goldenchickenIV;1128582 wrote:
Isn't energy burning a very narrow definition of "health benefits" which
was the original topic of this thread?
Yes it is, although it was relevant to the question particularly as it
was revived by Ducttape. That it spun off into such a lengthy
discussion shouldn't be taken as a disproportionate level of importance
attributed to it though.
chuckaeronut;1128568 wrote:
This has been beat to death both in this thread and others, but I just
found it funny that we're not talking about "extreme speeds where air
resistance becomes significant." On any good road bike, air resistance
is pretty much all there IS! (I'm assuming you're on a smooth road with
tires up in the 120 PSI range.) And on a geared 36, just bending down
over the handlebar will easily turn your 17mph into 19.5mph with the
same effort.
Yes, that was probably a poor choice of words and one that I
backpedaled on since. To be clear, I spend most of my time on a bicycle
at a recreational and commuting speeds, focusing on it much less than
running or unicycling.
I think the point I was groping for was more to do with where that
increase in resistance becomes very steep with respect to increase in
speed. I also think that the speeds that we're talking about have more
to do with performance than exercise. I don't train for any kind of
bicycle racing, but if training is at all like running then the
"exercise" of training is mostly at a slower pace than the "performance"
of racing. Finally, I think that the energy sinks involved in
unicycling increase quickly with speed too - we're nowhere near as
aerodynamic as a bicyclist, and it seems to me that the variances in
balance that suck up energy on a unicycle grow at higher velocities as
well. At this point I'm outside of the range of my systematic empirical
observations though. It would be fun to explore these further with my
fairly well calibrated magic number device.
Thanks for your insights chuckaeronut.
Cheers,
Z
--
boisei
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