Hard-core Cyclists Close Out Season at Velodrome

"Bitter Sweet Symphony"  by The Verve provided a fitting background over the loudspeakers during a race at the Ed Rudolph Velodrome on Thursday.

It was closing night for the 2010 season. Val Brostrom, from Chicago, and Stacy Appelwick, from Addison, were among the riders who will have to feed their addiction in other places until next year.

Brostrom, the race director, called this season an absolute success. "We had high numbers every night," she said. "It was great."

The duo won the women's madison, a relay race named after Madison Square Garden in New York, in which two partners tag each other in and out throughout the event. This was the first time the Northbrook velodrome ran a women's madison.

Brostrom won the women's keirin state championship with Appelwick finishing second. A keirin race is one in which a motorcycle paces the riders for two laps before giving way to the cyclists at about 30 mph just before the frantic final lap.

"The thing about the keirin is it's a lot of luck," Brostrom said. "It's speed, but it's a lot of luck.

"When the guys lined up, they were eight wide and the guys that were closer to the rail had to travel further to get onto the motor. So if you're in the back, you're automatically at a disadvantage and you have to cover all that ground."

Brostrom says she travels throughout the country in the summer to race at other tracks and has been racing for four years. 

"I'm really competitive," she said. "I had been a runner and then I was injured."

Brostrom was commuting by bike when she started doing alleycat races, which are informal street competitions often organized by bike messengers.

"Then I decided I wanted to do more sanctioned racing," she said. "I started doing road racing, crits and track. The track is more my style."

Appelwick has only been a bike racer for a year and a half, though she used to run triathlons.

She met her boyfriend at a bike shop, and he has helped make her the prolific medal-winning cyclist she is today.

"My boyfriend got me into it and showed me the tricks," Appelwick said.

Appelwick won two gold medals at the 2010 Masters Track Nationals a week ago in Frisco, TX.

Appelwick has raced at tracks in Kenosha, WI, like many of the riders who race in Northbrook, as well as Los Angeles. But she said she also likes crits or criterium races, which are typically held on closed-off city streets.

For Appelwick and Brostrom, the start of the next season in May can't arrive soon enough.