On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 10:58:08 +0000, Peter Clinch
<
[email protected]> wrote:
>Grolch wrote:
>
>> I can't
>> imagine anyone pushing over 23mph for over three hours, that's about 37kph.
>> Unless of course it's all downhill and/or with a good wind pushing.
>
>Try a bigger imagination... Andy Wilkinson, taking the UK end to end
>record, averaged slightly better than 20 mph for /over 40 hours/.
>
>Pete.
Comparing apples to oranges to bananas. First of all, going from 20 to
23 mph is a siginificant increase, and doing 20 mph all day by a
person setting a record is different from an average fit cyclist
riding any significant distance. Both are way different than how most
people ride while doing a daily commute. You may as well say that
racers can train at over 25 mph for several hours. None of it is
relevant to most commuters.
Based on the 12 or so years that I commuted, I can't see a fully
faired recumbent being the answer for a commuter, except for short
city commutes where the person has access to a locked ground level
space. I've rolled diamond frames down a couple of flights of stairs
and wouldn't do that daily at 6:00 am with my unfaired Vision SWB. I
had a 20 mile commute for a while and that meant that in spring and
autumn, the ride would or cdould change dramatically from the start to
the finish (crossing from or into darkness). Same thing: I would
prefer a diamond frame or possibly an open recumbent and a jacket to
pull on than a fully faired recumbent.There were rough roads in some
areas, overcast days when I wanted maximum field of view etc.
Interestingly, if I could do 40 mph in the fully faired recumbent, it
would not have cut my time in half. It doesn't work that way. Maybe it
would take 10-15 minutes off of the commute on a good day, if you
assume that I could roll the sucker into the office building at the
end. And I had a large office in a three story building with a freight
elevator (the building, not my office). Wouldn't work at all where I
work now. So unless you have a roll out point at home, a roll in place
at work, job security enough to know that all that won't change, and a
commute long enough and smooth enough to make it all work to the
maximum, I think I would put my $ 3,000 into something else. Maybe a
Catrike 700...
Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...
