The gates at the Valley Preferred Cycling Center closed on a Friday night in mid-August, and if you weren't paying close attention, you might have assumed that was it for the year. Fifty years of racing at the Trexlertown track, capped off with fireworks and a Madison Cup, then a long quiet stretch until next May. That's the story most people who've been to T-Town once or twice would tell you.
It's not quite right. The velodrome didn't shut its doors in August. It changed what it's doing with them.
The Night the 50th Season Closed
On August 14, the Valley Preferred Cycling Center brought its 50th anniversary racing season to a close with the Pro Men and Women Madison Cup, the event the venue's own executive director, Gary Thornton, has called track cycling's signature race. Gates opened at 6 p.m., racing began at 7, and the featured Madison pitted international teams against USA Cycling National Champions Kyle Perry and Aaron Beebe. Former T-Town racers were invited to check in at Will Call and watch for free, a nod to a season that had spent all summer looking backward as much as forward.
That backward look started five months earlier, on May 29, when the season opened with a tribute lap. Andrew Rodale Norelli, grandson of velodrome founder Bob Rodale, rode a commemorative lap in his grandfather's honor before the first race of the year. The venue had originally planned its 50th anniversary celebration for the preceding October 12, but weather forced a postponement, and the celebration got folded into opening night instead. That meant the whole 2026 season, from that first ceremonial lap through the closing Madison, doubled as a five-decade retrospective.
If you went to one Friday night this summer, you saw a piece of that. If you went to several, you probably noticed the season felt different from a normal year: heavier on ceremony, thicker with alumni in the stands.
What the Calendar Actually Says Next
Here's the part that gets skipped in most write-ups of T-Town's season. Friday Nights Under the Lights ending doesn't mean the velodrome goes dark. Two more things are on the books before the year is out, and neither requires you to know anything about track cycling.
The Mike Budjnoski Fall Bicycle Racing League has registration open right now for riders ages 9 to 16, using the venue's fleet of more than 150 track bicycles. The league carries the name of a longtime Lehigh Valley cyclist who died unexpectedly in November 2023, a tribute made possible through a gift from his wife, Martina Budjnoski. Mike was a Pennsylvania State Champion and a U.S. Federation Masters 55+ Road Race winner outside of his day job running Rayco Eurospec Motorcars, and the league now built in his name is meant to do exactly what he spent his own racing life doing: get more kids on a track bike.
Then there's VeloFest, returning to the velodrome's infield on Saturday, October 3, with public hours from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. VeloFest bills itself as the East Coast's premier bicycle flea market and swap meet, and according to the venue's own history, it's typically held twice a year, once in May and once in October. It draws collectors, racers, and casual riders trading everything from vintage steel frames to current carbon fiber, all inside the same 333.3-meter concrete track that hosted Olympic hopefuls all summer.
Here's how the three pieces of the year actually line up:
| Event | Dates | Who It's For | What's Different |
|---|---|---|---|
| Friday Nights Under the Lights | May 29 to August 14, 2026 (completed) | Spectators of all ages, ticketed race nights | Live professional and amateur racing under lights, food and beer service in the plaza |
| Mike Budjnoski Fall BRL | Registration open now | Riders ages 9 to 16 | Youth racing league, coached, bikes provided from the venue's fleet |
| VeloFest | Saturday, October 3, 2026, 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. | The general public, cyclists and collectors | Bicycle flea market on the infield, no racing, browsing and buying |
Three different experiences of the same 51-year-old track, spread across three different seasons of the year, and only one of them requires a ticket to a race.
The Names You'd Recognize If You've Actually Been
Anyone who's spent a Friday night at T-Town knows the plaza smells like the Sticky Pig before you even see the food truck. The Sticky Pig is a family-owned operation started in 2017 by Stacey and Charlie Wehr, and it parks next to the concession stand at the Valley Preferred Cycling Center for the entire race season, doubling as a commissary kitchen for the truck's other Lehigh Valley bookings. Right next to it sits Shangy's Craft Beer Handlebar, pouring beer, wine, and the occasional alcoholic slushee for people watching the action from a bistro table trackside.
Those two vendors are as much a part of the T-Town rhythm as the racing itself, and they're worth knowing by name if you're the type who plans a summer around Friday nights. The BRL All-Star Night on June 12 added another local touch this year: the Emmaus High School Jazz Band performed during Plaza Hour before gates opened and played the National Anthem before racing began, a detail that says something about how tightly this venue is woven into the towns around it rather than existing as a standalone attraction bused in from somewhere else.
What October 3 Actually Feels Like
If you've never made it to a Friday night race, October 3 might be the easier entry point. There's no lap counting to follow, no need to understand a points race versus a scratch race versus a Madison. VeloFest is a Saturday morning market on the same infield where, back on opening night, the women's 5-kilometer Scratch Race was won at an average of more than 42 kilometers an hour. Seven weeks after the Madison Cup closed the racing, the pace on that same concrete slows to a walk between vendor tables. Vendor setup runs from 6 to 8:30 a.m., the public gets in at 8:30, and it wraps by 1 p.m., which leaves the rest of your Saturday open.
The Valley Preferred Cycling Center sits at 1151 Mosser Road in Breinigsville, inside the stretch of Lehigh County that most locals just call Trexlertown, close enough to Emmaus and Macungie that plenty of the crowd on any given night has ridden or driven over on a whim rather than planned a trip. That's part of what the "off season" label gets wrong. A venue built around a single concrete oval in the middle of Lehigh County doesn't need a summer schedule to stay relevant to the people who live around it. It just needs a reason to open the gates, and this fall it has two.
The lights went out on the Madison Cup in August, but the track never really closed. It just started keeping different hours.
If you're weighing what a season like this says about the pulse of a neighborhood, that's exactly the kind of texture worth knowing before you buy or sell here. Witt Real Estate Group works across Lehigh County, including the towns that treat T-Town as their backyard track, and we're always glad to talk through what a place is really like to live in, not just what the listing photos show. Reach out anytime, or start with a free home valuation if you're curious what your corner of Lehigh County is worth right now.
