The quest for 80 mph on a bicycle

What you have is a human-powered vehicle that just might be capable of hitting speeds of 80 mph.

One person, Sam Whittingham of Canada, has achieved that result, blistering the pavement at 81 mph in 2002 to set the World Human Powered Speed Record.

Matt Weaver, holder of the US record at 78.02 mph, describes high-speed cycling at his Speed 101 website:

“That's human muscle rocketing the length of a NFL Football Field (100 yards) in 2.54 seconds and an entire mile in 45.8 seconds just before that.

When witnessed firsthand, one's thinking is forever altered.”

Whittingham, Weaver and many others who thrive on the need for speed meet every fall at the World Human Powered Speed Challenge at Battle Mountain, Nevada.

In a recent Wired.com article about human-powered vehicles, the builders and racers say fluid-dynamics software is usually necessary to achieve the most aerodynamic design. So is computer-assisted steering and videocam guidance systems.

In recent years, one of the major goals at Battle Mountain has been to win the $23,000 .deciMach prize for the first person to achieve one-tenth the speed of sound. At Battle Mountain, that's 82 mph. It hasn't been done.

Whittingham set the record in 2002 in the Varna Diablo, designed by George Georgiev, a sculptor with no training in aerodynamics or physics, according to an article on the CTV website. It took 10 years of trial and error to create the bike and achieve the record. Says Whittingham:

“It's like when you're a kid and you get on a bike and you ride down a hill, and you're going a little bit faster than you know you should and you're pretty sure you're not going to make it. It's like that every time we do it.”

Whittingham tells more about different versions of the Varna Diablo at his website.

Many of the human-powered vehicle records are posted at the WISIL recumbents website. Videos of some Battle Mountain rides are posted at the Easy Racers website.