173 Kilometers in 24 Hours: A New Human-Powered Boating World Record
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 07. 2.07
Greg Kolodziejzyk is pretty hardcore. Not content with one record, after pedaling 650 miles in 24 hours about this time last year in his "bullet on wheels" recumbent bicycle, he went after the same record for a human-powered boat. After 24 hours over this last weekend, chugging away on the converted kayak, he set a new record of 173 kilometers (about 107 miles, eclipsing the old mark of 168 km). He survived some pretty severe physical stress, a badly upset stomach and a series of bat attacks to churn out an average of between eight and nine km/hour and about 150 watts of power...amazing! Next on his list: a multi-day family camping trip (by boat) to Vancouver Island. Congratulations and good luck, Greg! Check out more pics and stats after the jump; read the blow-by-blow account at ::Adventures of Greg.
"After dark - I used a flashing LED light on the bow and stern so that the observers could see me."
photo by Karl B. Staddon
Average speed (km/h) during the 24-hour affair
As a cyclist, I can certainly respect the man's efforts to churn out 150W over a 24 hr period. That's a lot of power to put out over such a long period. The longest and fastest ride I've done was 102.1 miles in 4hrs, 50mins. I was pretty much toast after that effort.
The amazing thing is that total period equals 3.6 KwH (as would be measured by the electrical companies)... meaning he could sit on a stationary bike for the same length of time and "sell back" a whopping $0.45 worth of power each day that he does this - based on the TX average of 12.5 cents per KwH.
I just thought the math was interesting. It really puts it into perspective just how much energy we use in our day-to-day lives.
That's an interesting Calculation - too bad we can't hook up batteries to ourselves and harness all that energy - sort of like the matrix.
But Offgrid, we can hook ourselves up to batteries! There are all kinds of human powered gizmos that you can get that will charge batteries to run the sort of things you use, like computers, lights, and so on.
And, of course, it's even more efficient to use that human power directly, for things like transportation, farming, building houses, etc.