We attended our first FREE kiddie race at the Marymoor Velodrome two weeks ago and it was awesome! This was Grand Prix weekend, the velodrome’s biggest weekend of the season, so there were Kiddie Kilos on Friday and Saturday, but usually the kid stuff is on the first and third Friday of the month for June, July, August, and September. Kids ages 2 to 12 are welcome (with parental permission, bike, and helmet) and the heats are divided depending on how many kids show. July 19th had a record setting 60 kids so after the balance bikes/training wheels lap, each age had its own heat.

The park is great with a small train play structure very close by, plenty of room for riding little bikes around, and bike race watching.

The track is surrounded by grassy slopes and people set up picnics at the edge to watch while eating dinner. There’s even a beer garden down by the track.

The kids ride on the flat asphalt at the bottom of the tilted part of the track…though some of the bigger kids opted to take to the real track. The littlest kids took one lap and the bigger kids could do two if they wanted–that started at the six-and-under lap, I think. My three-year old just started full-time pedaling (he learned in April at Cascade Learn 2 Ride, but he hasn’t been motivated to really ride until the Pedalheads open house a few weeks ago). Unfortunately, he hasn’t picked up braking yet so he kept going once he finished his lap (or maybe he was just having too much fun to stop) so I darted through the grass after him and caught up about 1.3 laps in.

The remaining 2013 Kiddie Kilos are:
August 2
August 16
September 6
September 20

The racing starts at 7pm and Kiddie Kilo is the 4th event. Kids are free, but over 16 admission is $5 per person. My Cascade Bicycle Club membership card got me in free for Grand Prix weekend, but that’s just for the special weekend. Rain cancels racing and their twitter is the way to track the latest info.

I hope we can make it out again this season. We drove this time, but I would love to bike over early and have Mr. Family Ride meet us with the car after work to take kids and their bikes home for a reasonable bedtime. Pedaling home a quiet, empty bike and skipping bedtime mayhem would certainly be a nice ending to a day of Kiddie Kiloing :)