Hilly road roads — how slow to expect

A few weeks back I did what I think must be the slowest road ride of my life. I think my average moving speed dropped under 15km an hour, for a ride that was only 75km.

Now I’m never very fast, especially on the road, but I am fairly fit (I did the South Downs Way in a day last year on a single speed, for example). So averaging less than 10 mph on a road ride feels unreasonably slow.

However, the ride did have something like 2300m of climbing over that 75km, which is pretty intense for a road ride (I’m living in Switzerland now). That seems like the obvious answer, but I’m still surprised I was that slow.

So, does anyone have any rules of thumb for estimating the effect of elevation gain on their average speed over a full road ride? I mean, if you did a 100km flat ride, and averaged speed X, how much slower would you expect to be with 500m, 1000m, or 2000m of elevation gain?

The only things I found so far were looking at how much a gradient slows you down for a fixed power output, but I’m not sure how to extralolate to a full ride from that.

http://bikecalculator.com/ might help, to give you an idea of things up a specific section of the ride.

That sounds wrong – if you averaged 15kmph, you wouldn’t have enough momentum / gyroscopic effect when going at your very slowest to stay upright. How long did it take to complete the ride (excluding stops)?

you wouldn’t have enough momentum / gyroscopic effect when going at your very slowest to stay upright

Really ? Many steep climbs see me down at 9mph.

Ive done many local rised where I get 3,000ft climbing in 25miles and average about 12mph

you wouldn’t have enough momentum / gyroscopic effect when going at your very slowest to stay upright

What a load of nonsense. It’s perfectly possible to ride uphill at 3 or 4 kph without falling over.

Many steep climbs see me down at 9mph.

I’ll be pedalling up steep stuff at less than 9Kph !!

Really ? Many steep climbs see me down at 9mph.

Yes, but if they only managed to average 15kmph, they would have been significantly less on the climbs.

Fat biking on snow, steep or loose stuff would regularly see me below 4mph – having a low enough gear like 26×46 and spinning can help as it smooths out the power delivery whereas ‘stomping’ on the pedals can result in wheel slip. Even on my local, island roads it can be sometimes tricky to average 12mph – a combination of hills, wiggly rough tarmac and singletrack roads with passing places make it difficult to maintain momentum.

Weight plays a massive role when climbing. You can be as fit as can be but if you’re carrying an extra stone or 3 then it will slow you down considerably. Even if you’re trim but not built like your typical noodly cyclist, it’s going to be a struggle. There’s also fit, and there’s FIT. Tough conditions will have a tendency to make you feel small unless you’re somewhere on the elite side of the spectrum. 2300m is a huge amount of climbing over that distance.

That’s not too slow, just checked one of my mountain rides, 66 miles, 6800 feet of climbing, average speed 13.6 mph.
I purposefully selected that ride to show you as an example as the climb was new to me with, so steady descent and it was also August in Spain, it was hot. The final climb was just under 6 miles at an average of 3.5%, average speed was 7mph. Earlier climbs were a fair bit quicker, that one was at mile 45 to 51 of the ride.

(To try to show an equivalence I was a 2nd Cat road racer when I completed that ride)

TBH that’s a whole bunch of climbing in quite a short distance, I’m not surprised the average speed is down.

For the kind of roads I ride in the UK (spiky hills), I tend to think of 10m ascent per km as “typical”, as in, an 80km ride is usually around 800m climbing. If it’s more than that, I will feel like it’s been steep. If it’s less than that, it’ll feel fast, possibly very fast.

Continental style climbing is very different, often, because they’re big on “long single climbs” – think Mallorca, the Alps – as opposed to the Kentish approach which is “little vertical lanes everywhere’.

2300m in 75km is a huge amount of ascent. Given a rise of about 25% elevation over an equivalent distance knocks 0.5-1kmh off my averages (as a heavy but passably fit road cyclist)… I don’t think 15km/h is shabby, really, for something that steep.

Ignoring what the numbers say: did you feel like you should have been faster? Or are you mainly surprised by what the numbers say vs what it felt like?

OP

Did you know the route or was it an ambush?

There can be a world of difference .

If are prepared to attack the hard climbs with the knowledge of where the recovery sections are, and use all  or any momentum to keep the average  up.

However, the ride did have something like 2300m of climbing over that 75km, which is pretty intense for a road ride (I’m living in Switzerland now). That seems like the obvious answer, but I’m still surprised I was that slow.

Or in old units, 7500ft in 46 miles – when you say “did have something”, are you guessing or something else?

I live somewhere ‘lumpy’ and a normal road or gravel ride would see me doing approx 100ft of climbing per mile, with MTB 200-300ft per mile.  You’re at +150ft per mile, so proper lumpy.

An old walking adage was:

Scottish mountaineer William W Naismith considered this back in 1892. Naismith’s Rule states that an adult hiker can cover three miles an hour on flat ground. Add 10 minutes for each 100m of steep ascent, roughly speaking. So a 12-mile route including 600m of climbing would take around five hours.

Eric Langmuir’s addendum to this rule proposed that walk duration would be reduced by 10 minutes for every 300m of descent on slopes of between 5 and 12 degrees. But it would increase by 10 minutes for every 300m of descent on steeper inclines. It’s not an exact science of course but this method has proved remarkably accurate, at least for fit and experienced hillwalkers. Remember that three miles an hour is a maximum for most people; 2.5 miles per hour is a more sensible estimate, even on the flat.

And add more for carrying a load.

Don’t think any of my flat road rides have broken 15mph average this year, a ride in the Peak would see me down to 10-11mph.

Did you know the route or was it an ambush?

There can be a world of difference .

If are prepared to attack the hard climbs with the knowledge of where the recovery sections are, and use all or any momentum to keep the average up.

@fasthaggis, it was new to me, but I’m not sure it would have made any difference as the route was essentially two separate very long, not particularly steep, climbs up to 1800m cols.

Ignoring what the numbers say: did you feel like you should have been faster? Or are you mainly surprised by what the numbers say vs what it felt like?

@infovore, that’s exactly the kind of riding I was used to up in Yorkshire, albeit with a few larger hills in the Dales. I think I’m surprised as whenever I do a ride over here, I’m generally always slower than I expect, and more tired, on road rides, but viceversa on my mtb rides.

@butcher, I’m certainly not noodly (I was a strong boulderer for a couple of decades from age 8 and am still built like that), but at 76-78kg and 5’10”, I don’t think I’m particulary heavy.

Really ? Many steep climbs see me down at 9mph.

I go below 3mph on mine with moving average speeds of under 12mph on shorter rides than yours!

In my defence I do have a heavy bike & a damaged heart & I’m just a pootler.

I’m also a bit speed averse so my downs don’t cancel out my ups.

I don’t have any mountains round here, but there are plenty of small rolling hill.

A normal road ride would be 50 miles and 2500ft of climbing and I would expect to ride that at 19mph (conversational/social pace/z2 avg)

A hilly ride would be something approaching 5000ft of climbing over 50 miles. For the same effort I would expect to be about 2mph slower. Although in actual fact, I wouldn’t be that much slower because I put more effort in, so maybe only 1-1.5mph slower but with a higher average power.

You seem to have ridden about 46 miles with 7500ft of climbing, which is far hillier than I have ever ridden! So I couldn’t tell you how slow that would be, sorry. ?

100mile road ride in Lincolnshire, where I’m from and still visit, should be 5hrs ish.

100 mile road ride in the Borders where I live now is 6 1/2hrs ish for comparison.

Maybe 1,000ft Vs 6,000ft.

Both on a geared bike. It’s a noticeable difference.

What a load of nonsense. It’s perfectly possible to ride uphill at 3 or 4 kph without falling over.

Yup – my bottom gear on my adventure bike allows me to have a nice cadence of around 70 at  6kpoh and at a slow cadence under 4 kph.

takes a long time to climb hills at that speed

With a ride with a lot of climbing you spend so much time climbing compared to descending it has a big effect on average speed

+1 to that being fair amount of climbing over that kind of distance. No idea how much you might add/subtract to allow for climbing, but have you considered altitude? How long have you been there and how often do you ride at 1000-1800m? It might not be 2000m but it’ll still have an affect and I’m pretty sure will make you feel more tired.

There are a couple of things I’ve not mentioned so far as I wanted some answers purly about hills, and also didn’t want to make this thread too complicated:

One is simply that, since moving here late last year, life has been stressful — I’ve had back and glute problems, and am perhaps just not at the level I was when I did the SDW this time last year.

That said, I have managed 80-90km single speed mtb rides over here at something like 13km moving average. Those had less ascent, 1700m or so, but still, it suggestes to me my road speed should be quicker.

Now the trickier thing is my bike… It’s not exactly a conventional road bike, rather a steel gravel bike that I converted to Rolhoff last year (the below, but with now with skinnier tyres). I figured this can’t be knocking any more than 10% off my speed compared to a decent road bike. In the UK, I road familiar routes once I’d converted to Rohloff and compared times — I was only 3-4 minutes per hour slower. But, its possible that on very steep hills, the Rohloff efficiency drops off dramatically. I may need to start a separate thread for that.

@andrewh, that’s interesting data.

So only 950m extra ascent per 100km, and it knocks nearly 25% off your average speed.

My mid-week road rides around here are 60-80km with 1000-1500m climbing, so about 1000m per 100km less than the ride that prompted me to start this thread. On those rides, I average closer to 20kmph, which means I shouldn’t be surprised by something under 15kmph.

With a proper road bike, I suspect I’d be up to 22-23kmph on my local routes, 16-17km on the really hilly ones.

@n0b0dy0ftheg0at, I finally managed to use that tool and it’s super useful.

For 150W constant power over a 100km ride that goes steadily up and then back down a hill, then relative to a flat ride:

1000m of ascent drops the average ride speed by 11%

2000m of ascent drops the pace by 31%

3000m of ascent drops the pace by 46%

I guess the weird pattern is because I’ve set the power output to be the same up and down the hill, which is obviously stupid. If I could fix the total calorie consumption that would be better

A 6% gradiant

I lived in SE London most of my life and rode out into Kent, Surrey etc.

After I graduated, I moved to Lancaster and I plotted a “normal” road ride (this was way before GPS, all done on OS maps!) and off I went.

Bear in mind as well, this was “standard” racing gears for back in the day, 39/53 with a 9sp 12-25 cassette.

While I could cope with that around the short climbs in the SE by just attacking them, I absolutely died a death on that first ride around the Trough of Bowland. Much longer hills and a higher climbing total per ride really did it for me, it took quite a while to gain the extra fitness for riding in the North.

Besides, having seen the bike you’re using a couple of posts up ^^, if you were trying to go fast you wouldn’t be using that! Although it is a lovely bike but it’s not designed for speed as its #1 goal.

Or in old units, 7500ft in 46 miles – when you say “did have something”, are you guessing or something else?

@intheborders, I don’t have a GPS or smartphone or anything, so rely on mapmyride, which is a bit crap but I’ve used it for years. It overestimates I think, as the profile is wigglier at a microscale than the route was, and it says 2700m for this route:

https://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/6159539521/

I went from 400m to 1800m, back down to 1100m then up again to 1800m, with very little in the way of undulations otherwise.

What’s your descending like?

I mean, sure, that’s a lot of climbing but usually avg speed will “equalize” somewhat by much faster descending speed. But if you’re a nervous descender then a low avg speed is to be expected

If you plot a route on Komoot it will estimate duration and speed based on different fitness ratings so might be useful to experiment with…

Besides, having seen the bike you’re using a couple of posts up ^^, if you were trying to go fast you wouldn’t be using that! Although it is a lovely bike but it’s not designed for speed as its #1 goal.

@crazy-legs, yea I’m not trying to break any records on this thing 🙂 Perhaps I need to get some proper gravel tyres back on it and get onto some unpaved swiss roads that go even higher.

Like this 🙂

A recent ride i did with GF, her at some 50 odd kg, me at 72 odd kg, her on a a Trek Madone? me on a NP Digger.

Out of the gate was the longest hill i have ever ridden in my life 5km or something, can’t remember the altitude gain, but she was off. more than double my speed, i defaulted to MTB climbing speeds, and i think that was wrong, i should’ve lowered my cadence and pushed harder perhaps. rest of the ride was more equal, with me hitting higher speeds when things were flat or downwards. So.. i have concluded that My MTB hill climbing has given me less useful training for road climbs..

@vlad_the_invader, all the roadies tend to overtake me on the climbs, then I overtake half of them on the descents

It really depends on the route I choose though. Some of the smaller roads round here are back-to-back hairpins, with intermittant splashes of gravel. Others are wide open and you can cruise at 60kmph without much of a worry.

Like this 🙂

You realise that I have limited sympathy for your plight when you’re posting ride pics like that?! 😉

We ride tandem around the peak district, though we do occasionally ride elsewhere on holiday, and I occasionally ride solo (e.g. commuting)

Locally, we average 15kph. As an example, our “go to” ride is a lunchtime loop of 17.43km with 371m climbing, it take about 1hr 15. Uphill, the GPS usually gives single digits speeds around 7 or 8kph, though quite often it gies up and tells us we’ve stopped.

Flatter rides e.g. along the canal will see our average speed go up to 18kph or so

Recently we spent a week in the Cotswolds, much flatter, again we averaged over 18kph

I commuted to work in That Manchester yesterday, so rode solo. My average on the way in was 23.4kph (200m climbing over 22km). On the way home it was a flat 20kph, as there’s 300m climbing, mostly at the end)

S0 – 15kph for 2300, over 75km would be fine for me in all truth, but then I know I’m not a pro level athlete

Some Strava Stats:

Last 4 Weeks

Activities / Week – 3
Avg Distance / Week – 90.0 km
Elev Gain / Week – 813 m
Avg Time / Week – 5h 2m

2024:

Activities – 61
Distance – 1,358.7 km
Elev Gain – 18,302 m
Time – 84h 26m

2023:

Activities – 178
Distance – 3,518.5 km
Elev Gain – 51,803 m
Time – 230h 54m

Just looked up some rides I did 135km with 2500m ascent in Mallorca this year at about 20km/h (12.4mph) at home doing my south of England rule of thumb of 1000m per 100km at around 25km/h (all rides solo) I reckon I would average about 25km/h over a similar distance. So about 5km/HR (3 ISH mph) slower for an extra 1200m ISH of ascent.

What that all means I have no idea.

15km average speed for that amount of climbing is around where I was on a mountain bike before I got the Megawatt.

That is a decent amount of climbing in a shortish ride, and a lot would depend on how fast you can descend from the top and the type of route your doing – if there is lots of traffic etc to hold you up.

On my road bike, and on similar distance/climbing routes,  I would not expect to drop below 24/25km average.

It’s hard. I just checked an Alps ride from last week. 115km 3000m of climbing 20kph. I can knock out 160km and 1500m of climbing at 30kph.

It isn’t just distance and climbing but how those climbs are made up as well. In the big mountains it is one effort to climb and a long recovery. Also on the decent you can go at a rapid pace. Do the same in Yorkshire and the climbs are all 20% up and down so recovery is minimal and you brake a lot more.

The OPs ride sounds reasonable.  That’s a lot of climbing. Maybe don’t consider the overall average but a climbing average, VAM or some other statistic as a better measure?

Descents could play a part, but really, on open roads, there’s only so fast you can safely go. 2300m climbing in 75km is directly comparable to a mountain stage in the TdF in terms of height gain per km!

Not sure what they average, probably more than 15km/h like! (Wink emoji)

@intheborders, I don’t have a GPS or smartphone or anything, so rely on mapmyride, which is a bit crap but I’ve used it for years. It overestimates I think, as the profile is wigglier at a microscale than the route was, and it says 2700m for this route:

I think that if you really want to see the data you’ll need to collect it, recommend a Garmin Fenix watch (for ease of use, sheer volume of data collected and how it’s displayed in Garmin Connect / Strava).

So last year on AdH (12km and 1030m up) my average speed was 6.5kmh.

On Croix de Fer (24k, 1250m up) my average speed was 8.6kmh.

It was also the change in style compared to riding at home – 7 or 16 miles of unrelenting up, compared to shorter hills at home just makes it challenging to maintain a higher speed if you’re not used to it.

Don’t have descending data for the rides (boring) but at those kinds of speeds going up that’s going to knock my average speed down significantly. I am not built to be a climber, and wasn’t at my fittest at the time either.

On a flatter ride through Sussex (120k, 1700m up) my average speed was 20kmh, when I normally would be average 23/4 kmh.

Would also be interested in the rihloff gearing you have….. are you able to maintain a good cadence or just grinding.

Well today I beat my slowest road ride record — 108km in 8 hours, so 13.5kmph

3500m of climbing, and about 10km or something of gravel

The first climb was this, but from a differnt direction

https://www.cycling-challenge.com/lac-demosson-and-above/

Would also be interested in the rihloff gearing you have….. are you able to maintain a good cadence or just grinding.

@susepic, no problems with candence, although I’m used to SS mtb so am not particularly sensitive to this. Rohloff gear steps feel fine to me

Drag however… it was fine in the UK, slowing me down perhaps 4mins an hour on my local loops. But I am worried the drag is worse on these long Alpine climbs. Or, I’m just slow.