"Cycleops" 12 Hour-Eastern Creek International Raceway May 15, 2005
A Recumbent Perspective - Peter Heal
It's not often that "recumbent" riders get the opportunity to mix it up with "upright" bikes in races since the UCI decided in 1934 that the later was the steed of choice for all sanctioned bicycle competition. There has been a slow but steady resurgence for recumbents in recent years and some recumbent only racing takes place, although not a big scale. Some mainstream event organisers will allow recumbents in special events such as individual time trials.
The lure of a 12-hour race against uprights on a closed track was very attractive and several of Australia's faster recumbent jockeys and a recumbent team signed up for the Cycleops 12 Hour Cycling Classic on Sunday 15 May. The organisers were keen to allow any type of bicycle and went out of their way to accommodate recumbents.
There were 67 teams and 31 solos participating so lots of riders on the track. As I said there was one recumbent team in the mixed fours and five recumbent solos. Other interesting bikes were the Birdy Folder team of four and the solo rider on his GTEX folding small wheel bike. The team of "Fixies" was disqualified on the starting line for a lack of adequate brakes.
Everybody else was on a mixture of upright bikes from high road racing bikes to mountain bikes.
12 hours is a long time to spend riding laps of a 3.9km course. Given there is a 35 metre height gain on each lap of the course, it wasn't going to be an easy day's ride.
As you would expect, lap times varied between riders and during the day as energy levels fluctuated. The key to these long races is nutrition and hydration and this is difficult to manage when your getting a bit tired towards the end.
The first upright solo rider, Richard Vollebregt completed an awesome 112 laps or 436kms, consistently lapping at around 6m30s or 36km/h.
Recumbents filled the 3rd, 4th and 6th places in the solos completing 103 (401km), 95 (370km) and 83 (350km) laps respectively. Ian Humphries of Flying Furniture Cycles finished a very creditable 3rd place one minute behind the second place getter. For Ian's efforts he received a seat post. How ironic. At least it was carbon fibre and he says he can use it on one of his "Airnimal" folding bikes.
The recumbent team from the Canberra OzHPV Mob achieved an excellent 3rd place result in the mixed fours team besides experiencing several high speed crashes by one of the enlisted recumbent trike riders.The "Flight of the Birdys" team of six also showed you don't need to have big wheels and stereotyped bikes to enjoy a long ride and completed (304km).
Generally speaking, the recumbents participating were well received by other riders and some interest was shown in their obvious speed and comfort advantages. The recumbent riders are looking forward to next year hope to enter some more teams and maybe even a fully faired streamliner recumbent to push the envelope and show where cycling could have been after 70 years of development if recumbents hadn't been banned for being too fast all those years ago.
Peter Heal