Quote:

Quote:
In 1985, John Howard set the world's bicycle land speed record of 152.2 MPH (245 km/h) and he didn't use any rocket engines, either -- he pedaled the damn thing! A far more impressive achievement than strapping a rocket onto a bicycle and holding on for dear life!

Impressive! Thanks for that.

Downhill near my home I managed about 38.7 MPH which is my fastest ever. Set off the speed camera That is the fastest I've been and not far from my terminal velocity at a guess, the aerodynamics were hard to push against at that speed. I'd expect to go faster than about 45-50 MPH you really need to be behind a train or something - I like the guys rig with the 500hp car + fairing in front.

Nah... it depends on the bike you have, the hill you're on, and how good a rider you are -- I hit 37MPH last night on a moderate downhill and still had some gears left. I've gone plenty faster (just barely over 50MPH) on longer downhills where I was actually trying to go fast; at the point of spinning my pedals as fast as I can with no affect on speed (I need to go out to the mountains for a proper effort... ). But that's on my road bike. My mountain bike has never achieved such speeds. (Some of the Tour de France guys have gone over 75mph on downhill sections.)

At any rate, I was under the impression that the cycling land speeds were set by towing the cyclist up to a certain speed, first, and then the cyclist pedaling up to full speed.