The other day, my dad and I were watching the TV and they showed clips from a marathon. When they showed the disabled contestants in the wheelchairs my dad said that he thought that must be exhausting. Obviously going 26 miles by either method is no picnic but I would imagine over the same distance using a wheelchair would be less tiring on average, due to the built in efficiencies of the model. But I dunno, and I wonder if there is concrete data?
Wheelchair Records are roughly 1:15, running record is around 2:05. I would imagine that the ability to cut roughly 40% of the time means that the wheelchair athletes aren’t working as hard simply because they’re not working as long.
The easy rolling of bicycle type wheels and coasting on downhills take much of the work off the athletes. Uphills are a bear as there are no lower gears to shift to, much like singespeed/fixed gear bikes.
At least with a SS/FG bike you still have A gear… with wheelchairs it would seem much much harder.
Wouldn’t arm strength be lower than leg strength anyway?
Arm strength is less, that’s why they can’t match a singlespeed bike over the same terrain.
Wheelchair racers aren’t pushing the wheels, there’s a pushrim mounted to the wheel, different diameters are used to alter the “gearing”
If you take a look at the arms of elite wheelchair athletes, you’d probably say “Not a whole lot lower.”