Hang on…

I aim for 20mph no matter what the terrain. For my ability, it’s a good benchmark and forces me to press on no matter what the road is doing. I mostly train solo.

I have a 20 mile evening loop – it’s exactly 20 miles door-to-door and I know I have to bury myself to average 20mph.

So 20mph is a “good benchmark for your ability” regardless of distance, terrain etc, and yet you have a one hour route where it’s a struggle? Does not compute…

Unless I’m targeting specific zones, I aim for 20mph no matter what the terrain.

Favourable conditions and you’ll likely be riding too easy. Tough conditions and you might be riding way too hard. Also doesn’t take form (increases and decreases) or any progression into account. Is a bit of a useless metric to train to.

Njee, f you have a look at the route, it has a few traffic lights early on and finishes with a long climb. If I get lucky with the lights, you can get round in 55 mins, if I do it in rush hour, I often get snarled up at the M6 Tickled Trout junction, and then you have to play catch-up on the final climb.

I like the route because it’s quite challenging…

Is a bit of a useless metric to train to.

I don’t ‘train to it’, but it does seem to average itself out on the type of routes I do. I said I “aim for it”, if my average is 17mph and I’m 20 miles from home, I’d expect to make that up on the home leg…

For reference, I live about 5-10 miles away from the start of the climbs around the Forest of Bowland so the homeward leg is usually a fast lick back down from the fells.

It’s always been a benchmark for rides, older riders will be familiar with the term “evens”.

G

if my average is 17mph and I’m 20 miles from home, I’d expect to make that up on the home leg…

As in get home in an hour, or get home with an ride average speed of 20mph? If you’ve done 40 miles to get to 17mph then you need to average 31mph to get home with a 20mph average…?

If you just mean to get home from that point in an hour then that would be a 17.9mph average, which isn’t 20mph however you slice it 😕

Just trying to understand what you’ve written. I like things to make sense. Much funnier to just hurl insults eh?

As always on these threads there is a differnce between what I see out on the roads and what people on here claim to do 😕

As always on these threads there is a differnce between what I see out on the roads and what people on here claim to do

Really? I think there’s just a wide cross section of riders on here (and out there.) If I have a scan down the strava feed for my local club, or the STW TrainerRoad group (and I’m sure the STW strava group if there is such a thing) it’s pretty much the sort of variety seen on this thread. Nothing unusual. Add in regional terrain variations etc. and you have an even wider spread.

Edit… as an example, the STW TR group, although a small sample, has riders with w/kg all the way from 2 to 5. Quite a spread!

My average roadie speed is about 45 mph. I was expecting it to be much higher seeing as though at some points I get to the national speed limit.

I posted a link to a typical ride – last Wednesday’s usual team training ride. The average speed was 18.5mph which included a few stops at the tops of climbs waiting for some slower lads.

But you’ll always get some bellend that pulls you up and tells you that your claims are wildly different from reality.

If bellends like that took the time to look at the profile, they’d be able to see those stops. But they’re probably too busy looking smug and wondering why nobody ever invites them on a group ride 😉

The average speed was 18.5mph which included a few stops at the tops of climbs waiting for some slower lads.

Average speed is based on moving not elapsed time

Average speed is based on moving not elapsed time

I bet you quote in KM/H as well to try and make it sound more impressive.

average speed should be based on door to door.

Stopping and starting lowers average speed significantly compared to riding through.

Edit… as an example, the STW TR group, although a small sample, has riders with w/kg all the way from 2 to 5. Quite a spread!

is it awfully cynical to assume that some STW riders are a little heavier than they’re owning up to?

is it awfully cynical to assume that some STW riders are a little heavier than they’re owning up to?

Must admit I’m more inclined to update mine if it goes down than if it goes up!

I posted a link to a typical ride – last Wednesday’s usual team training ride. The average speed was 18.5mph which included a few stops at the tops of climbs waiting for some slower lads.

You’ve piqued my interest with your now deleted outburst, but I just looked at about 15 of your rides chosen at random from the last year, and didn’t find one that was anything like 20mph, 18.4 as per the one you linked appears to be the fastest I can see (save for a 10 mile TT). They’re nearly all in the 15-17mph range.

There’s nothing wrong with this whatsoever, but it does basically affirm that threads like this are just willy waving exercises.

Maybe we should just declare our Strava YTD average – mine is 15.05mph, dragged down by mountain biking!

Must admit I’m more inclined to update mine if it goes down than if it goes up!

Damn right – if you do an FTP test and the number is lower it’s because you’re tired, and not rested, or that you’ve lost tonnes of weight.

I suspect there might be calibration issues on a trainerroad group too.

This question arises at least every couple of months, usually posted by a newby that is the self-proclaimed gnarliest mtb rider on the local evening pub ride and is disappointed that he’s not smashing Strava segs every time he rides his roadbike.

There’s never going to be a right or wrong answer, the only way to see how you compare to others is to ride some TTs, (dragstrips and sporting courses), maybe do a bit of racing or ride sportives… Cos let’s face it, everyone rides flat out in sportives.

Njee, I ride mountain bikes too. If you scrolled back over the winter months, that’s mostly what you’ve been looking at. 🙄

But isn’t racing a very different thing again? (TTs aside) Surely then it’s not just the fastest rider that wins it’s also about racecraft and tactics.

And which is better?

I’ve got friends that can beast me out on a ride, but I can beat them in a race. They push themselves harder in training, whilst I can up it more for racing. Who’s faster?

I’ve got friends

Sorry, I can’t take any of the rest of this post seriously.

But isn’t racing a very different thing again?

To a certain extend, although it depends on the type of racing. But that’s why I suggested a broad spectrum of different activities to compare your form to others.

Faster isn’t up for debate. As I said above, there’s more to racing than being the fastest.

I have just got a lovely new road bike a few weeks ago and I bought my first GPS computer (Garmin Edge 200) to go with it.

I have ridden 5 rides on the new one and I am significantly faster than on my winter training bike. I put it down to much lighter bike, increased fitness and nicer weather.

However, the Garmin records my average speed over the total 301 miles as 20.2 mph which seems too good to be true!

The Garmin definitely struggles to get a good signal on wooded road climbs which I am less impressed with as the speed goes up and down a lot. Is this normal?

I am an old school rider and have always tried to break ‘evens’ as a target. It was a good training ride when I managed this around Surrey. I live in Epsom so normally have a long climb home at the end of the ride. I have to admit that I was a rider in one of the South East’s top sponsored road teams for over 10 years.

Scotroutes, expanding on my last point, the majority of the racing I did was crit racing, where usually, the majority of finishers get roughly the same average speed. So yes, position and sprinting ability were what won the points.

If you want to know how fast you are, there’s really no substitute for a time trial. If you want to know how you compare on climbs, try some hill-climb comps.

But everyone is different, and we all ride different areas/routes, so comparisons are pretty futile.

I’m signed up to the STW 500 mile/month group, so all my stats are there to browse through at will. Sunday mornings are usually Club rides, unless I’m ‘racing’ the MTB somewhere, so my fastest rides will be on that day.
I think my ‘total’ average is around the 14mph mark across all rides, which will mainly be down to MTB rides and that I lead the Steady Eddies Tues Club run where I lead from the back and always climb with the slowest rider on the night.

This thread is entirely pointless as average speed comes with so many caveats: distance, terrain, traffic, type of road and surface, number of riders, type of riders, bike choice, weather. There’s an awful lot of meaningless willy-waving going on.

Also, measurements should be metric. It’s much easier and it makes more sense.

Time trials – the race of truth!

Though having said that you can still buy speed.

Maybe the question should have been “Roadies what’s your w/kg?” or “Roadies what’s your 20MP?”. A “Roadies what have you done to improve your average speed?” thread would have been interesting too.

There’s nothing wrong with this whatsoever, but it does basically affirm that threads like this are just willy waving exercises.

Still, it’s been quite entertaining 🙂

I suspect there might be calibration issues on a trainerroad group too.

Probably, but good enough I reckon to illustrate the point.

Also, measurements should be metric. It’s much easier and it makes more sense.

Nonsense… Distance should be in miles, vertical ascent should be in metres. A person’s height should be in feet, weight in stone, bike sizes in cm and weight in kilos…

Now that makes sense… 😉

Faster isn’t up for debate

Wasn’t querying your comment that race winner doesn’t necessarily equal faster, was merely asking a similar question – who is ‘faster’, the person who can race quicker (call it TTing or mountain biking where race craft is less relevant) or the person who does training rides quicker?

Njee, I ride mountain bikes too. If you scrolled back over the winter months, that’s mostly what you’ve been looking at.

Nope, gave you the benefit of the doubt there and looked at summer rides, most of us slow down significantly over winter after all.

16.2
16.5
16.9
18.1
17.9
15.2
15.2
16.2

Again – chosen completely at random, apologies if I’ve chosen rides where you were riding slowly, but they’re all between April and August… You’re among friends, there’s no reason to show off!

Distance should be in miles, vertical ascent should be in metres.

Never! Miles and feet. Bike weights in pounds, but parts in grammes (up to wheels), FS frames in pounds, hardtails and road frames in grammes. People weight in kg, height in feet!

Headsets should be internally imperial and externally metric….

Njee, without resorting to being as big a bellend as your good self, let’s have a look at some of the rides you’ve chosen.

One is called “Dragging Poorly Dave Round the Trough of Bowland”.
Now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that the pace might have been affected by “Poorly Dave”, does it.

Another is called “Ride Home stopping off to see big stack at the CDNW Crits”. That was a gentle recovery spin home from a time trial, in which I averaged over 25mph. 🙄

“Guild Wheel Anti-clockwise” is a mountain bike ride. 22 miles at 16.5mph on a mountain bike is rather respectable.

Sadly, I’ve got better things to do that go through your list, but I will point out one other thing. You highlighted a ride in April 2014 which was quite slow. You’ll notice that there was a significant break prior to that which was also the reason you’ll not see any racing for the last 2 seasons.

Early last year I contracted a rather nasty little illness called Lyme disease. I don’t know if you know what that is, but you’ll probably quickly google it, like David Brent googling Dostoyevsky on the Office.
As that was the first ride back from a rather debilitating illness, I thought it best to try and keep below threshold.

Another is called “Ride Home stopping off to see big stack at the CDNW Crits”. That was a gentle recovery spin home from a time trial, in which I averaged over 25mph

No, you averaged 23.4mph. Sorry, this is quite good fun now!

Erm, anyone exaggerating their speed is only cheating themselves surely? No need to get all Sherlock Holmes about it.

I know via Strava some people do manage to average 20mph – but it usually seems to be shortish, flatish rides in a small group.

I ride solo and I don’t think I average above 18mph even on a good day – and that’s when I’m not looking for hills (though it’s hard to avoid them locally).

aim for 20mph no matter what the terrain

In his defence he did say he’d aim for 20mph, not necessarily achieve 🙂

Apologies Njee, still significantly higher than 20mph though.

In his defence he did say he’d aim for 20mph, not necessarily achieve

He won’t hear you, he’s too busy pouring over my strava files with his calculator.

I suppose I should be flattered…

In his defence he did say he’d aim for 20mph, not necessarily achieve

I nearly said that. 😆 I aim for 52mph average on my rides.

Apologies Njee, still significantly higher than 20mph though.

Yes, for a 10 mile TT! Sadly the thread isn’t “testers, what’s your average speed?”.

You’ll be pleased to hear that I’ll stop now. Suffice to say I’ll file your “20mph regardless” claim under ‘amusing STW fantasy chest beating’, and move on! Corking example of why these threads are daft.

Njee, without resorting to being as big a bellend as your good self

Now now, play nice, he may have picked holes in your statements but I don’t think he’s actually been directly rude to you.

Just give us links to all the > 20mph average rides you’ve done (which naturally will be significant in number if your original statement is true?), and the matter will be settled 😉

The problem with stuff like this is that if people go round inflating their figures and exaggerating it devalues the discussion and becomes a ‘fishermans tale’ style bragging contest rather than actual comparisons, the data doesn’t lie (much), and for people genuinely trying to get better and wondering about their own performance then it helps to have real data to compare to, it could be very demoralising for someone trying to get into the sport reading threads of posters spouting about all their 20mph+ rides, thinking they’ll never get there or are too slow to go out for a ride with people like that as they can ‘only’ average 17.5, when in reality the figures are much lower and they could join in and would feel better about their own performance and goals.

Although as loads of others have said, comparing averages with different people on different days on different terrain in different weather is never gonna give you much to go on.

I know via Strava some people do manage to average 20mph – but it usually seems to be shortish, flatish rides in a small group.

Seriously, it’s not that fast solo. If you are a decent club TT rider you’ll be looking to at least get under an hour for a 25. Out recent club 25, the top 8 out of 27 all under an hour, so 25+mph. Ok this is on a TT bike with all the aero accompaniments but you’ll still need 280+ watts for an hour (depending on how aero you are.) Winning time was 52:49 and I think he was doing over 360W.

If you can do that then a not too lumpy 20mph solo for two or three hours is probably around high z2 / low z3. Not a huge effort. (This is assuming good position, as over 18mph I think about 80% of power goes into overcoming wind resistance. I think most people could improve their averages just by addressing this, certainly those relatively new to road bikes.)

Just give us links to all the > 20mph average rides you’ve done (which naturally will be significant in number if your original statement is true?)

Here’s a hundred miler at 22mph…

There’s a 25…

Here’s a lumpy 20 on the winter bike…

I could go on, but a) I’ve not got as much time on my hands as Njee and b), I’m just not that much of a bellend.

Here’s a hundred miler at 22mph…

99.9 according to strava 😉

I’m just not that much of a bellend.

Can we stop with the bellend thing, it’s making you sound like a bit of a bellend.