3 ms·

It's interesting to note that this record was once again set along a very specific stretch of highway in Battle Mountain, Nevada which is prized for its near pe

• paulgerhardt 11y ago
  The course is not perfectly flat, but it is perfect for the contest. The rules for this event stipulate that the track cannot be slopped downhill by more than 0.66%. Conveniently this track averages 0.64% downhill over the entire 5 mile duration. [1] The story about how Raymond Gauge (what an aptronym!) happened to find this particular stretch of road makes for it's own fascinating big data tale. Months of mining away on USGS tables with Celeron processors to get 10 suitable tracks. A documentary made a few years back went into the specifics with plenty of dramatic shots of him driving the lonely stretches of Nevada, New Mexico, Kansas, etc whittling down his choice candidates until he settled on Battle Mountain. The biggest limitation in these events is air resistance. Plenty of other folks have gone significantly faster on bicycles not facing a headwind[2]. Altitude helps. [1] http://www.recumbents.com/wisil/whpsc2015/whpsc_site.htm http://www.recumbents.com/wisil/whpsc2015/whpsc_site.htm [2] 207.9 mph - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_records#Speed_record_on_a_bicycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_records#Speed_record_o...
  • mikeryan 11y ago
    Interesting that for land speed records you generally need to do two passes of a course one in each direction and your speed is an average of the two passes in order to prevent these types of shenanigans ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record
• deleted 11y ago
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