When most people think of cycling

they think of the steep hills and thrilling sprints

of the Tour De France.

But one of the sports oldest and most coveted records

is something called the hour record.

It's very simple.

One person, one bike riding for one hour

on a track like this.

How much distance can they cover?

The first official record was set in the late 1800s.

And since then, many of the greats of the sport

have attempted the hour.

Today, the men's record is 54.526 kilometers

or just under 34 miles.

For women, it's 48.007 kilometers.

Just shy of 30 miles.

But could somebody ride even farther?

Today, we're gonna look at why riding 60 kilometers

in one hour is almost impossible.

[upbeat music]

To find out what it takes I tried riding

as hard as the current record holder.

Discuss the pain of riding that hard

for a full hour with someone who'd done it.

All your body is just screaming stop, stop.

Good, very good Robbie.

[Robbie] And worked with a sports scientist

to find out what my body is capable of.

[Neal] Nice VO2's into the 50s, perfect.

That's excellent.

[Robbie] The hour record has been called

the purest of all cycling races.

But actually doing it is anything but simple.

It's become a team effort with designers, coaches

and athletes all trying to roll just a bit further.

They use state of the are tools like wind tunnels

and power meters to gain every competitive advantage.

No detail is too small.

You have the wheels, the frame, the helmet

and the shape of that helmet.

You know, we can get somebody to save quite a bit of drag.

[Robbie] But first, you gotta have the strength

and stamina to push hard for an hour.

The hour record is a very personal endeavor.

It's all about you, your machine,

and how much power you can put out for 60 minutes straight.

It's usually a lot of power

and it has to be very consistent.

It's a lot harder than it sounds.

But today, I'm gonna try to maintain the same power

as the current men's world record holder

and just see how long I can last.

To help me today, is Evelyn Stevens.

She's a former hour record holder herself

and she is gonna be controlling the machine

that I'm currently peddling away on.

Stevens retired from racing in 2016.

But before she did, she set a new hour record

by riding an incredible 47.98 kilometers.

Almost 30 miles.

An hour record proved to be one of the most

if the not the most challenging thing I did

during my career.

[Robbie] There's a lot that goes into the hour

but one way that cyclists look at racing these days

is through something called power output.

It's measured in watts.

A bike commuter might generate about 100 watts.

Pro sprinters can generate nearly 2000 watts

but only in short bursts.

The hour is all about a steady prolonged power output.

It's kind of a meditative process

in kind of a masochistic way.

[Robbie] When Stevens set her record

she kept up an output of around 300 watts for a full hour.

Bradley Wiggins, who has the current men's record,

is estimated to have cranked out 440 watts for an hour.

So what kind of power output am I having right now.

So Robbie, you're currently going 150 watts.

Okay, and how much power do I need to put out?

We're gonna need to get you to 440 watts.

Okay.

So next stop, 200.

Alright.

Stevens used an app to increase the wattage on my trainer

which made it harder and harder for me to peddle.

Okay, you're now at 200.

Alright, you're at 250.

How's it feeling.

Hard.

[both laughing]

Ready for the next?

Yeah, let's take it to 300.

Let's get there.

Oh, it's why harder if I watch you increase it like that.

So, Evelyn I've heard that when you're actually

trying this record, you aren't actually

allowed to look at your power output.

No, when you do the record you have no data what so ever.

So have, no power, no RPM, no time, no distance, nothing.

You are just, it is truly you and your machine.

Okay, I think this is kind of,

probably an uncomfortable level.

So I think we should just keep,

we should keep going.

Let's go right to 400.

Let's go right to 400.

Okay, we're at 401.

Okay.

Should we just go right to 440.

Yeah.

Kay, you're at 441.

We're giving you a little extra.

So remember, he did this for 60 minutes.

Alright you at, what is that about 30 seconds.

What do you think Robbie?

Can you do it for an hour?

No.

[Evelyn laughing]

Oh god.

Man, I am.

I think you held that for about 45 seconds.

God, that was ridiculous.

You would have hold that more than 60 times longer

than I just held it.

And actually focus on where you're going.

And you do it from a standing start.

That sounds miserable.

That misery is what cyclist call the pain cave.

And enduring it for a full hour is incredible difficult.

Stevens told me that she nearly cracked

with only a few minutes left during her attempt.

There was I think about minute 50 to 55

of the hour record I lost it.

And that's cause I was physically

in the most painful place I had ever been.

[Robbie] To come anywhere close

to setting an endurance record like the hour.

You have to be physically gifted.

And one of the greatest gifts a cyclist can have

is a monstrous VO2 max.

It's a measure of how good your body is

at getting oxygen out of the air

and into your tissues.

VO2 max is a value that we test in the lab

and we identify because really sets

the upper limit of how much energy can be produced.

[Robbie] That is Neal Henderson.

He's the sport scientist who coached Stevens to her record

and Rohan Dennis to his.

Both athletes have massive VO2 max numbers.

The thing is VO2 max output can only be sustained

for maybe five or 10 minutes in a well trained athlete.

[Robbie] But a pro athlete can perform at a level

just below their VO2 max for quite a bit longer than that.

That level is called their anaerobic threshold.

To find it, you measure something called

lactate in the blood.

Too much lactate and the effort can't be sustained.

Those two tests in concert tell us

what that absolute ceiling is,

and then how close to that ceiling

you can redline and hold.

[Robbie] To find my limits,

Henderson put me through the same exercise

that Stevens did.

But this time, he sampled my blood

while I rode on the stationary bike.

6.8, we blew through, finally.

So you got a 2.1 millimole change on that stage.

That clearly indicates that you were basically,

lactate was coming out, over the top.

[Robbie] Then he tested my VO2 max.

So this is a two-way valve.

So, he is gonna be breathing in

and getting air from out here.

And then, as he exhales it's gonna lock that off

and then what he exhales is gonna go in through here

into the analyzer.

This doesn't look intimidating at all.

Same deal, I rode harder and harder

and he measured my oxygen levels.

I reached this point where I kept telling myself, like

10 more seconds, 10 more seconds, 10 more seconds.

Right, like I can do 10 more seconds.

But around half way through the 320 stage

my body was just like,

nope, we can't do 10 more seconds, you're wrong.

What was my VO2 max?

Your VO2 max, the absolute peak got into the 50s

and in fact, 52.5 milliliters of oxygen

per kilogram of body weight, per minute,

which is very good.

I don't think you're gonna set an hour record tomorrow

with that, but that is well above an average value for sure.

So, and Evey's value was what?

72, 73.

The number of people on earth with VO2 maxes in the 70s

is just, vanishingly small.

Very small, yeah.

Women in the 70s is like mean in the 80s,

there's a handful.

[Robbie] Okay, so I'm definitely not a contender

for the hour record.

But doesn't mean I can't try to get faster.

I went to bike manufacturer, Specialized,

to get a pro fit on a bike very similar to the one

that Stevens used to set her record.

But first, a new outfit.

[upbeat music]

[chuckling]

It's very pink.

Then I got a custom totally pro level treatment

from fit specialist Aaron Posts.

Wow, yeah this is super aggressive already.

Yeah.

[Robbie] He used an LED motion capture system

to dial in every aspect of my position on the bike.

Yeah.

You just did your first 180 on bike my friend.

[Robbie] I figured I wanted to get as low as possible

to minimize wind resistance.

But Post says that's not always the case.

The aero position is only aero

when you're in the aero position.

Doesn't matter how cool your bikes looks in transition area

or, sitting out there for the photo shoot

before you got for an hour record.

If you can't stay in those aero bars

you're not gonna be faster.

[Robbie] He's right.

Staying in aero position can be limiting.

Too low, and it makes it hard to breath.

It can even restrict blood flow.

With my fit dialed in, I went into this beast.

It's called the WIN tunnel.

W-I-N.

Get it?

Safety first, even in the tunnel.

Alright, if you're gonna go fast, right?

Most WIN tunnels are for testing cars and aircraft,

this one is made for people.

[upbeat music]

Evelyn Stevens perfected her hour record position here.

I tried riding in slightly different positions

while the team at Specialize captured

my aerodynamics data.

I tried the lowest possible aero bar position

for my fitting.

And then I tried it two centimeters higher

which felt a lot better.

Why so much focus on this?

Because handlebars matter a lot to the hour record.

In the 1990s racers started exploiting

unconventional and profoundly aerodynamic

handlebar positions.

Like, the praying mantis.

The arms tucked up under the shoulders.

Chris Boardman set what is now called,

the absolute hour record, at 56.3 kilometers.

Using this, the superman position.

Arms stretched out into a air slicing dart.

But in 1997, the rules changed.

Everyone had to use classic drop bars.

And under those constraints,

no one could touch the absolute record.

But then in 2014, the rules changed again.

Allowing for a sort of in between position.

Aero bars like these don't slice the wind

like the superman did, but they're way faster

than drop bars.

Alright, so what do the results so.

Alright, so your baseline position again,

was the most aggressive and lowest that you'd could sustain

in the fit lab.

If we raise the pads two centimeters

because you said that, hey, that lower position

might not be sustainable, especially over an hour.

So we raised it the two centimeters.

And for you, it turned out that that position

was actually absolutely no different

in the aerodynamic drag.

So, as an athlete, that's a win-win.

You're able to hold the position,

you're able to generate more power

and there's no aerodynamic drag penalty.

Now, the icing on the cake on top of all of that

is with that higher pad position

you were a lot more comfortable getting aggressive

with head shrug.

And by doing that, that saved a further about 5%,

or 15 watts from your position,

which is enormous when you're trying to go

as fast as possible.

[Robbie] To put it all together

Henderson took me to the US Olympic track

in Colorado Springs where Stevens set her record.

[Henderson] Once you've gotten up to speed hold right

about 200 watts.

[Robbie] First if rode on standard track bike.

Given my measurements, 200 watts for an hour

seemed possible.

Right around 35K an hour.

I was gonna say 35-7.

Yep.

[Robbie] But I'd only go about 35 kilometers

just under 22 miles.

Hardly a record setting distance.

So Henderson swooped out some components.

The first thing I'm going to change out here

is gonna be the front wheel.

This will actually make even more difference

than the rear wheel since this is the leading edge.

The other thing we do is, in terms of the tire width,

this is an extremely narrow tire

on this extremely narrow rib.

[Robbie] Even if I wasn't born with a massive VO2 max,

I could still be faster.

You are aerodynamically enhanced.

Double disk front rear, aero bars, aero helmet.

It's go time let's see what you go.

We're gonna go the same target power, 200 watts,

which you're gonna see here.

But, we should see clearly some significant increase

in your speed.

[Robbie] Next level, alright.

With the same power output I was suddenly able to peddle

almost 40 kilometers an hour.

Or nearly 25 miles per hour.

You just went 10% faster.

Yeah.

That's big.

Same output, 10% faster.

Another way to look at that is,

it took us five minutes to put on about $5000 worth of parts

to buy us about five kilometers per hour.

I looked faster.

And definitely felt faster.

But I hadn't even approached the record speeds

or tried to crank them out for 60 minutes.

Remember I couldn't even do a full minute on the trainer

at the sort of power needed to challenge the men's record.

This event isn't about all out power.

It's about metering your effort just right,

for an entire hour.

And if you over cook it, there's a price to be paid.

If you start too fast, you're trying to do something

that's effectively not possible.

These margins are so very small.

That if you go over that effort by just a small amount,

.5%, doesn't sound like much for a male cyclist,

a high level rider, that's literally a couple watts.

But, the cost of exceeding that can on the end,

in the last 10 or 15 minutes cost,

10, 15, 20, 50 watts that they can no longer produce.

What was just a half of percent too much

for the first 45 minutes.

And then they fade out, and the speed drops.

[Robbie] To get a sense of what the pros experience

Henderson paced me with an electric motorcycle.

First, I tried riding 48 kilometers an hour,

the women's speed record.

Then, I tried the men's speed.

As you can see, I was wobbling all over the place.

It's one thing to try and ride this hard on a trainer.

Doing it on the track felt dangerous.

So we got up to Rohan's speed, 52 and a half K an hour.

And,

A battle lap

Battle lap.

[Robbie] As much as gear and training matter,

so does the track.

Concrete tracks like the one at Colorado Springs

are a little slower than wooden ones.

And the track's locations and altitude

make a big difference as well.

Ultimately a given rider can produce

a certain amount of power output.

The amount of power is going to effect the speed they go

but, your selection of what track and where you go

is gonna have an impact on aerodynamics

and air density specifically.

So, when we come up to altitude like we are here

in Colorado, the air is less dense

though you also have a physiological constraint

that you cannot produce quite as much power

as you would at sea level.

In most cases, there's benefit though

to performing at altitude,

especially if you have conditioning and training

being done at altitude,

so that you're prepared for the task.

[Robbie] When Italian racer Vittoria Bussi

broke Stevens' record, she went just 27 meters further.

And she did it on a wooden track in

Aguascalientes, Mexico.

It's where many cycling records have been set.

Aguascalientes is a faster track.

It's at altitude, it's about 1800 meters high

so it's just a touch higher than Boulder here.

Because of the air density,

which is really he barometric pressure and humidity

interactions tends to be much warmer

and that it's a wood 250 meter track,

versus a concrete 333.

So, it's got all the right characteristics

to be very fast.

[Robbie] How fast?

Let's just say that I attempted the hour at 200 watts

on this bike with this gear.

Now I'm not gonna set a record by any means

but the right track could make a big difference.

At an outdoor velodrome

like the one in Trexlertown, Pennsylvania,

I would ride 37.35 kilometers.

But in Colorado Springs, I'd get 38.75,

and in Aguascalientes, I would jump two full kilometers

and go 40.9.

And that's just the track.

Factoring in their position, equipment,

can give an elite cyclist just enough edge

to claim the record.

So will we ever see the men's record hit 60 kilometers?

Or, the women's hit 50?

Maybe.

I do believe that 50 kilometers per hour

is definitely in the realm for the women.

They're currently just under two kilometers shy of that.

I do believe that the men even with the current position

will be getting into the 55, and even 56 kilometer range.

Maybe 57.

[Robbie] To break the 60 kilometer barrier

under current rules,

Henderson says, you'd need a person capable of generating

450 watts while tucked into what would likely be

a very painful aero position.

And, they'd probably have to do it in Aguascalientes.

But until that happens,

remember that what athletes are doing already

is almost impossible.

[cheering]