On Saturday, June 22, 2019 at 6:24:41 PM UTC-4, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 6/22/2019 3:18 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:
Last night I was dreaming about a bicycle streamliner at Bonneville.
Does anyone know what the world speed records are? Are they in age categories?
Google knows! It leads to this:
http://www.ihpva.org/hpvarech.htm
Those are on paved road, mostly Battle Mountain I believe, which is
almost but not quite dead level. And there's no drafting involved.
If you want to cheat and have a car in front of you, you can do much better:
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com...183-mph-541481
But I suspect that most of the power actually comes from an air vortex
forming over the top of the car and literally pushing the rider from
behind. I'm thinking the same airflow phenomenon that causes a person's
hair to blow forward when riding in a convertible car.
None of those have an age category AFAIK. If you're interested in what
one friend of mine calls the "Geezer Olympics," you can find record info
here https://nsga.com/records
but they don't have a streamliner category.
Here's a link to time trial times, for which there are age categories:
https://nsga.com/media/documents/nat...ng10KTop10.pdf
--
- Frank Krygowski
Yeppers. A big vehicle in front of you can really pull you along even when going uphill. Years ago in Toronto Canada, on one of my commute routes, there were a large number of dump trucks going the where they were extending a marina and/or creating artificial islands. I would be riding along Kingston Road and the dump trucks would turn right at Brimley Road and down t o what is now known as Bluffers Park. There was a gradual incline along Kingston Road and I'd tuck in behind a dump truck on the left of the dump truck so I could see past the wheels. I wasn't too close to the truck but I'd be going uphill at around 50 kph and pumping the brakes light so as not to get even closer to the truck. If I didn't lightly pump the brakes the forward draft front the truck would pull me far to close to the truck for comfort. I remember many times coasting uphill being pulled along by the draft created by one of those dump trucks and not having to pedal but having to touch the brakes periodically.
Cheers