What is your top speed on an MTB?

On and/or road.

about 32mph according to Endomondo

or 176mph according to a few things in the past… but i doubt they’re correct.

40295mph.

Just getting in ahead of all the willy wavers 😉

According to Garmin Connect my top speed on my commute this morning was 5495.1 mph! May not be correct though 😉

42 mph on the road.
Could some clever person post the clip from Psychomania where they talk about how fast they have been.
“today we go for the ton”
“but that’s suicide”
“…..so what if it is”

High 40’s down sutton bank (road) near me, but pretty much anyone could get that and probably higher with gears.

Generally off road highest speed would be 23-25mph.

53 kirkstone pass in the lakes, alot on here have been alot faster…..

34 or 36mph off road in the Alps.. On a descent that Stevo said “heed your speed” on a 100mm HT. 😯

Kirstone pass is ace overtaking cars down there 😀

I know there will be plenty of willy waving, but I was just curious as I have never really looked at my own top speed.

I managed 34.5mph this morning without really trying, so I just wanted to see what speeds other riders manage 🙂

On road – 45mph Giant Anthem, B3247, Cornwall
Off-road – 43.6mph Skyline airfield section, Airborne Lucky Strike

65.8km/h was the most reliable recorded figure I’ve observed, but a hairpin was rapidly approaching.

Got a few recorded around 78km/h, 110km/h recorded the other day, and via GPS, at least one exceeding mach 1 uphill on road.

58 on the road, Crowcombe Park on the quantocks…. Friend clocked 62!!!
Not sure off road to be fair.
Average 38 down Alpe D’Huez on the road bike, that was pretty scary!

mach 1 uphill on road

Quite apt given your username

77.5kmh on road, heading down the Lindis Pass (NZ) carrying 40kg of luggage in my panniers. Bricked myself when I thought about the consequences of coming off as i took “the racinb line” around a corner.

Managed the same speed on my road bike the other week heading into Rothbury as part of the 100mile Cyclone. Had to brake due to the mincers in front of me.

No idea about off-road. 60ish kmh I guess.

Also, I’d like to draw your attention to Rule 24

62mph on road, sitting upright with howling tailwind.
recorded on cateye computer, so accuracy is open to debate.
i was slightly disappointed not to have reached 100kph tho.
off road, not certain, probably about 28-30mph, but that felt MUCH faster.

Just under 40mph on road off the Gillamour hill in N Yorks. Off road it’s about 28 in the dinorwic quarries (exciting when I stopped to think about all that sharp slate).

martymac – Member

62mph on road, sitting upright with howling tailwind.

62 on a mountain bike?? I’d go as far as to say you should throw that Cateye out… It’s obviously completely f*****d. The only way a mountain bike would do 62mph is on the roof of a car.

As a fast descender on road bikes, I can honestly say that low- to mid- sixties are possible, but there are only 2 or 3 descents in the UK that I can think of where you’ll hit those speeds.

The same descent on an MTB, you’d be lucky to break the 40 barrier.

You can top 50mph off road easily cycling down Devils Dyke just outside Brighton. It’s steep and dead straight and on a windy day you can go faster still. 57mph is my best. I recommend anybody in the area try it out as it’s great fun, even freewheeling you’ll hit 50 if you leave the brakes alone

Last time I did it though my iphone gps said 66 mph but my Garmin said 53, the latter being much more like it so GPS is by no means infallible.

63mph down Crowcombe on a Mt Vision Pro with 700c wheels and tyres (speedo calibrated for the wheels an double checked with GPS).
58 mph on my CX bike on the same hill but only 55.5 mph on the road bike last week (for some reason I got scared and touched the brakes).
As far as I’m concerned going fast is easy, as long as you have confidence in you brakes.

49.9mph on a smoothish dirt track in France, aero-tucked on an Anthem X! I was determined to top 50mph, but ran out of straight track (didn’t run out of nerve of course…..cough). TBH, although it felt silly fast, the bike felt surprisingly stable and calm at that speed. Unlike my previous PB, which was 44mph off-road on a Gary Fisher Sugar – deeply unpleasant experience, as the bike started to oscillate and pitch when it got over about 40mph.

90.6kph on the mtb with slicks on road.

According to Endomondo my best MTB time over 10 miles is 3 seconds therefore, it’s something in the region of 12,000 mph! Back on planet earth, Garmin Connect reckons it’s 36.7 mph.

On the road it’s 76.6 kph.

42mph on the smooth grassy descent down drum mountain. The fact that it was all grass to land on in the event of a mishap, with no hard, pointy, sticky-outy bits, helped

According to my cateye it was 60kph downhill on a road in the Quantocks. That felt good.

48kph offroad, downhill on a gravel fire road is the fastest I can recall. I do wish they hadn’t put the gate half way down the hill though!

@ shibboleth,
several points,
1, the accuracy of any computer is debatable, this includes gps.
2, when i say sitting upright, i mean i wasnt making any real effort to be aero.
3, just because you cant think of any roads where its possible, doesnt mean they dont exist, it was a 14% gradient, go find one and try it yourself.
for the record, it was the A689, heading east from alston, downhill towards the lead mining centre at nenthead, its steep, its almost completely straight, and its smooth.
any other time ive been able to go for it downhill, ive never managed to go much faster than c45mph.

As per Binners, but different ride, the grassy bit from Drum to Llanferfechan… this is Junkyards GPS, I was going just slightly faster so touching 50mph I would guess.

I shit myself when I touched the brakes.

DSC02206 by lowey.com, on Flickr

Just had a thought about GPS speed indication, does it allow for the angle of descent as due to the triangulation effect, you travel a greater distance over land than is observable from directly above or is this calculated by the differing positions of the satellites?

i dont believe it does, so the steeper the hill, the greater the error.
but its probably no worse than a normal bike computer.

@ Martymac, I’m a confident descender on a road or mountain bike and I know what is possible.

I’m reasonably slim/fairly tall, so probably about the optimum build/weight for getting the most out of a bike downhill. And if you claim to have been anywhere close to 62mph on a mountain bike, I’m telling you, you’re in cloud cuckoo land.

According to my cateye I’ve done 50.9mph. Was going down Buster Hill (nr Portsmouth) with a tailwind. I’ve done high 40’s down there before, so Im inclined to believe it.

And if you claim to have been anywhere close to 62mph on a mountain bike, I’m telling you, you’re in cloud cuckoo land.

You’re quite welcome to come to the Quantocks and try for yourself, but you’re probably too busy sat in front of your computer Trolling.

Fastest I have recorded is 51kmh off road on the big fireroad descent bit of the detour at Cannock.

slainte ➡ rob

Shibboleth – Member

As a fast descender on road bikes, I can honestly say that low- to mid- sixties are possible, but there are only 2 or 3 descents in the UK that I can think of where you’ll hit those speeds.

There are loads more than 2 or 3. I go over 50mph on plenty of hills around here (on a road bike), mostly while braking (and I don’t weight very much). If I was brave/stupid enough to not bother with the brakes, I’m sure over 60 is possible on lots of them. I’m not going to do that though, as they are full of holes and corners.

Over 50 mph on a mountain bike is impressive though, from an aero point of view, although at least you have better brakes and don’t have to worry about potholes.

so, shibboleth, what youre actually saying is you havent gone that fast on an mtb, therefore its impossible.
pmsl.

@glenh
it was the only time i managed to get anywhere near that speed, up until then my max was 48mph (totally flat, chin on bars)
ive been back to the same stretch many times, never managed to do any more than 51mph, im convinced the tail wind was the big factor, it was blowing at approx 30mph.
these are all recorded by computer, so subject to a degree of potential inaccuracy anyway.

I’m saying a mountain bike is 15-20mph less aerodynamic than a roadbike.

Thor Hushovd touched 68mph in last year’s TDF, and he’s one of the best descenders in the world. To suggest that you’ve got within a few mph of one of the world’s best, on an aero bike, in lyrca racing kit on a Pyrenean descent, whilst you’re a weekend warrior on knobbly tyres and probably with baggy shorts flapping in the breeze… Well quite frankly, you’re talking utter twaddle!

I suspect this figure of 62mph has crept up slightly every time you told the story.

62 on a mountain bike?? I’d go as far as to say you should throw that Cateye out… It’s obviously completely f*****d. The only way a mountain bike would do 62mph is on the roof of a car.

As a fast descender on road bikes, I can honestly say that low- to mid- sixties are possible, but there are only 2 or 3 descents in the UK that I can think of where you’ll hit those speeds.

I hope one of those is Sutton Bank (A170) 24% in places with long run out. If you put effort into it you’d hit 60mph I reckon, I certainly wouldn’t want to… been near enough on a road bike.

Maths says “yes” 😈

http://www.kreuzotter.de/english/espeed.htm

Thor Hushovd touched 68mph in last year’s TDF, and he’s one of the best descenders in the world. To suggest that you’ve got within a few mph of one of the world’s best, on an aero bike, in lyrca racing kit on a Pyrenean descent, whilst you’re a weekend warrior on knobbly tyres and probably with baggy shorts flapping in the breeze… Well quite frankly, you’re talking utter twaddle!

I suspect this figure of 62mph has crept up slightly every time you told the story.

True, but possibly his combined weight (bike and rider) is more then Hushovd and his 15lbs of road bike. Also better brakes and tyres on a mtb so you can brake later and more confidently.