On Saturday, 25th of August 2018, we arrived on the IVECO Test Track for Roland Schell’s attempt at
24h Outdoor Track with the streamlined Milan SL (faired recumbent) – which he planned to use 2 of.
Since 2 of the Crew already were ill with flu-like symptoms preparation took longer than anticipated.
Traffic cones were placed in the banked curves and inspected. A large amount of broken off metal nuts
and bolts were removed from the track for safety reasons and the electronic timekeeping was installed
and tested.
Weather conditions weren’t great, it started to rain at around 2 p.m. and continued to rain on and off
until 9 p.m.
Tim Botzelmann and Anja Rodinger were timekeepers whereas Christoph Rummel, Stefan Wolsfeld
and Helge Riechert coordinated shifts to oversee Roland from the top of the banked curves so that he
could be surveyed at all times.
Although the test track has lighting, not all of the lights were working. So both velomobiles were
outfitted with reflective tape and the lighting checked.
At 16:40h Roland started his attempt, 40 min later than anticipated. For the first 2 hours he was on
track for the standing record of 1219 km by Christian Ascheberg acknowledged by WHPVA.
While lap times of 1:51min were needed including breaks, he consistently had lap times of around 1:40
to 1:45 min and an average speed of 56 km/h / 34.8 mph with two small stops because his food began
to migrate into the drive train due to the banked curves.
Then he started to complain about a splitting headache – caused by the helmet, or so he thought.
However, after some cushioning was applied he didn’t reach his starting pace but got slower and slower
instead. At 21:03h after 4 hours and 23 minutes he aborted the attempt in the 139th lap because his
condition had worsened with dizziness and tremors due to low blood pressure / circulatory problems.
