100s have chance to shine at the University of Manchester Everyday Cycling Focus Day

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — Steve Marshall @ 11:27 am

On a blustery spring day, over 100 people came to the University Building to see what their peak power is and show their interest in cycling. Each person was asked to cycle on the Wattbike to generate power in watts. They were challenged to see how bright they could make a light bulb shine and record how many Watts their cycling produced.

Passers by, Sports Club Captains, University staff and students, were dragged off the main concourse to have a go on the bikes. The participants had their results put onto the leader board in the University Building foyer, and all the results are put onto the Wattbike ranking website.

Any man who achieved over 1200W (same power as a kettle) and any woman who achieved over 650W (same as a microwave) were given a prize. Nobody was immune from it, not even the passing group of school children or the 2 Police officers who came in and certainly shone on and off the bikes in their high-visibility wear.

By the end of the day well over 100 people had shown their interest and generated Watts for the University. 5 universities around Britain are using the Wattbike in the project for Everyday Cycling, the non-competitive arm of British Cycling. Currently, Manchester has over 500 participants and registrations to the project.

Wattbike University Project Training

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , , , , — Alex Skelton @ 5:08 pm

Today saw members of the staff at Roehampton, Plymouth, Nottingham, Manchester and Bristol Universities (and some visitors from British Cycling)  come together for the first set of training for the delivery of the Wattbike Universities project. The training lasted from 10 to 3, with a two and a half hour practical session including an attempt at a power test, 200m race and 1000m race. After lunch we introduced them to the ranking and we are expecting to see them appearing on the ranking soon with their scores. The rest of the afternoon was spent sharing our ideas for delivery of the project. It is an exiciting project and will see members of Wattbike travelling to all parts of the country to assist the Universities with delivery of their projects. 

Thanks to James and Chris from Birmingham, Nigel, Steve and Paul from Nottingham, Bridgette from Roehampton, Helen and Chris from Manchester, Kate from Plymouth and Geoff, Steve and Nicola from British Cycling for coming for the day, and of course to Eddie, Ben and Steve for delivering the course.