From right to left: A volunteer on a mountain bike, and Paul Macdermid
At Massey University in Palmerston North, sports and exercise scientist Paul Macdermid is testing how vibrations effect mountain bike riders. Volunteers such as Steve Stannard are being kitted out with hi-tech equipment to measure things like breath-by-breath VO2, heart rate, and vibrations in different planes, and are then riding uphill on both a road and an off-road track while keeping a steady 80% performance to determine the differences between the two. While it may seem obvious that mountain bike riders would expend more energy riding on the rough terrain of a cross-country track as compared with a road track, if the effects of increased vibrations can be measured and correlated, then steps can be taken to improve the performance of mountain bike racers.
