Saturday, June 20^th. Sacramento, CA. Be a part of the development of a mountain bike park behind the Township Nine development.

More details are on their Meetup page.

The Sacramento Mountain Bike Skills Park is under construction on a back lot of the Township Nine development between N. 5th St. and N. 7th St. up by the river levee.  Randy Spangler of IMBA and Terry Cox of College Cyclery are designing and building the park, starting with a pump track.  We will also be working on a single track around the perimeter this Saturday.

I seem to have become my own “Tale of two cities.” I’ve got one foot forever in Sacramento, and the other in San Francisco. Being a man of two cities, I have an interesting perspective on the cycling in both of them. I’m continually comparing and contrasting them both. I keep coming back to on inescapable conclusion: Sacramento is an awesome cycling town.

You seldom see Sacramento on the list of great cycling towns. However, there is an extremely tight-knit community there that has grown up around the bike. First off – the city is almost dead flat. Coupled with a climate that, while hot, is mostly sunny and you’ve got Midtown streets filled with cruisers (Sac definitely seems to prefer coaster brakes to questionably-legal fixies). But the cycling doesn’t stop with the mid-town hipsters. The CX scene in Sacramento is thriving, spurred in part by quirky dirt-track racing. Throw in a scrappy bike polo team and an active bicycle advocacy group and you’ve got a full cycling scene.

Pretty much every new city street project includes the addition of bicycle lanes. The area also sports over 70 miles of mixed use trail along the American River. You can ride all the way from Old Town Sacramento to Folsom on the foothills of the Sierras without riding parallel to a single car.

And speaking of foothills – east of the city provides some amazing hills for the wanna-be mountain goats among you. While your up there, don’t miss trying your hand at Beaty Dr., a local benchmark for area climbers.

I still routinely take my bike back and forth between Sacramento and San Francisco. While riding in SF is exciting and rewarding itself, I always seem to feel a bit more relaxed in Sacramento. It is a great place to just enjoy the ride.

Be careful out there on your training or casual rides, folks.  The Sacramento cycling mailing lists have been abuzz with reports of an incident of gang violence against an unnamed Rio Strada rider recently.  According to the circulated report:

Hey all,

Last night after the generic ride I was riding solo from Sac St to Discovery Park where I parked my vehicle. I was at the .5 mile marker and saw 5 teenage males walking/riding down the bike trail, on the same side that I was on. 4 of them were on bicycles, and 1 was on foot. I was traveling about 13 mph when I yelled to them, “on your left”. As I crossed the yellow line and began my pass, one of the juveniles looked at me, and swerved left trying to run me off the road. Another juvenile hopped off his P.O.S. bmx bike and used it like a baseball bat to try and knock me off my bike. His bicycle made contact with my right leg (causing no injury) and my frame (minor scratch). I was fortunate enough to not crash and continued to the 0 mile marker where my vehicle was parked. My phone battery had died so I asked another couple who was already in the parking lot if I could borrow their phone. As I explained the situation to 911 dispatch the couple advised me that the same dirtbag kids attempted to do the same to them. In the following minutes, I spoke with a few other riders at Discovery that were finished and they all had similar stories. I gave dispatch a description of the 5 males and also continued surveillance of them as they were riding around by the bridge at discovery. Within 3 minutes there was 4 marked Sac PD units, 1 County Ranger, and 1 City Ranger. All 5 males were proned out at gun point. All 5 were validated NORTENO gang members. 3 of the juveniles ended up going home, as they were just, “witnesses” not, “participants”…..the other 2 were arrested for PC245 (assault with a deadly weapon) and transported to juvenile hall. In april, the juvenile that hit me with the bicycle was arrested for gun possesion and a few other things….

So, moral of the story…..

Sacramento was treated to some fantastic pro racing as the modified stage 2 course of the 2011 Amgen Tour of California offered 3 circuits around the state capitol building.  A breakaway of 4 riders struggled to stay ahead of the peloton, but were caught before rolling onto the streets of California’s capitol city, where huge crowds waited despite the threat of poor weather.

Rain fell briefly just as the riders started to duel it out trying to get teams positioned for a sprint finish.

At the end of the day, it was Ben Swift of Team Sky that claimed the sprint – and of course the overall leaders jersey at the end of the first active day of racing of the tour.  Ben Swift stated that he actually felt the rain may have helped him out:

The rain helped me a little bit.  Coming from Britain, you get to experience riding in rain.  It puts a fear in
some people and helps you control things more.

Racing continues tomorrow as Route 3 travels from Auburn to Modesto.

In response to anticipated weather conditions, officials have moved the start of stage 2 of the 2011 mgen Tour of California to Nevada City, CA.  The start time has also been delayed to 12:15 Pacific Time.  This essentially moves the start along the original route to the location and time it was expected to pass the new start location, thus allowing the rest of the 61 miles to follow the originally planned route.

The route was expected to leave Squaw Valley and pass over Donner Pass.  However, the threat of more winter-like conditions again raised concerns for the safety of riders, spectators and crew, prompting this change.

This will mark the second year that Nevada City has hosted a stage start, the first being Stage 1 of the 2010 Tour.  Andrew Messick, president of AEG Sports, also spoke of the possibility of a return again:

Nevada City did an outstanding job hosting the first stage of the 2010 race and we know that the riders and fans will appreciate the return.  We owe a debt of gratitude to Andy Chapman, Carol Chaplin and everyone in Squaw Valley, who worked tirelessly to create what would have been an exceptional Stage 2 start and hope that we will have an opportunity to bring the Amgen Tour of California to the city in a future year.

This change will have some rewards for spectators in Sacramento, CA however.  Originally the route was scheduled to make only a single pass around the state capital building.  However, in light of the shortened course race officials have increased that to 3 circuits through the heart of the city.

According to officials:

Following the peloton’s 12:15 p.m. PT departure from Nevada City, California, the riders will travel approximately 61 miles to Sacramento, picking up the original Stage 2 route.  The riders will enter Sacramento at approximately 3 p.m. PT and complete three circuit laps before finishing in front of the Capitol Building between 3:30 and 3:45 p.m. PT.  The race’s original schedule called for only one complete circuit, but due to the modified course, the additional two circuits were able to be added.

If you are planning on attending the finish of Stage 2 of the Amgen Tour of California.  Sacramento can be tricky it park in and negotiate on a good weekend day.  Throw in all of the traffic for a major cycling event and you’re likely to find yourself walking miles even if you do drive downtown.  However, Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates (SABA) are helping to solve this problem for you.

As in previous years, SABA will be manning a bike valet service on the lawn of the capitol building.  You can ride your bike right to the finish line, and SABA volunteers will place your bike into a safe, fenced, staffed ‘bull pen.’  You’ll be given a claim ticket which you can use to claim your bike when you are ready to depart.  And besides, riding your bike to a bike race just seems to complete the experience – doesn’t it?

According to an Examiner.com article, Sacramento is ready to start adding more painted bike lanes to downtown Sacramento streets over the next 18 months.

The plans aim to create an environment downtown which resembles the bike-friendly portions of midtown, where cycling is popular and bikeways are more common.

This seems in line with what appears to be a growing trend of bike-friendliness throughout the region.

According to the article, the specific streets have already been allocated:

The first phase of the project will add painted bicycle lanes to J Street, I Street, 9th Street, 5th Street, 10th Street and Capitol Mall, where the roads are typically wide enough already to accommodate a dedicated cycle lane. In many cases, substantial bikeways can be added with little or no impact on existing traffic lanes or parking.The second phase will oversee the removal of existing traffic lanes from several major one-way streets. A single lane of traffic can be split to provide a dedicated cycle lane on each side of the road. Streets scheduled for the second phase of development include stretches of 5th Street, 9th Street, 10th Street, G Street and H Street.

Two Sacramento City Council members – Steve Cohn and Jay Schenirer – are working with local SABA members to look into closing streets select streets to motor vehicle traffic in May, according to a Sacramento Bee report.  The idea is called a Ciclovia, and most definitely is not new.  The idea is to create a corridor in a city where cars are prohibited, opening up the space to cyclists, street vendors, pedestrians, etc. The target month of May also coincides with May is Bike Month.

Oakland has enjoyed some apparent success with their Oaklavia:

Email requests for comment to both Jay Schenirer and Steve Cohn have gone unanswered at the time of this writing.

The goal is a velodrome – a smooth surfaced track with banked corners used for bicycle racing.  Unlike outdoor road or stage bicycle races – more commonly known in mainstream America – track races are much friendlier to spectators.  In road or stage races, the setting is outdoors and you can’t see the riders until they pass by your vantage point.  In some race formats – like the Tour de France – that happens exactly once.

In contrast, track racing takes place in a stadium-like environment, where spectators can watch all of the action as it unfolds.

I stopped by Rex Cycles in Sacramento to speak with Steve Rex and Dean “Dino” Alleger, two guys who just happen to know a thing or two about getting a velodrome facility in the Sacramento area.

Sacramento was home to a wooden outdoor velodrome in the early 20th century, so this wouldn’t be the first time track racing took place in the area.  It is also not the first time there has been a concerted, organized effort to get a new one built.

Steve Rex was involved in an effort in the early 2000’s to get a facility built at Mather Field.  The idea at the time was to build a national-level track facility, and include that as part of the Northern California’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics that was still in play at that time.  According to a Feb, 2002 article in the Sacramento Bee by Matt Peters:

The feasibility study is expected to be completed in late summer, at which time the group will begin attempting to raise the estimated $1.5 million needed for construction. The entire facility is expected to cost $3 million to $4 million. The goal is to complete the track in time for Sacramento to be host for the Masters Track Nationals in 2003.

Obviously things didn’t work out for that effort, however.  When asked about the what happened, Rex pointed to the findings of the feasibility study as a huge roadblock.  A consultant hired for the study came to the conclusion that, to be successful, the facility would require a specific type of organizational  structure:

(the consultant found that it would require) …professional management, like Trexlertown.  Based on that assumption, we would need a massive endowment like Trexlertown has.

As Steve Rex disappeared into the back of his shop to attend to shop business, I continued to speak with Dino Alleger.  Dino is currently in the drivers seat of the Sacramento Valley Velodrome Association.  We spoke about the association while he wrenched on a customer’s bicycle:

JustAnotherCyclist: So how do we fast forward [from 2002] to where we are today?

Dino: Mary Maroon … and I started racing criteriums around the same time together, so we were coming up on the River ride together.  She got the bug to start racing down in San Jose and invited me to come down.  And she said “We gotta build a velodrome in Sacramento.  I’m gonna move to San Jose and figure out how to do it”  So off she went.  She went on to be a national level road racer, and isn’t racing track any more.  But I caught the bug.  … So I just got into it.  Got hooked on the energy in the infield of all these kids racing after all that [prize] money and started think about how we could get more kids into it.

JAC: The effort that’s going on now, how is that different from the effort that was trying to get this going out at Mather Field?

Dino: Instead of trying to get a bunch of people at the top, to build the pyramid down, I’m trying to build an association with several hundred volunteers and racers and build the thing from the bottom up so that we can start running juniors programs, kids events, community stuff and be able to attrract the base that we need to keep it going.  If somebody says “you can’t do this” well, then, we’ll just figure out a new way to do it.  There will be enough energy and momentum behind it that, if it takes me 10 years of running twilight races to get it built, than that’s what its going to be.

JAC: Are any of the plans concrete enough?  Are we talking indoor, or outdoor?

Dino: It needs to be outdoor.  The velodrome down at ADT at Carson, California in LA is an indoor, worldclass track, and its close enough that we can send people down there if they get to the level where they need to be with the Team USA.  The drawback of it is that wood is fragil.  You can’t have beginners crash around on it.  Every time they chip a board they’ve got to replace it.  And the other thing is its sensitive to the environment.  And they have to run the air conditioner 24/7 year round.  And that costs right around 30 thousand dollars a month for heating and air.  To put that into perspective, San Jose’s budget for their entire season is 25 thousand dollars.

JAC: Is San Jose kind of the model to look towards?

Dino: In some ways, yeah.  Its a municipal property, so the county has rangers, and maintenance in the park.  Its a non-profit association that runs all the programs, and they get some private funding to keep things rolling and to do the big money races and stuff.

JAC: Unless you are into track racing, you don’t hear a lot about track racing.  What’s Sacramento like?  Is there talent here?

Dino: There’s about 10 of us from Sacramento and Davis and Folsom that go race down in San Jose on a regular basis.  But if you look at the other kinds of racing that we have here, the BMX out in Roseville – they had Nationals here one or two years ago and they had 500 entrants.  There’s the cyclocross series that has totally blossomed, and that has probably grown several hundred percent over the last 10 years.  They have hundreds of entrants to each race in the series.  The other one is the Prairie City mountain bike racing.  They get anywhere from three to five hundred racers every Wednesday night throughout the series.  So yea, there is a lot of local talent and desire.  The thing about trying to raise Olympic and world cup kids is that you need to get them on bikes when they’re about 10 years old.  And you need to get them riding – it doesn’t need to be there main focus, but there needs to be some kind of program so that the fast ones have a place to work out in a safe environment, and the proper banking.  We want to build a 250 meter track, because that’s the Olympic standard.  250 meters with a 40-some-odd percent banking in the corners.  America’s full of great talent, they just don’t – there’s no pipeline.  USA Cycling looks at results from kids across the country, and then they go with the kids.  Rather than getting hundreds of kids in the ten to twelve year old range to come through and have the ones that take to it or have the motivation to carry on.

JAC: You can’t help but wonder, with track or fixed gear bikes becoming something of a fashionable thing more than they ever have if we might be able to identify talented riders a little easier.

Dino: Yea.  Totally.  Down at Hellyer at San Jose they’ve got messenger races.  You don’t have to be a messenger, but they all have tattoos and messenger bags, you know?

JAC: So what can the average Joe out there that’s a recreational cyclist or just likes watching track racing, what can they do to help this effort out?

Dino: Well, the first thing is to come to our roller races for the next four weeks.  The one on Sunday we had a kid come up from LA that was raised on the track up in Portland.  He’s now on Team USA.  He’s an Olympic hoepful, so he’s living down in LA and training and racing down there.

JAC: So far are there any significant obstacles to making this happen?

Dino: I’ve been working on it for like 4 years now and its pretty solid in my head about how to funnel the energy.  I’ve filed for Articles of Incorporation with the state and I’m waiting for them to come back and if they say its OK for me to go forward than I can get a Tax ID and really start fund raising.  And at that point I’ll try to get maybe 100 people to pledge 1000 dollars and say we’ll collect it in the next year just to show another level of commitment.  Have you been to any of the roller races yet?

JAC: Yea.  Actually I was there last Sunday, and a couple of Second Saturday’s ago I was down here [at Rex Cycles]

Dino: Its highly addictive.  And the track racing is the same.

JAC: When’s the next one?

Dino: Two weeks.

JAC: Is that down at Hot Italian again?

Dino: Yea.  We’re doing a series of six of them, and on March 20th we’re going to have a championship event with prizes.  You can snoop around on sacvalleyveoldrome.org and see some of the stuff.  There’s standings on there.  There’s information … there will be 500 hundred dollars cash up for grabs.

JAC: If this all comes together what do you see your role being after its all built and everything?

Dino: My role?  I’d like to continue on.  Stop being executive director and continue on as a program director that can deal with the juniors.  Specifically the 10-12, 13 years old.

JAC: You sound optimistic.

Dino: Well, what else is there to do?  [laughs]

JAC: I imagine if you thought it wouldn’t work you probably wouldn’t be trying.

Dino: Yeah.  I gambled 20% of my yearly income on trying to get the thing to come off the ground, you know?  The roller race thing.  I bought the domain name, and the web service.  You know, I rolled the dice.  My wife is totally into it.  She races too.  Let’s do it, you know.  It probably would have been a little more financially conservative to wait another six months, but doors just started opening and we had to go through so here we are.  But really, with a good grant writer and all the people we know with non-profit and foundation experience I don’t think getting the money to do it is the problem.  The problem is organizing people.  And so far I seem to enjoy it.

Dino later spoke about desire to also ensure that women have equal representation and access to racing events.  This comes through in his roller racing efforts that are helping to drive awareness and funding for the Sacramento Valley Velodrome Association, where you will see women pouring their efforts into the stationary bikes just as zealously as the men.  You can see, and participate, in these events at Hot Italian in Sacramento.  See the Sacramento Valley Velodrome Association website for event schedules and details.

Steve Rex is a custom frame builder and owner of Rex Cycles in Sacramento, CA.

Dean “Dino” Alleger is a Cat 3 road and track racer from Sacramento, CA.

Information on the Sacrament Valley Velodrome Association can be found at http://sacvalleyvelodrome.org

Sunday night it was standing room only as Sacramento’s Hot Italian hosted another Savage Sprints event to benefit the Sacramento Valley Velodrome Project.

The venue worked well, providing food and drink for the adults, along with a comfortable location for the many children that also came out with their parents.  The races saw brother pitted against brother, and even a national track champion was in attendance.

Kevin Mansker, USA Cycling track rider, demonstrated the difference between a full time cyclist and, well, all the rest of us.  While the fastest men were posting times within a half a second of 9 seconds, Kevin clocked a 7-second whopper.  Donning his USA cycling jersey and – yes – aero track helmet, Kevin personified the general feel of the entire event.  While the event is clearly a competition, it is a good natured, fun event that anyone can participate in and enjoy.

The Sacramento Valley Velodrome Association is a group dedicated to getting a velodrome built in the Sacramento area, and utilizes these Savage Sprint events to help raise both funds and awareness for the effort.  According to their mission statement, the Association is:

…a nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation and is not organized for the private gain of any person. It is organized under the Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law for charitable purposes.

B. The specific purpose of this corporation is to develop and operate a velodrome for the use and benefit of the communities in the greater Sacramento region.

Charitable and educational programs will include:
a)bicycling safety and education, with an emphasis on junior development
b)the promotion of healthy lifestyles and fitness
c)the promotion of local, regional, and national sporting events

Watch for these events to continue in the Sacramento area as other local business like Hot Italian and Rex Cycles (Steve Rex, owner, pictured at left) get behind the effort.