Lake Wendouree 2.5 hour Classic 22nd Feb

[raptordesigns]

Just a quick note regarding the Sebastopol club "winners" of the sporting group section.

Supposedly they did 77 rider laps of the 6.2km course in 2.5 hours with 4 riders on course at a time.

If you do the math, this equates to an average slowest rider speed of 47.7km/hr, and they should have lapped us 6 times doing about 50km/hr (they didn't).

Sent a suggestion, tactfully worded to the organisers suggesting they might want to tighten up rules and procedures next year.

[bradwoodbr]

Can you tell us a bit about the experience of being in a recumbent paceline?

How close were you to each other, how strong was the draft, did you feel confident following closely to each other, how was the trike different to the bikes..........

Thanks in antici_ppppppppation (Rocky Horror)

[Gregory_carroll]

The pace line was good, although we weren't very close together (it was the first time most of us had met - never mind ridden together). So we were quite far apart, and tended to change over a fair bit. You could get a bit of a draft though, my overriding memory is that it was very long!! Recumbents tend to be long any way - so 4 in a row looked like a road train. I reckon with a bit of practice we could get some benefit from riding in a line (although probably not as much as uprights as we don't drag as much air).

I've done a bit of drafting in HPVs and to be honest it is almost pointless - so little drag anyway, the benefits a tiny.

[raptordesigns]

The pace line was good, although we weren't very close together (it was the first time most of us had met - never mind ridden together). So we were quite far apart, and tended to change over a fair bit. You could get a bit of a draft though, my overriding memory is that it was very long!! Recumbents tend to be long any way - so 4 in a row looked like a road train. I reckon with a bit of practice we could get some benefit from riding in a line (although probably not as much as uprights as we don't drag as much air).

I've done a bit of drafting in HPVs and to be honest it is almost pointless - so little drag anyway, the benefits a tiny.

I spent a little time close behind Greg, William and Steve and also remember Steve's "Bike from Oz" looming in my rear view mirror. William's Barchetta gave the best draft, with Greg in the Fujin lowracer second but the draft behind Steve was useless. I guess that chunky looking fairing does *something*!

John R.