{"id":268,"date":"2005-03-14T17:18:05","date_gmt":"2005-03-14T17:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/wordpress179\/?p=268"},"modified":"2005-03-14T17:18:05","modified_gmt":"2005-03-14T17:18:05","slug":"my-first-recumbent-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thehippy.net\/blog\/my-first-recumbent-ride\/","title":{"rendered":"My first recumbent ride.."},"content":{"rendered":"

Next weekend I’ll be a member of the Greenspeed<\/a> team, racing for top honours at the 2005 Wonthaggi Human Powered Grand Prix<\/a>. The event is a 24 hour HPV endurance race around Wonthaggi Secondary College. Our team consists of 8 riders powering a full carbon-fibre faired, recumbent, trike.<\/p>\n

Today we had our first (and probably last!) test ride around Blackburn<\/a> velodrome.<\/p>\n

The machine looks mean, currently all-black in raw carbon weave, it will be painted gold before the race (my protests went unnoticed! :)). I think it ran on three 20″ wheels with slick tyres. <\/p>\n

The cranks were very short, at least compared to a road bike, but the chainring was massive to make up for it – something up around 65T?<\/p>\n

Unfortunately I didn’t even think to take photos of it! Doh! That’ll teach me to run late!<\/p>\n

It was warm in the full fairing. It felt quite fast given its ~33kg weight – I was usually doing 45kph up to 50kph on the Blackburn ‘drome. <\/p>\n

The steering was cool – it was very sensitive but as soon as you relaxed and got used to it it was pretty awesome. <\/p>\n

The large chainring dragged the chain over a 9-speed rear cassette which was shifted with a barcon lever on the right steering-lever. <\/p>\n

Braking was front discs operated by a brake lever, also on the right steering-lever. A backup brake will be fitted to the left lever. <\/p>\n

Lights will also be fitted – I heard HID mentioned and Luxeon for backup and rear flashers. <\/p>\n

I’m not sure if bottle mounts will be fitted but a Camelbak bladder will do nicely.<\/p>\n

There’s definately some different muscle use going on – I noticed some muscle soreness in my quads, just above my knees, which I don’t tend to find on an upright bike. I think I’m just going to have to keep my cadence high and make sure I warm up properly before each session at the race.<\/p>\n

\"Greenspeed<\/a><\/p>\n

Greenspeed’s<\/a> Wonthaggi 24hr HPV Grand Prix machine<\/p>\n

Click here for a frontal shot<\/a><\/p>\n

While waiting for some of the others to ride the black beast (I wonder if it has a name?) I tried to ride John’s (I think that’s ya name?) funky two-wheeler ‘bent. I don’t know what it was but it had a round tube over the rider’s right shoulder and very small handlebars up and in front. The pedals were out the front and it was quite low to the ground. <\/p>\n

I was UNCO!! <\/p>\n

It was like learning to ride all over again! Actually, it wasn’t that bad because I did manage to get it moving and stay upright.. mostly \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

I want to get hold of one for some more practise.. fun fun fun!<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a><\/p>\n

John’s XEVON<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next weekend I’ll be a member of the Greenspeed team, racing for top honours at the 2005 Wonthaggi Human Powered Grand Prix. The event is a 24 hour HPV endurance race around Wonthaggi Secondary College. Our team consists of 8 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehippy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehippy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehippy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehippy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehippy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thehippy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehippy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehippy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehippy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}