What Is Your Average Speed?

Meh, average speed is pretty useless unless it's used as a comparative measure. Flat averages may be of some greater use as they're more or less a uniform measurement, but descent and ascent speeds are hugely variable upon grade/length of the hill in question.

PartisanRanger said:

Meh, average speed is pretty useless unless it's used as a comparative measure. Flat averages may be of some greater use as they're more or less a uniform measurement, but descent and ascent speeds are hugely variable upon grade/length of the hill in question.

You have a good point, one that I realized while making this post. I do not intend for this post to be perfectly accurate though. Even your speed on the flats can be affected by headwinds, tailwinds, crosswinds, temperature, weather, etc.

Trek_Athlete said:

[font=Franklin Gothic Medium] Hello everyone! I am doing this poll to find out the average speed for most riders. Average speed means for the flats, hills, and descents combined. If you would like to note your average speed specifically for flats, hills, and descents, please do so in reply to this post. Thank you![/font]

18 - 20 when I ride by myself. 20 - 22 in a group ride.

Flat to rolling terrain.

Jim

32Kmh including stopping for lights but excluding stopping for breakfast or to help a nice lady with her puncture.

Hey you made me use my calculator. 32Kmh * 5 / 8 = 20Mph

I live in a very hilly area so the only flat riding I usually get is in crits. Yesterday's average was 38km/h or approx 24mph.
As for average speed riding through the hills... I record everything from my bike comp, and so far this year, that average is around 27km/h - 17mph, but it really is irrelevant as sometimes I'm doing intervals, sometimes recovery etc and conditions change from one day to another.
HTH

You need to expand this Pole into age groups. How can a 50 y.o. be compared to a 30 y. o. Roughly there is a 20 bpm max heart rate difference to start with let alone the aches and bad backs and...................
To answer the Q Today 20kM 31 kph neat, no wind, plenty of cars & intersections.............Yesterday 74kM 30.6 kph into the wind first, tail wind home, always seems easier into the wind first,rolling hills none to steep or very long.
BTW I've been riding 3 years & I'm 50 y.o.

So far I can ride about 10 -12 miles at 13 mph
Doesnt sound so good huh.
Consider that I live in the Texas hill country and I had my second heart surgery in January and then its not so bad.
Ride on !!!!!!!!

Supraman said:

So far I can ride about 10 -12 miles at 13 mph
Doesnt sound so good huh.
Consider that I live in the Texas hill country and I had my second heart surgery in January and then its not so bad.
Ride on !!!!!!!!

Sound like your doing well. Good job

I ride a "loop", so I think the hills and wind even out. 14.7 including 1 stop light.

starship said:

I ride a "loop", so I think the hills and wind even out. 14.7 including 1 stop light.

The hills and wind never even out the ride, even in a loop. You will always lose time/speed to them.

Albert 50 said:

You need to expand this Pole into age groups. How can a 50 y.o. be compared to a 30 y. o. Roughly there is a 20 bpm max heart rate difference to start with let alone the aches and bad backs and...................

I've been dropped by guys older than you. 😉

Doctor Morbius said:

The hills and wind never even out the ride, even in a loop. You will always lose time/speed to them.

Traffic too. I find that just the few miles it takes me to get in and out of town will knock at least 2-3mph off of my average depending on how long the ride is. After noticing that my 15 mile rides were at the same average speed as my 50's despite a 30bpm difference in average heart rate, I stopped paying attention to speed.

[quote="artmichalek"]I've been dropped by guys older than you. 😉

Hi art
These type of threads appear very often on these forums. I guess they really do'nt mean a great deal, I was pointing out just another variable that reinforces that we should all take the replys that nominate "speeds" with the proverbial "grain of salt". I could have also added that I ride a flat bar, yet another variable,due to a back condition which prevents me from being able to bend over the bars to far, but I'm not complaining about that. I enjoy my riding after being sedentary & fat for the previous 20 years.
Good on Supraman for his reply as it reinforces that speed does not matter at all. Doing it is what counts.
Bye

Really depends, I am sure I could average over 36km/h with aerobars over 40-50km but why would I want to? Most rides are inbetween 60-75%mhr at this time of year and I average about 31-33km/h over rolling terrain all the way. A lot of the time I do recovery rides that are under 28km/h sometimes under 22 if I really need an easy day. Some times I do intervals In which case I might average 45km/h in the interval stages and 20km/h in the recovery stages, what does it matter? nothing! work to a heart rate and dont worry about speed because most of the time you are affected by wind or hills or stoplights anyway.

However it is nice to say you did a 100km ride at over 32km/h on your own when once upon a time I couldn't ride 32km/h for 20 minutes:p .Over a long period of time eg. 3 years then measuring fitness may have some affect but for the short term (eg. 3 weeks) you simply cannot measure improvement by your speed unless your on an indoor velodrome.

By the way the only way you can improve average speed is to do training way above or below your average HRzones that some people try to stay in when aiming for a PB on the average speed. Speed hurts!

mine is about 18mph,i am a girl and asking myself is it too low...:o

I am 44 and average about 18 mph when riding by myself, 21 in group. I live Florida so the hills are minimul. There is a serious wind issue though. Example. I did a 83 mile ride last Saturday, half of that riding into a 15-21 mph wind. I ended up doing about 15 mph average for the whole ride.

I voted 25-30 in the poll before realising it was in MPH. 25-30kmh (around 27kmh, riding from Riverwood - Waterfall via Como Bridge - East Parade - Anzac Prde Engadine - Princes Hwy to Waterfall and back 60km total (thats in SYDNEY btw) is more like it. Sorry about that.

I see too many riders going too fast in the wrong places. Very often I'm taking a slow, steady descent down a lane and some rider comes hurling past me flat out.
What they don't realise is that in certain areas, there is a real risk of getting knocked off - be it by a dog or child walking out from behind a car or even a car-door opening unexpectedly.
I've only just been knocked off by a reckless driver so I know how it feels to go over a car-roof and land on the hard ground.
My first rule is to not go too fast if it puts me in danger of serious injury, causing me to be lose training time as a result. I tend to go fast on open roads where I have a good view around me.
I also tend to put fitness before speed at this stage. Speed is only one part of the spectrum but neing fast and being fit are two different kettles of fish, I guess.
Also, I do think to be fast you need to find a bike that suits you specifically.

[In all honesty, I think that a good percentage of cyclists either have no idea of thier real averages or flat out lie about them. Now, as a fatish older guy, I average about 15 mph. Years ago, a poor racer dude, I would average about 17-18 on a causual ride, 20-22 on more serious solo ride, and we would go about 25 as an average in races. Some faster some slower. But all these guys claiming to average 25 mph or more are not really that fast, IMHO

tasmart said:

[In all honesty, I think that a good percentage of cyclists either have no idea of thier real averages or flat out lie about them. Now, as a fatish older guy, I average about 15 mph. Years ago, a poor racer dude, I would average about 17-18 on a causual ride, 20-22 on more serious solo ride, and we would go about 25 as an average in races. Some faster some slower. But all these guys claiming to average 25 mph or more are not really that fast, IMHO

If you look at some clubs that hold TTs and post results. The best guys(cat 1s with aero stuff) will do 28mph on a flat 10 mile TT and the lower guys will come in the low 20s.