If you haven’t seen the video yet, here it is for you. The Recumbent Bike Vs Road Bike: Manon Challenges Hank To A Race by Global Cycling Network. The GCN is the best cycling Youtube Channel with over 2,5 million subscribers and they have already done two videos about recumbents. And this is the third one. I have to say I don’t like the previous two much. The presenter James Lowsley-Williams used quite an old, not very good-looking lowracer and even front-wheel-drive Raptobike which is pretty difficult to ride for a beginner so just the velomobile ride is nice looking. Especially the video with Alpha 7 where they show all the carbon details, but hey, showing a recumbent lowracer or a velomobile riding into a serious climb? This is just the way to ruin the recumbent bike image. And I find it unfair. So the third video is the first one that makes sense to me. At least a bit. A pro racer James on an ultra-light carbon road bike from Pinarello Dogma is racing against former female pro-racer Manon Lloyd in Milan SL which is considered to be the fastest velomobile in the world. All that happens on Castle Combe Circuit in Wiltshire, England. The circuit is 2.977 km / 1.85 miles long has seven turns and is almost flat. Manon won at the end and her maximum power output was much lower than the one of James so one would be interested in his result in Milan. Still, I would better like to see her on some M5 carbon highracer or so which would be a more appropriate recumbent to what he was riding.
Anyway, it is great to see GCN presenting recumbents and giving them such welcome visibility and advertisement.
Here is the last video plus the two previous ones as well.