A need for speed.

Can Bicycles be pedalled at 128 Kilometres an hour? Yes they can, and they do it at Battle Mountain, Nevada in October, every year.

If you're like me and just like to poke along at 20 K's or so a bike that travels at over six times that speed seems like a stretch of the imagination. What is it like to be in a car speeding along faster than we ever usually drive and some guy on a bike is riding just ahead of you?

But of course these are special bikes and they are used under special, favourable conditions.

They are of course Recumbent Bikes encased with their rider in a streamlined cocoon of Carbon Fibre, Kevlar and Lexan plastic.

There is nothing new about Recumbents, they have been around since the dawn of the Bicycle when nobody knew what a Bicycle was supposed to look like. But the ascendency of recumbents was dealt a severe blow when the French cycling body, the UCI, banned them from competiton in 1936 because they were too fast.

Recumbents are now being rediscovered by people who are interested in alternative designs and have been boosted by Lance Armstrong who recently stated that if they were allowed in the Tour de France Time Trials section he would ride one.

If you couple the efficiency of Recumbent bikes with the latest Space-age composite materials and a strong rider we now have a bike that is faster than some cars!

The HPV, Human Powered Vehicle association, is making great advances in the science of human propulsion. Nobody took this very seriously until a pedal-powered aeroplane crossed the English Channel powered by an ordinary cyclist.

These super-bikes that compete every year in the desert dusk and dawn of Nevada are the Third generation of the science that has literally become an art, the Art of Human Propulsion.
Some are so streamlined that they have no windshield to look through, instead the rider sees his way via an external camera and steers via an LCD TV screen inside the cramped cocoon.
Even more suprising is that some of the riders are in their fiftieth year!

The official course is over a one mile distance and the bikes which have only ONE gear wind themselves up to speed over a 3 mile course, so no special endurance training is required.
The shape of the outer shell is like the aerofoil of an aircraft wing, designed to develop lift and make the bike lighter the faster they go, so they are not even made especially light.

Your average small Cessna aeroplane develops enough lift to take-off at about 45 Knots or 83 Kilometres an hour, so sometimes these bikes actually do leave the ground and wipeout if they are unlucky and experience an unexpected headwind gust that exceeds the design airspeed.
That's why they are raced at still-air times early and late in the day. The 8000ft altitude at Battle Mountain also decreases air resistance as there is only half as much air at 10,000ft as there is at sea-level.

Why do they do it? Well, if two men have two wheelbarrows they will figure a way to compete with them. But also the materials, design and construction techniques have downrange benefits for every cyclist who want to ride a modern bike.

I have been fortunate enough to be invited onto the Bentrider Magazine Team as a general dogsbody who helps with jobs such as "Catching" the Streamliner as it finishes its course.
I hope to be able to post more personal photos of this event when I return from my 4-month Recumbent cycling tour in the USA.

I would be glad to answer any questions if you mail me at skymax@iinet.net.au.

MY USA BLOG: http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/usa2005

More info: http://www.easyracers.com/virtual_rush.htm

Or: http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/03/bikerecord_0330

Mark (Max) Townsend.

[Max was talking to one of our BUG members one Saturday morning after the community ride, and was asked to contribute to the blog! Thanks Max -Bon Voyage, and we hope to hear anything on your bike touring in the States, and of course your experience at the World Bicycle Speed Event]