What is more green than powering your super computers with bicycle power? How about using that bicycle power to run simulizations for fusion technology that might result in almost free energy for thousands of years. Pretty awesome, plus in the future when we run out of oil and the zombies come we will need elite bands of cyclists to do the research that will result in mankind rising from the ashes. Or something like that.

The cycling team, by the way, won last year’s National Collegiate Athletic Association Division 2 cyclocross championship. Cyclocross is a combination of dirt biking and traditional road racing, across lots of different types of terrain—”like a steeplechase on bikes,” says team member Ilana Brito, a graduate student in biology. The team will be defending its title this Sunday in Kansas City. Brito thinks it has a chance both to repeat as national champs and to win the Google contest, which includes a Specialized bike for each team member and a single check for $5,000. But she also seemed to think the whole idea was cool. “Using bicycle power to do something novel and something that will hopefully lead to maybe solutions for alternative energy, something like that.”

The afternoon was about setting a Guinness record for human-powered computing. This time the team used 10 riders. As in the morning run, the bikes were used to power machines made by SiCortex, of Maynard, MA, a venture-funded startup (investors include Flagship Ventures, Polaris Venture Partners, and Prism VentureWorks, along with Chevron and JK&B Capital) that specializes in low-powered supercomputers. To give you an idea of how low-powered, CEO John Mucci says the chip in his supercomputer, with six processors, uses about eight watts of power. The single-processor chip in my laptop, he told me, takes almost 100 watts. Ouch.

Learn more about this fantastic project here.

PS. The tale of elite computational cyclists saving the world from zombies would make an amazing short story…hmmm.