I feel sick. I’m clipped into a bike with no brakes on the starting line of the Manchester Velodrome. Ahead is an empty straight at the end of which is a banked left turn that looks more like a wall of death than a bend.

Beside me is Iain Dyer, Britain’s national sprint coach, and behind him half the British squad. But I’m the only one on the track at the velodrome, which this week plays host to the track cycling world championships.

I’m about to discover just what it’s like to hurtle round a 250-metre track at a velocity that would get you a speeding ticket and three points on your licence if you were to do it in your car on an urban road.

Track cycling may not be as popular as road cycling, and it attracts less coverage – and controversy – than the Tour de France, but for many cycling fans it is the ultimate test of rider ability, not least because of the dizzying speeds: in the absence of wind, and thanks to super-smooth wooden tracks, riders reach speeds of up to 50mph.

Tracks are banked because if they weren’t, riders would skid off into the stands on the bends. Crashes are common: last year two riders locked handlebars in Melbourne and the resulting pile-up involved 13 people, one of whom performed a double cartwheel before sliding face-first along the track fence while still clipped into his bike. Remarkably, nobody was seriously hurt.

This is cold comfort as I saddle up for my taster session, after which I’ve agreed to race a 1km time trial against one of the most experienced track cyclists in the world, to find out what the difference is – to the nearest thousandth of a second – between mere mortals and world champions.

Jamie Staff is a former BMX world champion who turned his attention to track cycling in 2001. He qualified for the British team on his first attempt, and a year later he won gold in the team sprint at the 2002 world championships. He won two further golds in world events in 2004 and 2005, a bronze in the 1km time trial in 2007, and he’s on target for another medal this week. At 34 he’s the same age as me, but only one of us has thighs the size of prize-winning marrows.

Mercifully the British coaching team knows better than to allow me anywhere near the track when Staff is riding full tilt, so instead I’ll be racing against the clock: Staff’s PB (personal best) – and my target – is 1:02.074.

The first thing I have to get my head round is the bike. There are several different types, depending on the discipline (track racing is broken down into two broad categories: sprint and endurance). However, to the naked eye they all appear to be stripped-down cycles.

Track bikes have no gears, no brakes and no freewheel. No gears and no brakes I can live with, but the thought of not being able to freewheel scares me silly – if you stop pedalling a fixed-wheel bike on a banked track, the back wheel will lock up, slide out from under you, and deposit you at the bottom faster than you can say “dislocated hip”.

Staff rides a super-sleek carbon-composite bike with solid disc wheels. These are more aerodynamic than conventional spoked wheels but can be used only for indoor racing since any side wind will destabilise the bike. The space-age handlebars are low slung to encourage an aerodynamic position for the rider and the tyres are pumped to massive pressure to reduce friction. Each bike costs upwards of £15,000, although the development costs of top racers can run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds.

For my first few laps I ride gingerly round the marble-smooth section at the bottom, but once I’ve got the hang of it I sidle up onto what is known as the Côte d’Azur, a narrow blue strip of gentle banking that eases riders up onto the track proper. The track itself is built from specially imported pine from Siberia. The separate planks are knitted together to form a seamless bowl. As they age, the track becomes harder – and faster.

Before the challenge I survey the track from the top of a bend. I regret it immediately – from above, the 40-degree slope looks almost vertical. As members of the British squad thunder past behind a motorised pace bike, they seem to be defying gravity – the only thing that’s keeping them aloft is the fact that they’re doing more than 45mph.

“It’s even more fun behind the motorbike,” Staff enthuses after his warm-up. “Provides an added element of danger.”

Doesn’t he ever think about crashing? “Not at all. If I did, I couldn’t do it. I crashed the first time I ever rode on a track. It was made of concrete, and I got road rash from head to toe. It was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced.

“I’ve crashed here three or four times, too,” he adds. “Last year I fell in a World Cup race and slid all the way up to the top of the turn and back down again. It gave me some good friction burns, but thankfully I didn’t get too many splinters.”

Track racing is one of the few Olympic sports in which Britain can claim to be truly competitive. However, it is not a sport for the fainthearted. Crashes are common as riders jostle to keep the best racing line: Victoria Pendleton, one of Britain’s medal hopefuls, recently crashed at the Olympic track in Beijing during a World Cup race, ripping a huge chunk of skin from her elbow and hip. The most famous crash occurred in 1985 when the Australian rider Craig Milton suffered a tyre blowout: his pedal dug up a splinter of the then-new track surface and a 15in spike entered his torso just under the armpit, puncturing his lung. Milton was back in the saddle the following week.

I put his accident to the back of my mind as I make my way to the start line and am thankful that my four-lap, 1km race will be solo and short (there are many different track cycling events, ranging from 1km to 60km).

“The kilo is unique,” says Staff. “You’re basically pushing your body beyond where it wants to go. The trick is to pace it. If I went for it from the gun, I’d probably blow up at 2½ laps and fall off the bike. After two laps you know it’s going to hurt, and after three laps you feel like you could get off and walk quicker, but that’s when you have to dig in.”

On the first bend the bike starts to wobble alarmingly. Picking up speed on the back straight, I power round the second bend with more confidence and by the end of the first lap I’m flying. The world has been reduced to the thin black line in front of me; everything else is a blur and, for a fleeting moment, I feel invincible.

It doesn’t last long. Despite Staff’s advice, I’ve gone off too fast. Halfway through lap two I know I’m in trouble, and by lap three the wind is no longer in my hair and my legs are no longer a whirl of Lycra. My lungs feel like they’re being turned inside out and I’m convinced my thighs are melting.

Hearing the bell comes as a huge relief, but I still have 250 metres to go before I can die in peace. It takes great willpower to convince myself I’m not going backwards. And then, after a last-gasp effort in the home straight, it’s all over.

When I finally clamber off the bike, I can hardly stand. It isn’t until I hobble off the track that someone tells me my time: 1:28:78.

So there you have it: the difference between a mere mortal and a world champion is 26.706sec.

Had Staff been racing at the same time, he would have crossed the finish line when I was in the middle of my third lap. In sprinting terms, where races are won or lost by thousands of a second, that’s a country mile.