Pedal Power

Getting up to Speed

We may have been at Calshot to cycle, but we

were starting our HPA speed campaign at the

historic heart of air racing!

ALSHOT Velodrome is just a short

journey from Southampton and is the

only indoor banked velodrome cycle

track in the South of England. The velodrome

is part of Calshot Activities Centre, a huge

adventure centre on a spit of land that sticks

out into the Solent. Here you can learn and take

part in all sorts of watersports, while inside

the giant aircraft hangar it also offers skiing on

a dry ski slope, rock climbing and cycle racing.

The hangar was the base for the Sunderland

flying boats and at one time housed the RAF’s

High Speed Flight, the lads who competed in

the Schneider Trophy races. Having taken the

trophy in 1927 and 1929 (the race was held

every two years) against stiff international

competition, in 1931 the High Speed Flight

won the competition for the third time in

a row, meaning that the trophy was theirs to

keep forever. The seaplane they raced was

the Supermarine S.6B, a direct ancestor of

the Spitfire.

C

The velodrome can be a busy place, as it is used

not only by individual cyclists taking the racing

courses laid on at the velodrome but also by

cycling clubs and even Olympic cyclists as a

training venue – but we were lucky enough to

have it to ourselves for a while. As I changed

into cycling togs, Alex explained what we were

about to do. He had a very nice Cannondale

racer for me to ride, and it had been fitted with

strain gauges that would give me an electronic

read-out on a handlebar display showing how

100  HUMAN POWERED AIRCRAFT

much power I was delivering. Alex also had a

screen that would show him how I was doing.

I was to do circuits of 133 metres and go for 15

laps in three minutes. Alex and his team had

calculated how much drag their design would

incur and that it would have a mass of 110

kilograms with me on board. The power output

reading that I would see on my display was in

watts and I needed to aim for 450 watts. To give

you an idea of how much effort that requires,

it has been estimated that a man doing manual

labour can keep up an average output over an

eight-hour day of 75 watts. Sprinter Usain Bolt

was measured at one point during a record-

breaking 100 metres race generating more than

2,600 watts, although his average over the race

(he can do 100 metres in 9.58 seconds) was

closer to 1,500 watts. That is about the same

as a Tour de France cyclist during a finishing

sprint, although they will probably generate

about 500 watts during most of the rest of

the stage. I reckoned that keeping to a steady

450 watts over three minutes would not be a

problem. How wrong I was.

Once I got going on the first lap, the read-out

was easily topping 500 watts. On the second

lap I was settling in to around the 450-watt

target area, and then the figures started to

slide. Nobody could ever accuse me of being

a slacker, or of being unfit, but, even with

all of the training that I had been putting in

for the ‘Britain’s Fastest Bike’ challenge, my

lungs simply could not feed my muscles fast

enough. My legs felt OK, but I was puffing

like an old steam engine and after five laps the

power output was all over the place. When

Alex flagged me down after 15 laps, I could

barely speak, I was gasping for breath so much.

Clearly I had some work to do, but figuring out

how best to improve my performance threw up

a few surprises – including beetroot.