I try to use 20 mph average as a goal/ benchmark for all of my local rides. I don’t tend to stop that loop until I’ve cracked it.
Sad, yes but I like to push myself and it’s a good benchmark for me.
One loop I’ve peaked at 19.7 and I can’t get past that. I will, one day.

I’m 40
5-10
12.5 stone
Like pizza
And can’t touch my toes

Solo road ride on my Tripster yesterday managed 18.7mph average over 23 miles with 1319ft climbing.. Biggest problem i find is my speed dropping off on hillier rides over 3500ft or longer than 60 miles.

One loop I’ve peaked at 19.7 and I can’t get past that. I will, one day.

Based on the info you posted you could do it tomorrow by pacing yourself better using HRM. Get rid of the 40 mins in Z1/Z2 and the 6mins in Z5 you’re sorted.

Edit Also, if that is the typical intensity distribution of most peoples rides, no wonder they post such high ave speeds.

So stay in 3/4? Ok, I’ll try that next time. It was a pretty hot day so heat rate was higher than usual for the same pace.

Depends on the exact method you used to set your zones, and which zones you are using (BC’s zones don’t match Friel’s for example), but you should pretty much be able to ride near the top of Z3 for most of the ride, letting it drift into low Z4 on climbs and drop to low Z3 on descents. Once into the last 20-30mins its time to use up everything you’ve got left.

Based on the info you posted you could do it tomorrow by pacing yourself better using HRM. Get rid of the 40 mins in Z1/Z2 and the 6mins in Z5 you’re sorted.

Summarised as rider harder 🙂

50/50 of z3/z4 for two and a half hours would be a rather hard ride though!

All my speeds are pretty average.

All my speeds are pretty average.

I aspire to being that fast!

Summarised as rider harder

That’s the way I took it 🙂

I’m at the quicker end of the mtb spectrum with pages of koms but although I’ve tried really hard to average 20mph on the road I just can’t. 18 mph no problem, but a sustained 20 requires power I just don’t have.

Out of the 50 odd people I follow on strava it is very rare to see anyone get an average speed above 18mph (30kph) and when they do get anything approaching that speed its usually a flat route.

Most of the rides I do tend to have more than 1,000 ft of climbing per 10 miles, I really struggle to get over 14/15mph avg for a ride

Heading to the flat lands on Friday for a duathlon on Friday, will be interesting to see what I can avg then over 20 miles

I’m at the quicker end of the mtb spectrum with pages of koms but although I’ve tried really hard to average 20mph on the road I just can’t. 18 mph no problem, but a sustained 20 requires power I just don’t have

KOMs don’t mean much as they are typically shortish high efforts. The longest off road segment I ride is a 3 mile uphill in around 12 minutes which has me gasping at the top.
You need to look at your average speed for the whole ride .

That long thread was a bit of a read. Glad none of that lot were racing properly when i was.
Only year I’ve got full records for i logged a total of 18500km, about 250 odd rides, including 9 or 10 semi classics, 2 classics, 40 odd days of stage racing and about 60 “just races” then a stack of just training.

Average speed for the lot… Just short of 30kph. Some of that lot on there would have cleaned up. 😕

FunkyDunc no big hills in this part of the world but some rather tiresome block headwinds, most days. Enjoy.

Ghostly with that sort of volume though you’d likely have spent a lot of time riding at a low intensity.

If you’re a time limited amateur, maybe racing for an hour or two once every couple of weeks, you’re training time would likely be at a higher average intensity.

But then you probably know all that 🙂

I know. It’s really just for comparison. It never felt particularly low intensity though!

The first year or three i raced mtb (after “retirement”) my road averages were mostly in the mid 30s. But each year i only did maybe 4000 km on road all of which was pretty much full on, intervals, 2×20, pacing etc virtually no LSD, and maybe 3000 off road……. which was a bit slower. Then had to go to work 40 hours a week as well. Which sucked 🙁

Would be interesting to know the breakpoint where adding low intensity volume trumps intensity. Would imagine most people working full time struggle to recover from more than 2 intense sessions a week, so benefits to be had from just adding volume of Z1/Z2 for anything over about 6hrs/wk.

I usually ride 3/4 week days MTB of 20 miles a session in mostly zone 3 131 – 143 hr . The above is a typical road weekend session. Sometimes I’ll do that both weekend days.

Started entering XC races this year. Have been trying to improve my performance, no real training plan, just trying to put pieces together. The dip near the beginning of the year probably because I was deliberately seeking out bigger/steeper hills which required longer rides to get to. Commuting 5 days a week on the HT as well, so recovery rides at HR Z1 pushed avg speed down too.

Cheers for all the input, no one seems to come back and ever say they tried stuff but here goes.

For work and life reasons tonoight was the first real ride I’ve got in since posting.

Tried the advice from fifeandy about HR Zones, pretty much got 95% in z3/z4. Felt like a real workout.

Also picked up on the slightly lower gear\increased cadence from another thread as I do normally favour slower cadence in bigger gears.

Not done any changes to the bike as yet and I’m about as aero as a 6′ tall 14 stone bloke can be.

On call for work, so just a short 9 mile circuit, started of at a whole mph higher on the average average according to Garmin, had to slow down for a couple of horsists and farmers, eventually came in at 14.5mph average over 9 miles.

Only one ride but I can see where to work on rather than worrying about a single figure target that’s not as simple as suggested. Still don’t fancy racing, but at least I can aim to be a bit faster while enjoying getting out and about.

Cheers again for the useful advice.

allan, glad you found it a good workout, however that particular advice was targetted at @on and on for his particular goal of going faster round loop of around 140 mins.
Generally i wouldn’t advocate riding in zone3 that often, it generates quite a chunk of fatigue without having a massive training benefit.
Also, for max speed on a ride under 1hr, cut the z3 out, should be z4 all the way, just have to learn to enjoy the suffering! 😈

Also, for max speed on a ride under 1hr, cut the z3 out, should be z4 all the way, just have to learn to enjoy the suffering

Interesting, my commute is about an hour each way,me high I try & do 3 times a week.

On that theory I guess I should be burying myself all the way there, and just cruising home in an attempt to work on recovery?

Usually best the other way round, i wouldn’t fancy a day in the office after an hour of Z4. Sitting in front of the telly is much more like it.

Depends what you’re trying to accomplish (and how you define your zones!) but an hour at z4 should be a really hard session. If you’ve only got an hour you’d be better off doing something like…

10 min z2
15 min z4
10 min z2
15 min z4
10 min z2

Once you’ve done that a few times then bump the z4 up to 20 min. Then once you’ve done that a few times cut the recovery back to 5 mins. You get a good chunk of time at z4 and it’s not so hard that you’ll not be able to ride the next day (or do a gentle z1/z2 commute back in the evening.)

@Hobnob, as ghostly said, easy in, hard home. If you do a quality z4 workout you should be a bit mangled to be working after.

Wouldnt try to do the full hour hard nor on all 3 days. 2x20mins with a short warmup/cooldown on 2 of the 3 days.

edit, blobby beat me to it

Interesting, thanks.

I will try & apply a bit of science to it over the next couple of months to see what it does.

If you want to pull up your average speed, I think the most important things are to minimise time spent going slow (no shit!) by sprinting out of junctions/corners and over the top of hills. i.e. dont rest on the downhill until you are flying. Also keep peddling down the other side of the hills, or at least just spin the cranks to reduce freehub drag. Obviously the same applies when slowing down so really make sure you leave braking until as late as you dare and then anchor on hard.

Also, sticking on the drops the hole time will probably save you at least 1 mph, even if you have your arms straight you will still notice a difference.

I wouldn’t worry about power meters or training programs too much if I were you. I’ve had seen great improvements from just going out and smashing myself to pieces once or twice per week. The main thing is to carry food or stop for coffee so that when you’re empty you can have a break and re-fuel and then go and bury yourself all over again.

I’d love to average 20mph (or even 15) but as most of my rides a around 20 miles with 1000m of climbing I’m pleased if I see 12mph.

Usually best the other way round, i wouldn’t fancy a day in the office after an hour of Z4

Doing just that after my circuit race this evening. Average HR was 161. Home soon.

I try and average 30 km/h as it sounds better than 19 mph 😉 . On a fixed road bike, it sometimes feels easier to keep the pace up. And when I’m tired, the bike really tells me as the cadence dives – see other thread…

See TiRed, that is why we are better riders than those on the continent. When they aim for 30kph, we aim for 20mph. When they race over 40k we race over 25 miles. We go just that little bit faster and further 😉

but as most of my rides a around 20 miles with 1000m of climbing

Where do you live, sounds hellish! Most ‘hilly’ rides will be about ~1000ft for every 10miles, but you hitting almost 1700ft per 10 miles, you must have some brutal hills*, and cracking descents** round your way! 🙂

* these might make me stay away
** these might make me visit

I went out for my fastest ride in … ever last night. Was a group of 5 of us. I did what I could on the front but have been out every day since Sunday and done a total of 122 miles in those 4 days… which is about 3x what I’ve been doing so far this year – way behind on my cycling.

Anyway, I think we averaged about 19.2, taking into account my enormous drag factor of how slow I am compared to the others, who are much, much fitter than me and were well-rested. I don’t think I held them back toooo much to the point they were annoyed with me but I had nothing left in my legs near the end, if there was even a small incline.

Definitely a lot easier riding in a group, especially if you’re on the back wheel of someone that’s bigger than you. It’s also more fun if you’re all a similar speed/ability/they’re going at your pace.

Think my fastest before was about 17.6, solo, 17.8 with one other, pushing pretty damn hard… and before that 16.5 back in June last year 🙁

Where do you live, sounds hellish!

Yes the Quantocks and Exmoor can be hellish 😉

Yes the Quantocks and Exmoor can be hellish

lol, well I’m round Dartmoor, not much better 🙂

Although it’s rare for any road ride to exceed 1000ft/10mile on average over any decent distance due to roads generally being built intentionally to manage gradients where possible.

Sticking to the tiny lanes and offroad is a different matter of course, much more opportunity to be reminded about gravity there…

BTW, the climb out of Lynmouth can ‘eff right off, I had to gurn my way up that on a mini-tour a couple of weeks ago, after having ridden up from the south coast over Exmoor, weight of bike with kit was in excess of 50lbs, I only had a 30t granny gear, it was scorching hot, and that climb came at mile 70, I was not impressed, there may have been swearing, so I might not be back to visit for a while…

I’d love to average 20mph (or even 15) but as most of my rides a around 20 miles with 1000m of climbing I’m pleased if I see 12mph.

You might want to try picking some flatter routes 🙂

Most ‘hilly’ rides will be about ~1000ft for every 10miles

I’d say that’s about the right mix for a hilly ride.

you must have some brutal hills*, and cracking descents**

Both of which are a bit rubbish for training (unless you’re specifically training for brutal hills and descents!)

the climb out of Lynmouth can ‘eff right off

If you mean Countisbury Hill a workmate of mine rode it 32 times in a day last year doing an Everest Challenge. 😯

Following on from my previous post and stats.
Today was a way more windy and humid day but I dug deep and ( just ) managed my 20mph avg over 46 miles.
I’ll wait for better weather and try again as I’m pretty sure a 21. Is on the cards.

Following on from my previous post and stats.
Today was a way more windy and humid day but I dug deep and ( just ) managed my 20mph avg over 46 miles.
I’ll wait for better weather and try again as I’m pretty sure a 21. Is on the cards.

Do you know your power out of interest??

I went out and had a go after reading this thread and did 20.3mph off 211W (3.12W/kg) average for 68 miles which I thought was surprisingly little considering it was a normal road bike. I think the main thing really is just to keep sprinting back up to speed and keep spinning down the hills. Eg. my average power was 211 an my Weighted average on Strava was 219W so there was little time resting.

Sorry, no idea of power but considering getting myself a crank to start measuring output.

What do you mean by surprisingly little ? You mean your output vs the high average speed ?
My ride is undulating so some horrible long gradual inclines. They really make the legs burn.