Fastest mph on a flat road!

freehub

The best I've hit on a flat piece of road (0% gradient) is around 38mph. I've hit 50.5mph down hill on at a guess a -10% gradient, it was Holme Moss.

pamuzu wrote:

That's top!

I'm a newbie but starting to average around 23mph on a 10 mile commute. Ambition is to set a speed camera off? Possible? I'd love to get a speed ticket on a bike!

You don't average 23mph on a 10 mile commute.

Biffz0id wrote:

A mate of mine got 57MPH on the flat on his old TT bike. Saying that he was drafting behind his brother who was riding a 900CC bike ha.

Apparently, if you managed to get behind a lorry and where close enough, you could be pulled along at 40+ mph without even pedalling.

Mettan

Approx 38 - 40 mph on the flat - that was with a 25-27 mph Tailwind (BBC weather check when got home) - it felt alot easier than riding into a 15 mph headwind tbh. Crazy. Its like getting sucked along in a vacuum with that kind of tailwind. The tyres sound like a "swoosh" at that speed - great fun.

amnezia

I average about 27 mph on my commute and i can reach speeds of 40 mph on the flat - on a hybrid :roll:

bigricky

i did 59 mph a few years ago on a decenct with tail wind!

lae

I think the world record is about 90mph, not drafting and no tailwind, on the flat with a standing start.

It was in a fully enclosed recumbent, but it's still amazing to think that a human can go faster than the top speed of some small cars.

rick_chasey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQwpGLCAMm4

Marcosplace

bigricky wrote:

i did 59 mph a few years ago on a decenct with tail wind!

Cough cough

Marcosplace

amnezia wrote:

I average about 27 mph on my commute and i can reach speeds of 40 mph on the flat - on a hybrid :roll:

I would check your speedometer... :?

Mettan

amnezia wrote:

I average about 27 mph on my commute

When I raced Ed Clancy last year (Road racing), he averaged that - you sound like a good rider

desweller

Marcosplace wrote:

amnezia wrote:

I average about 27 mph on my commute and i can reach speeds of 40 mph on the flat - on a hybrid :roll:

I would check your speedometer... :?

Mm, yes. Methinks that bad boy is calibrated for 14" wheels or something!

Oh, and for the thread my fastest on the flat I think is high 30s, but that is almost certainly with a tailwind. I've never tried that whole thrash-it-till-you-feel-sick sprinting effort.

garrynolan

Fastest speed today alogside the Phoenix Park in Dublin was 43.6kph (26mph-ish?) on the flat - no wind. Chuffed!

crumbschief

I don't do sprinting that much,but i remember doing 29mph last year on the flat when i was in the mood and laughing at the car going past slowly and the driver frowning with a "How Very Dare You" look on his face.I must try again soon.

markos1963

167mph

Sorry I forgot I was on a cycling forum, that was on a Honda Fireblade on the M4 many years ago.

About 34mph on a bike, but what does it matter? Like average speeds during training it doesn't tell us much about the rider.

desweller

Actually, I forgot Tesco. My commuter bike reckons I'm doing about 88mph while it's in the rack. Does no end of good for my end-of-week stats, especially if I have to get a lot of groceries.

oldwelshman

Biffz0id wrote:

A mate of mine got 57MPH on the flat on his old TT bike. Saying that he was drafting behind his brother who was riding a 900CC bike ha.

Ask him what gear he was using then as he would be spinning over 300rpm to do that unless he had a special huge front ring like D.LeGrys used for his effort when breaking the record on the M40 years ago when it was built.
I have descended that speed but certainly never pedalled that speed and I have hit 48mph in downhill sprint and was spinning out on a 53 x 12 so I guess your mate can spin faster than Chris Hoy who I think had the rollers racing record for rpm ? !!

I have cloceked 45mph for a couple of miles with a wicked tail wind near Brecon, but the opposite direction could only muster 5mph into it on the flat !!! Not a nice day !!

freehub

DesWeller wrote:

Actually, I forgot Tesco. My commuter bike reckons I'm doing about 88mph while it's in the rack. Does no end of good for my end-of-week stats, especially if I have to get a lot of groceries.

Does the speedo or bike disappear when it hits 88mph?

I remember crossing a junction near Tesco, my speedo always used to reckon I was doing about 70mph stationary.


I've being descending before and I've hit 50mph whilst still pedalling, on a 50-12 gear.

pamuzu

Absolutely amazing!

40+ mph on a bike! I thought I was doing ok and now realised got lots of work to do.

Particularly like the comment re: confidence in downhills, not sure I would currently have the balls to risk a full on descent!

Off to the lakes this week so may go for it! I'll post back.

Initial target - get over 30!

Dazza2280

With a hefty wind behind me one day i managed 37 on the flat, at last years Braveheart ride i pressed a button by mistake on the speedo and changed it to Kph, did see 72.6kph then. without the wind though, think about 28's as fast as i've seen.

Pross

freehub wrote:

pamuzu wrote:

That's top!

I'm a newbie but starting to average around 23mph on a 10 mile commute. Ambition is to set a speed camera off? Possible? I'd love to get a speed ticket on a bike!

You don't average 23mph on a 10 mile commute.

How do you know? It's perfectly possible. I used to average 20 on my 15 mile commute without trying and carrying a rucksack.

Decent club level TT riders are averaging about 28mph and top riders over 30mph for distances of 25 miles. My own PB for a 10 averages at about 24.7mph and I wasn't much cop. Don't know what my fastest on the flat is though, I've done well in excess of 30mph on the flat when racing in a bunch. If we're talking just a short, sharp sprint over 100m or so I would say I've probably done between 30 and 35 at some time. The most meaningful way of telling what you are capable of is over a flying lap on the track while staying on the black line as you get no assistance from a gradient or tail wind. On the road there will always be some kind of gradient other than for a split second at the crest or valley of a road.

fenboy369

"How do you know? It's perfectly possible. I used to average 20 on my 15 mile commute without trying and carrying a rucksack. "

+1. I used to do my 17 mile commute in 50 mins. On a Kona Dew Deluxe. Yep, a hybrid. No computer to be going wrong. I leave work at 3.30 and get to the childminders at 4.20, give or take a couple of minutes either way, and with no wind a couple of mins quicker. And thats in Cambridge, so no hills....

freehub

Pross wrote:

freehub wrote:

pamuzu wrote:

That's top!

I'm a newbie but starting to average around 23mph on a 10 mile commute. Ambition is to set a speed camera off? Possible? I'd love to get a speed ticket on a bike!

You don't average 23mph on a 10 mile commute.

How do you know? It's perfectly possible. I used to average 20 on my 15 mile commute without trying and carrying a rucksack.

Decent club level TT riders are averaging about 28mph and top riders over 30mph for distances of 25 miles. My own PB for a 10 averages at about 24.7mph and I wasn't much cop. Don't know what my fastest on the flat is though, I've done well in excess of 30mph on the flat when racing in a bunch. If we're talking just a short, sharp sprint over 100m or so I would say I've probably done between 30 and 35 at some time. The most meaningful way of telling what you are capable of is over a flying lap on the track while staying on the black line as you get no assistance from a gradient or tail wind. On the road there will always be some kind of gradient other than for a split second at the crest or valley of a road.

I didn't know people TT it on there commute, no newbie is averaging 23mph on a commute...

23mph is considerably harder than 20mph to maintain. I can't believe you are comparing TT'ing to commuting...... Have the people who mention there average speed are just pulling figures from the air or looking at there speedo, they see 20 a couple of times, get asked there average, look back... Oh 20..... People can claim figures when they can back it up with a reliable device, for example, a garmin is a reliable device for recording routes because you can upload the data. A properly configured speedo is for recording routes if you see it in real life.

At the end of the day, no one can really trust what anyone says on a forum, it'd be different if you met em out on the road, then you'd see the true figures, but I'm taking everything with a pinch of salt on these forums now. A newbie doing 23mph average over a commute is most likely not true and it's either KMH, or a wrongly configured speedo.

fenboy369 wrote:

"How do you know? It's perfectly possible. I used to average 20 on my 15 mile commute without trying and carrying a rucksack. "

+1. I used to do my 17 mile commute in 50 mins. On a Kona Dew Deluxe. Yep, a hybrid. No computer to be going wrong. I leave work at 3.30 and get to the childminders at 4.20, give or take a couple of minutes either way, and with no wind a couple of mins quicker. And thats in Cambridge, so no hills....

Well, all these people claiming these speeds over certain distances, I'd bet it'd be different in real life, the amount of commuters I've seen the north west and north east must be desolate of them.

And no computer means no real way of telling your average anyway.

redddraggon

No lights and no hills, and even then 23mph is not far from fantasy.

Radioactiveman

Done 48 mph downhill but it was fecking scary, wasn't a straight run with lots of nasty corners and a few junctions. Those sort of speeds = death or skin grafts

Fastest sprint on the flat 36mph.

Anonymous

freehub wrote:

And no computer means no real way of telling your average anyway.

WTF?

If you know how far it is and how long it took you...

freehub

NapoleonD wrote:

freehub wrote:

And no computer means no real way of telling your average anyway.

WTF?

If you know how far it is and how long it took you...

WTF?

But you can still pull figures out of mid air and post them on a forum.

This forum is full of people who pull figures out of mid air, it's a mess.

Paul32uk

Mine is probably only about 23-25mph on the old tredder with 2.5" knobblies. I've never really had a sprint on the flat on it and measured it.

On another note I managed to get my speedo reading 83mph sat here at my PC. Wireless router makes the thing go ape

Seanos

I averaged 23.1 mph yesterday according to my Garmin, with a max of 35.1. The route wasn't flat by any means but it wasn't particularly hilly either (couple of 40 metre ascents). 27.21 miles in 1:10:43. I had the benefit of some drafting for the first 18.5 miles, then I had an unscheduled stop for a minute or so. Then i was on my own for the remainder.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention. It was the first two laps of an 80k road race.

If any of you commute at that pace then chapeaux, just don't start racing otherwise there will be a lot of red faces when you scoot past on your flat bar hybrids.

Pokerface

My last few road races haven't even averaged 23MPH! So I'm not sure how people are managing to go FASTER than race pace on a daily commute.

A lot of future Mark Cavendish's on here I reckon.

freehub

I never used to see how fast I went, or I can't remember.

I used to commute 10 miles and 15 miles back on the bike on the left. My first road bike on the right (way too small for me)



The best I got on the flat with that lump was 26mph, and down (at a guess) a -2 or -3% gradient I got to 31mph and I pushed so damn hard I had to stop at the bottom, it was before I started properly cycling though.

I remember on a 3 miles bit back from town home, I thought, I was to do 20mph, so I pushed and push and pushed like mad, the lactate building up, and I hit 20mph average on a pan flat stretch of road for 3 miles, I even overtook 2 road cyclists that where no doubt taking it steady, but I sure felt good, if I had another mile to go I'd probs have ended up walking.

Pokerface wrote:

My last few road races haven't even averaged 23MPH! So I'm not sure how people are managing to go FASTER than race pace on a daily commute.

A lot of future Mark Cavendish's on here I reckon.

They're not.

Pross

freehub wrote:

Pross wrote:

freehub wrote:

pamuzu wrote:

That's top!

I'm a newbie but starting to average around 23mph on a 10 mile commute. Ambition is to set a speed camera off? Possible? I'd love to get a speed ticket on a bike!

You don't average 23mph on a 10 mile commute.

How do you know? It's perfectly possible. I used to average 20 on my 15 mile commute without trying and carrying a rucksack.

Decent club level TT riders are averaging about 28mph and top riders over 30mph for distances of 25 miles. My own PB for a 10 averages at about 24.7mph and I wasn't much cop. Don't know what my fastest on the flat is though, I've done well in excess of 30mph on the flat when racing in a bunch. If we're talking just a short, sharp sprint over 100m or so I would say I've probably done between 30 and 35 at some time. The most meaningful way of telling what you are capable of is over a flying lap on the track while staying on the black line as you get no assistance from a gradient or tail wind. On the road there will always be some kind of gradient other than for a split second at the crest or valley of a road.

I didn't know people TT it on there commute, no newbie is averaging 23mph on a commute...

23mph is considerably harder than 20mph to maintain. I can't believe you are comparing TT'ing to commuting...... Have the people who mention there average speed are just pulling figures from the air or looking at there speedo, they see 20 a couple of times, get asked there average, look back... Oh 20..... People can claim figures when they can back it up with a reliable device, for example, a garmin is a reliable device for recording routes because you can upload the data. A properly configured speedo is for recording routes if you see it in real life.

At the end of the day, no one can really trust what anyone says on a forum, it'd be different if you met em out on the road, then you'd see the true figures, but I'm taking everything with a pinch of salt on these forums now. A newbie doing 23mph average over a commute is most likely not true and it's either KMH, or a wrongly configured speedo.

fenboy369 wrote:

"How do you know? It's perfectly possible. I used to average 20 on my 15 mile commute without trying and carrying a rucksack. "

+1. I used to do my 17 mile commute in 50 mins. On a Kona Dew Deluxe. Yep, a hybrid. No computer to be going wrong. I leave work at 3.30 and get to the childminders at 4.20, give or take a couple of minutes either way, and with no wind a couple of mins quicker. And thats in Cambridge, so no hills....

Well, all these people claiming these speeds over certain distances, I'd bet it'd be different in real life, the amount of commuters I've seen the north west and north east must be desolate of them.

And no computer means no real way of telling your average anyway.

I didn't say it was likely but you have stated that they haven't done it when you don't even know the person so I'll ask again - how do you know they don't do it (other than because you wouldn't be able to)? The time trial times were unrelated to that comment hence a new paragraph and were just intended as a guide to all these people who think 30mph on the flat is some kind of land speed record.

Did they not teach basic maths in your school by the way? Last week you were arguing that your average spedd may have been lower over the same time and distance as someone else because iyou weren't riding at such a consistent pace and now you think people can't know their average speed without having a computer on their bikes!