The fastest bikes in the world

Although land speed records are usually associated with cars, of all types of varieties including EVs and hybrids, there are also land speed records for bicycles, too.
In August 2011, wooden bike designer and builder Michael Thompson from Norfolk and triathlete James Tully broke a land speed record with Thompson’s wooden bicycle – the Splinterbike.  It is made entirely of wood, and though they were aiming to reach the heady heights of 30mph, they managed to establish a world speed record for 100% wooden bicycles at 11.25mph.
Although they set a new world record for a wooden bike, they didn’t come anywhere near the current world record for a bicycle land speed record – which is held by a Canadian, Sam Whittingham.  His record speed is 82.3mph, set in the World Human Powered Speed Challenge, an annual event for speed obsessives.  In 2009, a section of a Nevada highway was closed off to its usual array of family cars, trucks and lorries for the event to take place, and Whittingham broke his own previous record.
Whittingham used to be a track cyclist, but now pays for his record attempts by building bikes for other people.  His world record braking bike is a recumbent bike encased in a carbon fibre shell, with a Kevlar skin, designed to stop the carbon disintegrating in case of a crash.  The highest point of the bike is only 2 feet above the ground and its tyres are less than 1 inch across, to minimise rolling resistance.  It only has five gears, but they are enormous – it takes more than five miles for him to get his bike up to full speed.
Of course, bicycles will never get close to the kind of speeds which can be achieved in car land speed records – the current aspiration for the next record is 1000mph.