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Agreed. I think you should be able to go to either extreme that is safe.

1. Everyone gets just the equipment they were born with. Its barefoot with nothing beyond basic clothes for modesty/support. In this scenario its all about the human body and training.

2. The other end is springy shoes, aerodynamic clothing.

3. Farther down the line you have safe technology like 100% O2, autologous blood tranfusions. Nothing that permanently changes the body. If you think some of these things are dangerous, I'd counter that the sport itself is dangerous and well known for its injuries.

3a. Even farther you have the things that can cause permanent changes/death for the athelete. EPO, steroids, Perfluorocarbons etc.

> Look, it'd be one thing to have little batteries and motors in the things. But these just take the energy that I've already expended and returns a bit more of it than my old shoes. But I've still got to do the work.

How about Pistorius style blades that extend your feet? There's no external power source[1] so would that be okay in your book?

[1]: *Assuming they're not "primed" by compressing them prior to the race starting so you bounce off the starter.

How about Pistorius style blades that extend your feet? There's no external power source[1] so would that be okay in your book?

See my reply parallel to yours: how about we write that "book" and then we can all check together whether or not it's "okay" in that book. In contrast to a chronic case of never-ending what-aboutism.

But to answer your question directly: carbon blades would be consistent with what I've written in this thread.

Yeah, I bet I could bear Usain Bolt if I was on a bike.

Also see: flippers.

For 100 meters from a standing start? He'd crush you. Time yourself someday.

Rolling start, obviously.

True, but over a few KM I could. I couldn't name any longer distance runners off the top of my head.

Usain Bolt claims to have never actually run a few KM at a stretch

http://time.com/4436498/usain-bolt-has-never-run-a-mile/

Maybe.

I think it'd be an interesting thing to study. When I was young and running a lot, I could beat (recreational) cyclists uphill, but they would smoke me on downhills. So there might be the kernel of a fun study there.

I guess my hypothesis is that, given equally fit bikers and runners, there's an incline where they will climb at equal speeds. Furthermore, at steep inclines, the runners will be faster and at shallower inclines, the bikers will be faster.

Doesn't seem too unlikely (or interesting, actually), given the weight of the bicycle. But the general shape of the curves might be interesting.

Depends how fit you are. Even in a marathon top athletes are maintaining ~20km/hr!

> So it boils down to this: how inefficient does my equipment have to be in order to follow the rules? Put a number on it, manufacturers can build to it, boom, sorted.

I believe this is exactly what they do in car racing with restrictor plates.

Having grown up around Indianapolis, that was my inspiration for writing it. Which is why I get wrapped around the axle about this stuff when it comes to physical sports. Racing cars could be much faster, but we don't want drivers plowing themselves into the Turn 3 wall at 300mph at the Indy oval, so restrictions are carefully defined.

Creating testing rigs, define sports shoes to only return 57.3% of energy on that rig. Define full-body swim suits to have a drag coefficient of 47.2 (I'm just making up numbers). But all this hand-wringing over whether this is fair, or that is fair, seems to just be something to keep people in jobs (because I'll need to do further study at $300K/year to decide if the UCI should allow that bike or not).

> I'll need to do further study at $300K/year to decide if the UCI should allow that bike or not

The UCI bike regulations are relatively straightforward, albeit somewhat eccentric. They're based on the principles of the Lugano Charter of 1996. This charter was created largely in response to the arms race between Obree and Boardman, which led to extreme and arguably dangerous riding positions. The charter sought to limit extreme bicycle designs and riding positions, whilst still allowing for safe and useful innovation.

http://oldsite.uci.ch/imgarchive/Road/Equipment/The%20Lugano...

We can see the impact of these regulations today. The Cervelo S5 is widely regarded to be the fastest UCI-legal road bike. It is a phenomenal work of engineering, but still broadly resembles the kind of bicycle that you or I might ride around town. By contrast, a high-end triathlon bicycle, unencumbered by UCI regulations, barely resembles a bicycle at all.

The UCI regulations are a long way from perfect, but few cyclists would welcome a complete technological free-for-all.

https://www.cervelo.com/en/road/s-series/s5

http://www.diamondback.com/shop/andean

Are you not aware that literally every major sport has technical restrictions like the ones you're decrying and have for many decades?

This whole thread is full of people staggeringly ignorant of physical sport and competition.