Four cyclists will push their bodies to the brink when they embark on a four-day 1,350-mile road race – all in the name of scientific research
JUST HOW far can you push the human body? What happens to our bodies when we are exposed to extremes of stress and fatigue? And what can be done to help us cope with those extremes? The answers to these and many more questions lie at the heart of a groundbreaking new research project being undertaken by the Science Foundation Ireland-funded Clarity: Centre for Sensor Web Technologies.
The project will see four cyclists being subjected to the most comprehensive physiological and psychological monitoring imaginable when they take part in the 1,350-mile Race Around Ireland cycling challenge later this month.
The event runs for four days from Wednesday, September 16th, and will see teams of four and a number of solo riders undertake an ultra marathon cycle challenge which will test their endurance, strength and mental toughness.
Billed as the toughest, and most gruelling cycling event ever to be held in this country, the Race Around Ireland is a time trial consisting of 1,350 miles of open roads, over some of Ireland’s highest mountains and passing some of Ireland’s most famous landmarks.
The An Post Connacht team is made up of four riders – Padraig Marrey of the Western Lakes Cycling Club, South Mayo, Daire Mooney of Eire Og Cycling Club, Sligo, and brothers Noel and Michael Brady of Covey Wheelers, Westport – who will ride the race in a relay with pairs of riders taking four-hour stints each as they ride non-stop around the country.
As if the challenge of the race wasn’t enough, the cyclists are also participating in a unique study which will see their every heartbeat and breath measured by the Clarity research team. Clarity is a partnership between University College Dublin and Dublin City University, supported by research at the Tyndall National Institute (TNI) Cork.
This ground-breaking research centre focuses on the sensor web, which captures the intersection between two important researches areas – adaptive sensing and information discovery. The centre brings together software engineers, material scientists and sports scientists to meet joint research objectives. Also involved are several industry partners from a range of important sectors including information technology, telecommunications, digital media and medical devices. Current industry partners include Critical Path, Changing Worlds, IBM, Vodafone, Foster Miller and Episensor.
This latest research project involves the gathering of data from the cyclists through a number of different methods and later the analysis of that data by the part of the team based in the School of Health and Human Performance at DCU.
To begin with, each of the cyclists will wear a “sensor vest” designed and developed by Clarity.
The vests, manufactured by Clarity industry partner Foster-Miller, contains sensors to record data such as movement, location, heart rate, respiration and so on. They are also quite rugged and can be thrown in a washing machine after use, so they are suitable for athletes. A few of them were already tested in last year’s All Ireland Senior Football quarter final between Wexford and Armagh by referee Paddy Russell and his linesmen.
All the information from the vests were collected through wireless connections and the referee was filmed to give a full analysis of how long he spent standing, running, sprinting and so on during the course of the match. This helped assess the performance and fitness levels of Russell and his colleagues.
But the vest is just part of the story. “We want to study the degradation which the human body undergoes as a result of ultra-endurance sports activity,” explains Clarity deputy director, Professor Alan Smeaton. “The vest monitors their heart rate, blood pressure, the rate and depth of their breathing. It’s also fitted with a GPS device to accurately record their location and speed. Once they come off the bike the cyclists will be weighed, swabs will be taken of their perspiration and saliva and urine and blood samples will be taken for analysis in the laboratory.”
In addition, the bikes are fitted with what are known as three-axis accelerometers. These devices measure the speed at which the pedals are turning, the force used to turn the pedals, the slope the bike is on at the time, and the riding style of the cyclist.
“Simply measuring the speed of the bike doesn’t give much information,” Smeaton points out. “For example, the ideal cycling style is to stay vertical, while an inefficient style that wastes energy is rocking from side to side. We also need to see if the bike is going up or downhill at any given time as well as the force required to turn the pedals. When we put all this information together we get the power output from the cyclist.”
In short, they will be able to measure quite accurately the amount of energy the cyclist has to put in to ride the bike.
The laboratory analysis is designed to look for the various chemical markers of fatigue such as lactates and so on. Also analysed are the cyclists’ fluid and nutrition intake in order to assess the impact and value of these.
All of this data would only be of limited use if the research team didn’t know what’s happening in the environment around the cyclists during the race. For this reason they will be filmed at all times during the 96 hour marathon.
“NUI Maynooth has a mobile mapping platform in a specially equipped van and they are loaning the vehicle to us for the race,” Smeaton adds. “The van will travel behind the cyclists and film them day and night throughout the four days. This will give us the ground truth that we need.”
Finally, the cyclists also undergo brief psychological and cognitive tests after each stint on the bike. This is to assess the effect of the stress of the massive physical effort on their psychological state.
When all the data has been gathered it is then handed on to the health and human performance section of the team for further analysis. This part of the project is led by Giles Warrington of DCU.
“We want to see how the human body copes under extreme conditions,” says Warrington. “And the race will represent very extreme conditions. The cyclists will work in pairs with one on the bike and one in a pursuit car. They will change over every 20 minutes and have 12 changes in each four-hour stint. The other pair will then take over at the end of the four hours. Each cyclist will cover more than 330 miles over the four days at an average target speed of more than 20 miles per hour. This will be very challenging.”
The potential outcomes of the project include benefits not just for elite athletes but for people in all walks of life. Nutrition is just one example. “We will be looking at the energy intake and expenditure of the cyclists to see how effective their nutrition is,” Warrington points out. In other words, do the sports snack bars or bananas really work as well as we think?
“We want to see what the most effective nutrition is for these types of activities and this will not just apply to sportsmen and women but to the whole population,” he notes. “We are also exploring the whole area of energy deficit. The average healthy male uses up about 2,500 calories per day, a Polar explorer uses about 12,000 and a Tour de France rider uses 7,000. It’s a hell of a challenge to take on this amount of calories. We are looking at matching energy expenditure with intake and the most effective ways of doing it.”
Another area of research is recovery. “We are also looking at the whole area of recovery. Many people are recommending different types of recovery regimes without any scientific basis for it. We will be monitoring the cyclists for a number of weeks after the event to assess how their bodies recover and this will be of use in areas such as rugby, as well as for people who just take exercise occasionally.”
And the research won’t stop on September 19th. “It is hoped that the race will be run again next year and we want to build on the results of this ambitious project by working with a team again and adding to our understanding of how the human body reacts and responds to ultra-endurance events like this.”
