My new cycle computer* says I did 30 miles at 17mph on Sunday.

Bearing in mind I’m no race wippet (more slightly chubby labradoodle), is it simply because I can’t sit and spin my way up hills and the option of slowing down for technical bits and using low gears to get me through has been removed?

Is it true riding singlespeed really does make you a better person bike rider?

*I’ve checked, 80rpm on the roads (38/18 gears, 26″ wheels) was indeed 12mph, so its not a calibration error.

It’s called singlespeed for a reason. You have to do the same speed up the hills and on the flat. If you’re above a certain level of fitness it will make you stronger. If you’re below that critical level it will weaken you. You’ll end up doing a lot of walking.

You are now ten times the man you were before the weekend.

Revel in your glory.

Harummph! I did 50 miles on a geared bike on Saturday and only averaged 18 KILOMETERS per hour! Mind you, I had lots of practice track-standing just trying to pedal into the wind 😯

My guess is you had some good long, fast downhills on your ride to achieve ave 17mph on an offroad mtb ride 8)

17mph average speed on an MTB ride? That is very quick on any bike. According to the magic Sheldon Brown gear calculator, with that gear you would have to be averaging over 100rpm cadence.

I would see if the British Track team have any spaces left 😯

EDIT – I would be pleased with a 17mph average on the road currently

17 mph average?

That sounds immensely quick for an SS mountain bike ride, unless your idea of mountain biking involves no hills or mountains.

20mph average on a road bike with gears etc. is an ok pace for me for 30miles

I start to spin out on my ss at about 17mph. I think your calculations must be out.

Your bike computer is borked/not setup correctly.

10mph average on a MTB ride is a good rate IMO.

You sure you don’t mean 30km at 17kph?

17mph is a decent average on a road bike – to average that speed off road you’d probably have a place on the Olympic MTB Squad.

Well thinking about it………..

Uphill, I didnt push once I deliberately avoided hills that were un-singlespeedable (maybe only 3 in the whole ride that reduced me to a pace where crawling would have been more comprortable), so climbing had to be done at ~8mph or not at all.

Allong the flats 10-12mph isn’t much bother. Downhill I weigh 95kg on a skinny day, using 160/140mm hope minis there isn’t much in the way of slowing down, and a lot of the time I’m pumping for more speed. So getting the average up probably isn’t too hard, although the max speed wasn’t too high so it must have spent a lot of time at/above the avreage.

Still seems unaturaly high! I’ll take the garmin out next weekend to confirm speed/cadence/distance.

You sure you don’t mean 30km at 17kph?

Sounds closer the truth – I managed 14.1km/h average over 30Km ish on 32:18 at the weekend – lots of hills, mud and always seemed to be into the wind, maxing out at 50.1km/h – GPS measured, and it always seems spot on. I’m no deadly Ned (though I do have bar ends on my ss) mind. I was inm a hurry to get home too, under a 3 line whip to be back by 09:30.

I haven’t hit a 17mph average on my road bike for some time 🙁

LOL,we ave. about 9.6 mph on our night rides(SS),most who come and ride with us recon this is ‘quick’

to average 17 mpg on a 30 mile ride,on an mtb of any description,you need to have been going off the edge of a very high cliff.

bit confused tho, 38/18 isn’t really a suitable mtb SS ratio,unless of course you just ride round flat fire roads ?

more info please !

You need to get yourself a sponsor thisisnotaspoon

I am lucky to see an avg. like that on my road bike!

😉

Nope, its definately says its in mph, that was my first thought.

he’s probably been eating Spanish meat 🙂

Riding arround Swinley, so probably;
25% on road from home to the lookout
25% fire road
25% not very technical single track/flat out
25% technical/twisty singletrack

38/19 because I had a 38t chainring from when I went 1*9 and I bought the sprocket off a guy who was int 29ers.

If true,that immenseley quick.17mph is 27kph!I’m not slow by most standards.On most normal ss mtb rides I average 16-18kph,22-24kph for racing cross (but thats only an hour and at 95% max hr!) and 32-34kph on the road bike.
Go race quick!

a lot of the time I’m pumping for more speed.

Yep, this is a great way to get your average speed up. I do it over crests and into troughs all the time on my road bike, it transformed my TT times.

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears/

According to this with a 38:19 ratio spinning at 80rpm you’ll get 12.3mph.

Do the maths…

Found another GPS’d run from round the woods – hillier than Swinley mind, but it still comes in at 15.4 kph – full rigid though, hurts my arms more than my legs. I wouldn’t have wanted to try riding that twice as fast!

You should have raced at the Gorrick (same terrain as your ride). I don’t know lap length but I’d guess at between 4 and 4.5 miles. The winner in expert did 5 laps in 95 mins, so go for the longer lap length that’s 22.5/95*60 = 14mph.

You’d have been showered and in the burger queue by the time he finished….

Yep, this is a great way to get your average speed up. I do it over crests and into troughs all the time on my road bike, it transformed my TT times.

At Swinley there is a lot of trail that its quicker to pump than it is to pedal.

Right, lights and garmin are on to charge, time to go figure this out.

I used to race at Swinley in the Gorrick Series, done it on both geared HT and geared FS. Even in an Expert level MTB race there is no way on earth the winner was close to that speed – 15mph average was about right for the winner, down to about 13mph average or so for the back end of the field. And that was proper, lungs on fire, legs burning racing.

Your computer is a) buggered or b) set-up wrongly.

Edit: jonv beat me to it by 1 minute, he’s calculated pretty much the same average speeds for the Expert field.

The spoon is a hyper-MAMIL 🙂

btw,on the ride that you got those figures,you would of finished in under 2 hours,correct ?

Arround 2 hours 20min, I spent ~20min at the dirt jumps and sessioned one of the corners on tank traps (the left handed berm at the bottom of a dip which you have to get all the braking out the way before the trail drops, but not so much because it comes straight back up the hill before bearing right again, abotu 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through).

Hang on a minute.
Are you sure this is overall average speed for the ride, not just moving speed ?
There can be a big difference, especially if the speedo doesn’t record anything under 5mph as moving. 😉

Moving average, or whatever you’d call it, no it doesn’t include breaks, hence 17mph average taking 2 and a bit hours to cover 30miles.

Just a note for comparison to the gorrick course, I had a quick mooch about and It looked pretty slow and techy in places, I deliberately stuck to fast flowing trails I knew well.

Just went to look for some fast boys GPS records. This is Matt Page (mtbmatt from here)’s race output for 50Km (30 miles) of Salisbury Winter Challenge. 800m of ascent in total and a shade under 15MPH average and he probably had gears. I’m calling shenanigans on you being anywhere near 17MPH. I doubt you are over 12MPH to be honest.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/61625297

You say you were on a single speed, was it your bmx by any chance?

I’m not suprised fellow MTBers are anti social towards you, at those speeds you’ll be long past them before they have a chance to say “hi” or give you a funny look.

17mph for a road SS (48x17ish) sounds right cos according to roadside speedo my commuter cruising speed is 17mph.
XC 17mph, hmmmmmm, got to say I’m sceptical.

Naaa, the BMX is tucked up in the shed for the winter 🙂

Everyones nice and sociable on 26″ wheels, I wonder if by extrapolation of that trent 29er riders are all hippies into the concept of free love?

Not only can you ride bloody quickly but I bet if you get out your tape measure you’ll discover you have a 12″ cock! 🙂

Did you check that you only had 1 magnet on your spokes? 😉

Did you check that you only had 1 magnet on your spokes?

Was my first thought, that the cadence magnet on the crank was spinning past the speed sensor, but no, its miles away.

wireless ‘puter ?

I’d go and ride a mile between two ‘kmown’ points and see what your ‘puters registered (or go on a ride with someone with a gps based system) and see what result you get.

You have set right wheel circumference into ‘puter haven’t you?

Nope wired, I’ve been through every concievable source of error and come to the conclusion I am in fact superhuman.

BOW DOWN BEFORE ME FOR I AM YOUR GOD*

*other deities may exist, no responsibility is taken by myself (henceforth refered to as GOD) or any of my worshipers or reprisentatives of my church for your eternal damantion or other vengance wrought by other deities as a result of worshiping the wrong diety.

I’ve been through every concievable source of error and come to the conclusion I am in fact superhuman.

Proof you must have missed at least one error then 😉