Battle Mountain - Day 5 - Evening runs

We took it easy after Davids crash yesterday evening, see yesterdays blog post. We could stay in bed a bit longer, have a relaxed breakfast and work on the bike after that. The scratches have been filled up and sanded as good as possible to make the fairing smooth again. Thomas, David and Frans put the bike together agsin in the afternoon and Jan-Marcel got the chance to get some extra rest. At half past four the car had been packed and we could leave for the starting area. Nice in time, we need not to hurry, had time for warming-up and some talks with a few local people at the road block, and also with the State Trooper. The police agent has been here to watch a number of times this week. Not only to see that everything is according to the rules, but also to fine some hot-headed local people. But ALSO because he is interested. At the first heat the wind was way above legal. Some teams decided not to run. At the second run, the wind decreased strongly and was even below the legal value for the beginning of the third heat. The entire team was excited, now was the time. The start was perfect and the build-up of the race was acording to schedule. The chase vehicle sometimes had trouble to keep up with the acceleration of the bike. 78 mph according to the cars speed-o-meter, and a bike that is moving away even further, that is promising for a very high speed at the finish. The catch went perfect as well, and Jan-Marcel stepped out of the bike exhausted. According to his own measuring device he had a run of 127 km/h. That would be an enourmous improvement of his personal record earlier this week.

 

But the disappontment for the team came with the anouncement of the speeds. For some reason Jan-Marcels time had not been measured, so no official time. That is SO disappointing. Jan Bos managed to up his personal record to 126.5 km/h; a wonderful achievement. We started to ponder on an opportunity to somehow find out how fast Jan-Marcels run has been. The race had been filmed from the bike itself. We went to Neil with that sd-card. Neil is working, together with Claudia, on a documentary film of the World Human Speed Challenge. He looked at the video and made calculations on that basis to get the time needed for the 200 meters. By starting the calculations when the starting line is still visible and finish when the finish line is no longer visible, we can be sure that the time needed can not be more than 5.633 seconds. By starting the measuring before the start and ending after the finish, the actual time can only be less. The timing committee and the organisation will let us know what will happen next. We now have the confirmation that the speed was indeed above 127 km/h.

A videoclip from the film can be found here