware of what even track cycling is.

Jed Kornbluh (29:47)
We'd love to do that early limitation of the number of rental bikes that we have that would be sized appropriately for the kids. We would love for a sponsor to step up and help us obtain some smaller sizes so that we can accommodate more kids and build a youth program. Right now, I think that the shortest rider that we can really accommodate would be around five, two. So if we could get some smaller bikes, we could absolutely build a great collaboration with the local school systems and have a youth cycling program there.

Art Trapotsis (30:11)
Yeah, and get some of the underserved communities involved. And I don't know, this could be kind of fun, but I understand your need for sort of that lead sponsor. Dave, were you gonna add anything to that? I'd mean to cut you off.

David Lafond (30:21)
I was going to add two things. One of the things we're looking into for this year, at least to get youth involved is to potentially host a kids race at the VeloJump. If it's a kids race, could use what it's bring whatever bike you got, whether it's a Strider or a mountain bike or, you know, bring what you got and we can do it. We can do some racing, get the kids.

introduced to the facility and stuff like that as we work on getting equipment. And not necessarily related to juniors, but to young racers is we did do a training session with the MIT cycling team last year. We were approached by, I think, Bentley's cycling team to do a clinic for them. So we're looking into trying to get some collegiate cycling

Art Trapotsis (31:08)
cool.

David Lafond (31:15)
done and if we can make it work have a collegiate race in the fall. So we're working on that. I don't know how that'll pan out yet, but it's kind of in New York's.

Art Trapotsis (31:17)
That'd be fantastic.

Yeah. So what are your, what's your vision or your goals for the next, let's

say five years with the VeloDrum? Where do you, where do you hope it gets to?

David Lafond (31:30)
I'd like to see us get to, you know, expand the racing and get to the point where we can have a number of fields on the big race days, at least like on the Sunday racing, have women's specific field, have masters and fields and junior fields and stuff like that, and have it be a place where folks can come on a regular basis and race.

You know, there's not a lot of racing compared to, you know, when I started, when I started every weekend, Saturday and Sunday, there was either mountain bike race or road race or stage race. And then in the fall you had cyclocross. It seemed like you could race from April through, you know, the winter every weekend. So.

Art Trapotsis (32:00)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So are there, I should have asked this at the beginning, but are there any other velodromes

in New England? There's nothing. I I heard something brewing a few years ago, one in Connecticut, one in Western Mass. There's an organization, if you do a Google on track cycling in New England, you come up with New England Velodrome and Sports Complex, and I see our mutual acquaintance Ed Cross is involved with that.

Jed Kornbluh (32:18)
No, not a one.

David Lafond (32:22)
No. No.

Art Trapotsis (32:38)
You know, is there is there anybody else doing this?

Jed Kornbluh (32:41)
Well, there's several groups that are trying to get tracks built. know the guys that are hoping to get one done in Connecticut, Dave Chonner and Rick Mayer, part of their Team Track project. They had a press conference and an investor meeting at a brewery in Windsor last winter, Windsor, Connecticut, where they're hoping to build a 200 meter indoor facility, but they're still in the seed capital phase for that. I Alan Ferry is trying to build one, has been trying to build one around the Waltham area for a number of years.

We had a conversation with him a few months ago. The closest track, the closest high quality facility is in Bromont, Quebec, which is about four and a half hours from me in central Connecticut. Beyond that, there's Casina, which is in Queens, New York. And then farther south and west is Trexel Town, which we talked about before. Beyond that, that's really all we've got in this region.

Art Trapotsis (33:20)
Mm-hmm.

I mean, it's amazing. You know, we've interviewed so many different cycling groups for this podcast. And the fact that there's no real legit indoor velodrome is baffling. But maybe it has to do with the economics. But I'm really grateful that the Northeast velodrome at least exists and that, you guys are really putting a lot of effort into that. So that's really exciting. If you could implement one major change to elevate the sport in New England, what would it be?

Jed Kornbluh (33:55)
I'd want to build an indoor facility within an hour of Boston.

Art Trapotsis (33:59)
There you go.

Jed Kornbluh (34:00)
Yes,

that's a multi-use facility that is exactly the same as the one in Bromont and maybe a little bit smaller scale than what we have out in LA. But we're hungry for it. The community could use it as a great community resource center with indoor pickleball and volleyball, skate park, pump track, conference space, gym. The velodrome is only one part of that. And we just need a few pockets of change.

Art Trapotsis (34:22)
Hmm.

Jed Kornbluh (34:28)
in the millions of dollars to make this happen.

Art Trapotsis (34:31)
That's fantastic. So Dave, is there anything else that we needed to cover today and we didn't or that you wanted to mention or plug for the millions of folks listening today?

David Lafond (34:39)
Definitely check us out if you're a cyclist. You talked about it earlier. I think everybody, if you're an avid cyclist, should come and see what we're doing. Take the clinic. It might not be for you. We've had folks come and it was definitely not for them, which is fine. But I think you should come try. You know, we used to say with cyclocross, right? We say folks...

For those of us that do cyclocross, you gotta at least come try one race. It might not be for you, but expand your horizon. See what it's about. At the very least, when you watch the Olympics four years from now, you'll understand what the athletes are doing, what the races are about, and I wanted to add with Jed and just go back to kind of my...

Art Trapotsis (35:14)
Hmm.

That's a good point, Dave. Yeah.

David Lafond (35:27)
my project for my MBA, I modeled kind of how things would look based on Bromont. In addition to what Jed just said, in Bromont, they have outdoor facilities as well for cycling. So they have the BMX racetrack, pump track, they've got a freestyle, they've got mountain bike trails out there. So they do all sorts of stuff year round, indoor, outdoor.

Art Trapotsis (35:41)
So interesting.

David Lafond (35:55)
kids get involved, especially with the mountain biking program and the BMX track that they have. So ideally, it would be great if we could have the space to do that in addition to the actual facility, the building with the velodrome in it and the gym and the pickleball courts that they have up in Bromont and stuff like that.

Art Trapotsis (36:08)
Mm-hmm.

At the very least, might need to make a road trip up to Bromont to see what's going

on up there.

Jed Kornbluh (36:19)
Let us know. We're going up there a few more times.

David Lafond (36:22)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Art Trapotsis (36:23)
Jed, is there anything else you want to mention about the track or about New England track cycling

in general?

Jed Kornbluh (36:27)
Yeah, so I hope that through this conversation, your listeners discover that we're friendly people. And the rest of the folks that come to Northeast Velodrome are just as friendly, if not more. We want people to come and discover the track. We will answer every question. We will help you with every gear choice, every equipment selection. If you're ready to buy a bike, we'll help walk you through that. But we're here not just to host races, we're here as a community resource to turn more people onto track racing.

So don't hesitate, reach out and join us even if it's just for, as Dave said, just give it a try. We're here for you.

Art Trapotsis (37:03)
That sounds awesome and that's probably a good segue for me to just plug the websites we're talking about here. We've got two, newenglandtrackcycling.com and we also have northeastvelo-drome.wordpress.com. And we can register through BikeRage and it sounds like you're looking for some fundraising as well and we can also donate if we'd like through one of those websites as well. Is that correct, Dave?

David Lafond (37:27)
That's correct. Yeah, Jed's put that together. He could probably speak much more to that than I can. Yeah.

Jed Kornbluh (37:29)
Yes, if you follow us on social media, either Instagram or Facebook,

just search any velodrome, NE Velodrome on Instagram or search Northeast Velodrome on Facebook. We're running our fundraiser until the 31st. We're just a thousand dollar shy of hitting our $10,000 goal, which is going to help us cover some major expenses for this year and hopefully expand our programming.

We're a 501c3 so your donation will be tax deductible if you've got some extra change you'd like to throw our way, we would be greatly appreciative of that.

Art Trapotsis (38:01)
Excellent. Thank you. A huge thanks to Jed and Dave from the New England Track Cycling. And also to the, I want to thank the entire New England Track Cycling community. This isn't just you two guys. It sounds like there's several folks involved and you guys are dedicated to making track cycling more accessible. And I just want to tip the hat to everybody involved and thank you so much. And also thanks for everyone listening for tuning into the New England Endurance Podcast.

Don't forget to like, subscribe, et cetera, share with your fellow endurance enthusiasts. You can find us on YouTube and Apple and Spotify, So until next time, keep enjoying the beautiful terrain of New England and give track cycling a try up in Lennon Dairy, New Hampshire. And hopefully we'll see you out there on the track someday. Thank you very much.

Jed Kornbluh (38:51)
Thank you.

David Lafond (38:52)
Thanks, Art.