If you want to have a special trike made for you out of carbon fiber
and totally stripped,,, you could beat the time on the upright but
most trikes are just too heavy. Your best speed would probably be on a
tadpole, deltas are just too massive. A Greenspeed or a Cat trike
would be the type to check.

I own a Penninger recumbent trike that weights 53 pounds and it
take a lot of effort to get it to 15-17 miles per hour, My wife can do
that speed on her Penninger for about a mile(flat ground, no wind)
before starting to slow down.. We normally ride along at about 8-10
miles per hour.

Now as for riding time/ riding comfort, my wife and I have ridden 8-10
hours many times with very little discomfort. After a couple of hours
the endorphens kick in and we just don't want to stop.

Now, a Penninger that weighs in at 20 lbs would be a dream to ride..

Anyone else have any comments???

Jim Andrews Columbus Phoenix




On 1 Nov 2005 00:30:23 -0800, wrote:

Hi,

I do loaded touring on my regular standard bike (sitting upright,
Brooks saddle, Aero bar) using panniers.
I'm interested in buying a tadpole trike for my next "expedition" being
roughly 4000 mi/6000 km. I'm not interested in recumbents - only
trikes.
My main reason for buying a trike would be the speed increase. But
browsing various forums and newsgroups it turns out that the speed
picture is different.
So I have a question for those who ride both a trike and a regular
bike: Without talking about weight, rolling resistance etc, I would
like to know if you go faster on a trike (with or without panniers).

On my loaded touring bike I go 125mi/200km a day, even in mountains
like the Rockies. Usually I'm only limited by the daylight hours. I
average at 15 mph/24kmh.
I know it's a bit extreme, but it would be cool to go even faster.
Feeling that my power is used efficiently is VERY important to me -
this is why I don't have any bike generators (like the ones in the
front hub) or internal gear hub systems on my touring bike.

I know recumbents and trikes call for a much more relaxed driving style
which eliminates soar etc. But if I ride from dusk til dawn on my
regular touring bike (and not biking when it's dark) I do those 125 mi
averaging 15 mph (loaded with 35 pounds of gear) and that's it. The
values are, of course, without hourly brakes, eating, shopping etc. If
I cannot go faster/longer I will not buy a trike. This is crucial.

I must admit that I'm the stamina type of rider - I don't like to waste
excess energy because I know the wind resistance is squared, so I ride
at 15 mph but for a LONG time. I would adapt this riding style to the
trike.

On my regular bike I usually bike 1 hour, make a 10 min break, ride one
hour, 10 min break, at noon shopping, eating for 1 hour and so forth.
I'm only making breaks to give my butt some rest (it might irritate a
bit) and eating snacks. So, if I could eat snacks while riding the
trike, because I would't get soar at all anymore - it would of course
be interesting.

So what are the experts saying? Can I gain 1-2 mph compared to a
standard bike (we're talking loaded bikes here)?

Thanks in advance, Lucas Jensen