WeGo Team Link Field Tests –
Road Racing

An excerpt from Eric Bone's inventor's notebook shows that, in team road racing, the performance of the team may exceed the average performance of the individuals, were the individuals to race solo.

Test description:

Tested the system during the Emerald Hills Street Orienteering race, 31 January 2004. I towed Terry during the entire race. We covered 12.5 miles with 490m of climb over a period of one hour and 57.5 minutes.

Test results:

For the first half of the race, Terry exerted herself at an enjoyable level. Then she began to fatigue. I was interested in putting in the best performance possible so we continued to run at a brisk clip for Terry. Toward the very end of the race, Terry for the first time issued the "easy" command on nearly level ground (slight downhill). She was not able to turn her legs over fast enough to keep up with my pace.

Terry estimated that if she were not being towed she would have taken 3 hours to complete the same distance. Thus, she achieved a 50% performance increase. I would probably have taken an hour and 30 minutes if I weren't towing; thus I suffered only a 23% performance decrease.

Conclusion:

1. Overall race time of a pair of people linked together may be less than the average race times of the two individuals racing alone. This may be due partially to psychological effects.
2. The amount of assistance the leader is able to transfer to the follower is limited by the follower's ability to turn over his/her legs. This may be limited by fitness level, fatigue, and/or injury.