1998 6-Hour
The Oz HPV 6 hour Challenge, Canberra, Australia Sunday 12 July 1998
This was an event organised by the one year old OzHPV Inc. - a volunteer organisation formed in Canberra Australia with the intention of promoting Human Powered Vehicles in Australia.
Part of the vision for this 6 hour event is for all manner of HPVs to take part and for riders of all levels to take part, either as team relays or individuals. This first event was held at the Sutton Road Driver Training Centre (venue for the 7th annual 10 event ACT HPV Challenge last November) and entries were limited due to the fact it was not publicised to many outside of the OzHPV membership. The 1999 event will be bigger and run in March or April as a 12 or 24 hour event (The Canberra 24 Hour), be nationally publicised and award prize money.
The following gives the general shape of the event...-Closed road venue, Sutton Rd driver training circuit, Queenbeyan -Six hour event, 9am (any weather) start -$10 per entry / $25 per team -Eight classes - Individual M&F open, Junior M&F, Veteran M&F, Open team, Family team -Drafting acceptable
Achievement was based on the greatest distance ridden in the time, as well as intermediate goals such as greatest distance in an hour, first to cover 100km. The event was run clockwise, ie up the short steep hill at the end of the main straight and across the top, although the hairpin turn was bypassed which gave a good run down into the dip and a bit of extra speed to tackle the hill up to the top of the long downhill run back to the main straight.
The racers were flagged away at 9:11am and the first lap was completed by the leaders in about 4 minutes. Obviously there were going to be lots of laps......
The course could be described as reasonably difficult with 3 hills encountered on each 2.455km lap. The steep hill at the first corner saw speeds regularly drop below 15km/hr, while if your run-up was good and you cranked hard it was possible to remain just faster than this up the other two. The maximum speed on the course was about 60km/hr, reached coming back down the hill onto the main straight, although with the straight slightly uphill it was not possible to maintain any better than 30-35km/hr before encountering the first steep climb again.
The laps themselves required a fair amount of concentration to navigate at speed but once the correct line through the corners was found it was possible to lap without using the brakes. A difficulty on such a tight, twisty course however was to drink or eat without compromising lap times by 10 or more seconds.
After a few laps it was clear that the course was reasonably fair to both upright and recumbent pedallers with both having areas of superiority. After almost an hour one upright rider on a full-blown-triathlon-bike was leading the first recumbent by just 2 to 3 minutes, with the first uphill slowing the heavier recumbents down significantly but with the lost time being regained elsewhere on the faster parts of the course. Perhaps if the leading homebuilt recumbent low racer bike weighed in at 10 instead of 13kg and was made of carbon fibre rather than mild steel muffler tubing the difference in hill climbing probably wouldn't have been as noticeable. The obvious huge aerodynamic and ergonomic advantages evident in the recumbent position would remain :-).
Fate struck a blow to the leading upright rider just before the end of the first hour when 2/3 of the way around the lap he blew a rear tyre, possibly on a misjudged corner and had to limp back to the start area, surrendering his narrow lead. At the start area he decided to withdraw, perhaps because he wasn't carrying a spare tube or tyre, and went home. Unfortunate luck.
The leading recumbent rider, Ian Humphries from Sydney, in second place until that point, riding an unfaired homebuilt recumbent low racer passed through the hour mark having completed 33.5km. Ian held the lead from then, almost maintaining his first hour average until the 5 hour point, completing 100km in under 3 hours and 100miles in a few minutes less than 5 hours. After an 8 minute break at this point, Ian went on to complete 186.6 km within the 6 hour time limit. The second place finisher, Mike Dennis, also from Sydney and also recumbent on a 12kg home built carbon fibre recumbent race trike, less than a lap behind at one hour, succumbed to some cramping in the 2nd hour before powering on again to finish with a total of 177km in 6 hours. Interestingly both Ian and Mike claimed to finish comfortably and without any soreness, except understandably they were a little tired in the legs! Both recumbent racers used very laid back seat angles of 20 degrees from the horizontal and were extremely happy with the performance of their HPVs.
The first team, comprising of 4 upright and 2 recumbent riders, after battling with the first individual rider for almost 5 hours, amassed 82 laps within the time limit to just pass the 200km mark. There were no juniors, veterans or family teams entered in this years event.
The event was extremely well run and the laps counted professionally using a PC system - the competitors results and lap times were available shortly following the event. Temperatures ranged between a finger numbing 5 degrees Celcius and 12 degrees C, with minimal wind and clear skies. The event, with more publicity and competitors should go on to become a major event on the HPV calender in Australia.
There were four teams and three individuals and whilst it took all the race for team 57 to catch Ian Humphries (1) they were in separate events if you like. Ian finshed first in Individual followed by Mike Dennis. Mr Laugesen looked like he would blow every body in to the weeds until he split a tyre and retired on lap 14.
Canberra Challenge 6 Hr Results click here for Excel format