On any other day, you could expect a hefty fine for breaking the 70mph speed limit on Nevada’s state route 305. But this was a special occasion and the ­local traffic cops watched in awe as Sam Whittingham topped 80mph — on a push-bike.

The Canadian’s record-breaking cycle run took place on a dusty stretch of Nevada highway close to Battle Mountain, which had been closed intermittently to traffic to allow a bunch of two-wheeled speed freaks to vie for the title of fastest self-propelled human. It was all part of the World Human Powered Speed Challenge, an annual but little-known event that began on Tuesday and continued until yesterday evening.

Whittingham’s speed of 82.4mph beat by a whisker his previous record of 82.3mph, set in 2008. That may not sound fast, but when you consider that it’s twice the speed that Chris Hoy, the triple-Olympic-medal-winning cyclist, can hit on the track, it puts the feat in perspective. Whittingham, 37, is truly taking pedal power to another level.

“It hurt,” says Whittingham, catching his breath after his record-breaking run. “My timing, though, was perfect: with the sun setting on the desert, the tarmac was still warm, and there wasn’t a breath of wind.”

Like Hoy, Whittingham is a former track cyclist; he now supports himself and pays for his record attempts by building bikes for others. The secret behind his superhuman pedal power is his Varna Tempest, a low-slung recumbent bicycle encased in a carbon fibre shell, with a Kevlar skin. “The Kevlar’s for protection,” Whittingham says. “If I crash at 80mph, the Kevlar stops the carbon disintegrating.”

Like a tailored suit, it is custom-built to fit Whittingham. “There isn’t an inch of room to spare, but apart from turning my legs, I don’t need to move much. At the speeds we’re talking about, steering basically involves gentle pressure on the handlebars. It’s incredibly noisy in there, but that noise tells me what’s happening with the bike. If the noise changes, I get anxious. If it’s quieter than normal then I’m probably in the air, and that’s not good.”

The bike is fast thanks to its super-streamlined shape and the fact that it’s less than 2ft high at it highest point. Then there are the tyres — ultra-thin slicks less than 1in across, which reduce rolling resistance to a minimum. And finally, there are the bike’s enormous gears: “It’s only got five,” explains Whittingham, “but even the lowest is harder to push than the highest gear on a standard racing bike.”

So hard, in fact, that it takes more than five miles for him to get his bike up to full speed. “I can reach 50mph in a mile,” he says, “but the effort required to get up to 80mph is exponential.”

“I have to time everything right, so that I get to the start of the 200-metre timing trap while I’m going flat-out. By that stage I’m completely spent, but I’m going so fast that even if I stopped ­pedalling I’d cover the 200 metres in five seconds.”

So what does it feel like to ride a bike at 82.4mph? “Like wheeeeeeeee!” Whittingham says with glee. “Like going downhill for five miles with an unbelievable tail wind. It’s the closest thing to flying without leaving the ground.”

And he’s still not satisfied. By the time you read this, Whittingham may have gone one better and achieved his ultimate goal of hitting 85mph.

If he succeeds, it will be the culmination of years of honing his machine and pushing his body to new limits of endurance and danger. Whittingham recalls how in 2003 he blew a tyre and crashed at more than 80mph. His bike flipped sideways, then flew through the air for almost 100 yards before spinning another 200 yards down the road. “It was scary as hell,” he says. “I didn’t know what was going to happen — the fastest anybody had crashed before that was about 70mph. Thankfully, I wasn’t hurt, but it took me a long time to get back in a bike after that.”

He’s now philosophical about the risks. “There’s no point worrying what’s going to happen, because there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m squeezed into this little bubble, I can’t move my head and I can’t move my arms more than an inch or two; all I can do is pedal my little speed capsule. At a certain point you’re committed, and turning back or second-guessing yourself at that point is the worst thing you can do.”