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Legs - Diary

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Adam and the Blueyonder team
Adam and the Blueyonder team

Sleep

Mike Leahy battles to stay awake for over 60 hours to determine the effects of extreme deprivation on the body in 'Up All Night'.

Charge yourself up

Faster, faster! Kris Akabusi gets his heart pumping as he finds out the secrets to physical power.

6th November after noon
12.45pm
Jem looks up from his cluttered workshop desk as he saws through £1.20s worth of MDF board to make a flywheel for his Flywheel Bicycle, and sees £100,000 worth of human-powered machinery parked out on the track.

The Blue Yonder, Britain's fastest bicycle has arrived with its designer Chris Webb. Chris has just come back from Nevada in the USA where he and the British team have just been competing for the world human powered speed record. They didn't win (this was the first year they competed) but they did manage to get up to 65mph and reckon they have learned enough to beat the world record of 80.5mph next year.

Powering Blue Yonder was Jason Queally - Britain's Olympics 2000 Gold Medalist in the cycle time trials. Blue Yonder's fibreglass frame is moulded around Jason's shape for maximum aero-dynamism. Chris, who designed the bikes for the British Olymic team and is a motor racing car designer by trade, loves the magic of human powered machinery. 'It's amazing to see a silent machine go past you at 65mph with only the sound of the wind rushing past it,' he tells Adam.

2pm
Adam is keen to get into Blue Yonder's driving seat but designer Chris Webb looks a little queasy about the prospect. Adam is quite powerfully built and quite clearly too big (by that we mean too tall of course) to manage this feat of high tech limbo dancing. Adam notices that the handlebars are far too low to be comfortable for the man of average waistline.

3pm
Adam is finally comfortably seated in Blue Yonder. He learns that if he cycles off into the distance alone he will need a team of 'collectors' (the official term) standing by to stop the bike toppling over with him inside it. Designer, Chris Webb, also tells him that there is too much wind here at Rockingham today to risk driving off anyway. Not the most practical machine for shopping or carrying a girlfriend on the handlebars!

3.30 pm
Jem stands proudly by the Flywheel Bicycle he designed all by himself. Remember that Blue Yonder - Britain's fastest bike - reached 65mph and cost up to £100,000. Jem's bike may have cost up to £13.04 (this includes the cost of the bike he probably dredged up from the Leeds canal) - almost 10,000 times less. So if it reaches just 0.001 mph Jem will be more than satisfied.

3.45 pm
Jem is ecstatic. The Flywheel Bicycle has performed beyond his wildest dreams. As predicted he thumbs his nose and waggles his fingers at the Blue Yonder team by comparing the cost of his technology with theirs.

In an exclusive interview with the Science Shack website he comments 'we have shown that in principle you can easily accelerate from 4 mph to 6 mph using a very very very low price flywheel. I would say that for mph per penny budget it was quite a successful job'.

4.30 pm
The atmosphere is tense in Action-Man land as one of their kind braves 'Science Shack' producer Jonathan's extraordinary propulsion technologies.

Our volunteer stunt Action-Man sits impassively in the driving seat as Jonathan winds a baked bean tin to the top of the gallows hanging over the back of his vehicle. When the tin is released our stunt hero shoots (perhaps 'travels' is a better word) across the very same ground 'traveled' by 220 mph Champ cars.

Action-Man's vehicle comes to a halt a good four yards away and he falls out of his seat. Unfazed by the trauma he is anxious to get back into the driving seat and test drive another of Jonathan's machines (at least this is the gist of the imaginary conversation Jonathan had with him during the experiment).

4.45 pm
Action-Man eagerly awaits the moment when Science Shack producer Jonathan, will release the twin pronged mouse trap device on his vehicle - an idea sent in by a viewer. The mousetrap vehicle manages to cover several yards before Action-Man, as usual, loses his balance and falls sideways out of his seat. He is currently lobbying for the mousetrap-powered vehicle industry to fit doors to its cars.

Don't forget to see what Adam and the team get up to tomorrow when Action-Man hands the steering wheel and handlebars to Adam who will be zooming down the race track here at Rockingham Speedway on a pop bottle rocket propelled bicycle.

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