Originally Posted by
rydabent
...Another old wives tail is bents dont climb. To prove that wrong is easy. Look at the 4 man RAAM race of a couple 3 years ago. The RANS team won the four man race. Also they improved their standing comming up the west side of the Rockies by about an hour against the other 4 man DF teams. So dont tell me that "bents dont climb"!!!!
Seriously, if you are going to pull this stuff out at least put into the proper context. Yes, they did win three years ago. A great achievement by any standards. If you want to compare their actual speed though, look at the competition they had three years ago and their overall time. If you want to see where there truly stand overall you have to compare them to the fastest four man teams. They don't look so good there. The recumbent record is over 24hrs slower than the fastest DF teams. I can tell you that the fast DF teams didn't make up 24+hrs over the recumbents across Kansas!
The answer to the question "can recumbents climb?" is sure they can but not as fast as a DF bike. A recumbents advantage (speedwise) is in aerodynamics, that's it, period. Why try and make it something it isn't?