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from the holding-the-bumper-doesn't-count dept.
Velonews reports that experienced cycle racer Denise Mueller of San Diego, California was successful in setting the first woman's paced (drafting behind a car) cycling record. The record is the culmination of at least two years of training and planning.
Mueller set the new women's speed record at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats where she rode a highly customized bike that includes two 60-tooth chainrings and double-speedup gearing (the article mistakenly calls this double reduction). The article claims the bike had a 488 inch gear (equivalent wheel diameter for a direct-drive wheel) which translates to a cadence of 102 RPM at 147 miles per hour.
While she hoped to go even faster, the article mentions that they were only able to use a four mile long course. They had hoped for 6 miles but it seems that conditions on the salt this year don't make that possible.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday September 14 2016, @09:16PM
I am incapable of the doublethink required to see the point in this article.
On the one hand we are required to affirm as an article of religious faith that gender is a social construct. There are no men and women, no male or female. Some men can menstruate, lactate and become pregnant while some women have a schlong. Mens rooms need dispensers for tampons and other 'feminine hygiene' products. Women can be firefighters and Navy Seals if they want to because there absolutely no physical differences in the capabilities of humans. There is to be no distinctions, ever, under any circumstance, even using words like man and woman are triggering artifacts of The Patriarchy.
On the other we are required to celebrate the achievement of a cis-woman who tried really hard but didn't in fact come close to a twenty year old record; since she failed we are to create a special category for 'best time by a woman' since everybody has to get a trophy. But of course the classification she 'won' in can't actually exist because women do not exist.