What is the fastest speed you've reached on a bike?

Welsh boy

Close to 70mph coming down the Heads of the Valleys road towards Abergavenny in south Wales during the Ras de Cymru in 1983. Knew it was fast at the time when i pulled out to overtake a wagon but didnt realise quite how fast until a following car driver said that he was doing just under 70mph and we were pulling away from him

larkim

Topped out at just over 34mph (unimpressive) on my 29er mtb on the road earlier in the year, hoping to smash that with my Triban 3 which is waiting for Santa to make his deliveries.

I did manage 60.6mph on a pair of skis though in Val Thorens last year - terrifying close to significant limb and bone damage!!!

Matt

rolf_f

Welsh boy wrote:

Close to 70mph coming down the Heads of the Valleys road towards Abergavenny in south Wales during the Ras de Cymru in 1983. Knew it was fast at the time when i pulled out to overtake a wagon but didnt realise quite how fast until a following car driver said that he was doing just under 70mph and we were pulling away from him

So your impressively fast speed claim is based on what a random unknown driver told you your speed was rather than any actual knowledge?!

cougie

Probably as accurate as most of the claims here then ! :-)

kingstonian

I was pulled over by the police in 1991 bombing down Lavender Hill in Enfield - the copper told me his speedo indicated above 50mph. Certainly felt stupidly fast.

sub55

dnwhite88

simonhead wrote:

Last year I got pulled over by a police car on Downs Road in Epsom for going 45 in a 30 zone. It was Derby day and the road was totally clear so i thought awesome lets go for it. Apparently though her Majesty was due to be coming up the road any minute and they didnt want her to belayed by a dead cyclist.

Do they just tell you to slow down and stop riding like an idiot or do the police hand out fines for speeding cyclists?

rickeverett

58 down Slaidburn Road on Hallgate Hill near Newton in Bowland. Has sort of been a target to beat (eg get to 60mph) but the fear factor sets in.

+

really its a bit silly to go that fast on a road bike - imagine if we came off!

overlord2

rickeverett wrote:

58 down Slaidburn Road on Hallgate Hill near Newton in Bowland. Has sort of been a target to beat (eg get to 60mph) but the fear factor sets in.

+

really its a bit silly to go that fast on a road bike - imagine if we came off!

If you can get over to the south decent on Fleet Moss you can easily go over 60mph. Its like Hallgate but 10 times longer. It's probably the fastest decent in the UK imo. It really is a test of nerve. Don't touch the brakes on that decent you are either nuts or have balls of steel.

barrie h

Fleet Moss is straight and steep ( heading north ), I hit 50 mph then old age and sense took over and the brakes went on,
I kept thinking how far I would slide if I came off

Barrie

Stedman

My PB is 45 mph coming off Leith Hill in this year’s Ride London 100

clickrumble

Is there a terminal velocity for bike plus rider? Like when you jump out of a plane, eventually your weight equals wind resistance and you stop accelarating, I think this is about 120mph.

rickeverett

Overlord2 wrote:

rickeverett wrote:

58 down Slaidburn Road on Hallgate Hill near Newton in Bowland. Has sort of been a target to beat (eg get to 60mph) but the fear factor sets in.

+

really its a bit silly to go that fast on a road bike - imagine if we came off!

If you can get over to the south decent on Fleet Moss you can easily go over 60mph. Its like Hallgate but 10 times longer. It's probably the fastest decent in the UK imo. It really is a test of nerve. Don't touch the brakes on that decent you are either nuts or have balls of steel.

not 100% sure where you mean ? ..... edit. Sorry yep the dales one. :roll:

ManOfKent

I've been over 45mph and regularly beyond 40mph on one of the few North Downs descents that has a decent surface, good sight lines and the right combination of length and gradient. It never felt that fast until last time, when I met a car coming up. It was nearly the last time. I might be more cautious in future.

crispybug2

Got to just over 53mph riding into a town called Chalabre in SW France, until I got seriously scared and started dabbing the brakes.

On the flat I once did 42.5 mph along Southend seafront with a bloody hurricane blowing at my back......enjoyed that immensely!

desweller

Clickrumble wrote:

Is there a terminal velocity for bike plus rider? Like when you jump out of a plane, eventually your weight equals wind resistance and you stop accelarating, I think this is about 120mph.

Well, you stop accelerating when the drag force reaches the same value as the force exerted by gravity. So it kinda depends how heavy your bike is.

Seriously it is probably about the same, maybe a little higher.

madtam

Just seen the comments on Fleet Moss and checked back to the KotP sportive earlier this year that went that way. I remember I got to the top of Fleet Moss and was a bit knackered, so I grabbed a drink as I started to coast along and down whilst getting breath back etc. I then grabbed one of the energy gel things that were dished out at the start, just as the slope steepened up a bit and then realised we were heading downhill seriously. It's a cracking road with a huge long straight with full visibility and a good surface but, whilst trying to open an energy gel pack, eat it and stick the wrapper back in my pocket. All without smearing the sticky stuff everywhere or fall off. Well I don't think I did it justice, as looking back my highest speed according to Strava was 54.1mph. I have gone faster down Holme Moss but if I get to Fleet Moss again I reckon it's a great road for hitting high speeds and might try and go a bit faster.
Just as a point, there is a Strava segment descending Fleet Moss and I am in the 200's so an awful lot of people have gone faster down there.

larkim

DesWeller wrote:

Clickrumble wrote:

Is there a terminal velocity for bike plus rider? Like when you jump out of a plane, eventually your weight equals wind resistance and you stop accelarating, I think this is about 120mph.

Well, you stop accelerating when the drag force reaches the same value as the force exerted by gravity. So it kinda depends how heavy your bike is.

I suspect the weight of the rider rather than the weight of the bike is more imporant :-)

Or does that carbon drinks bottle holder make all the difference...

gt-arrowhead

Ive decided to revive this thread... i have a question:

I got this pictured recording on Strava. This was on a 3 hour long forest ride, and about 10 minutes before the end i went really really quickly on a downhill, on the road (on a mountain bike ofcourse). I was spinning out the final gear really really quickly. But i dont know if the top speed given by Strava is a true figure or not, as the graph looks really retarded. I would have thought a speed graph would be a more steady type of curve. From what i can tell, this graph is telling me that i am accelerating and slowing down like an F1 car...

And apparently my fastest speed was 35 mph. Eventhough it says 60.8 mph on the bottom right. Confused!

I have just got a road bike, and the one thing im really dying to do, is just try and get the highest top speed i possibly can down a long and steep hill, as i quite enjoy going fast. And i want to set myself a target, but i dont know what to set it to. Going by the bottom right, i would say 70-75 mph, but surely that cannot be right...

Dippydog3

74.5 kph.

Could go faster if I changed my chainset and was able to ignore the fact that there is nothing between me and death than a silly rubber tube, some Lycra and a helmet about as strong as an egg box.

davidof

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

Ive decided to revive this thread... i have a question:

I got this pictured recording on Strava. This was on a 3 hour long forest ride, and about 10 minutes before the end i went really really quickly on a downhill, on the road (on a mountain bike ofcourse). I was spinning out the final gear really really quickly. But i dont know if the top speed given by Strava is a true figure or not, as the graph looks really retarded. I would have thought a speed graph would be a more steady type of curve. From what i can tell, this graph is telling me that i am accelerating and slowing down like an F1 car...

If you are using a GPS you probably cycled under a tree or something.

Initialised

57mph, you don't need that much hill to get there.

BTW I was drafting a car and had a tailwind, if the car hadn't slowed for the bend at the bottom I may have been able to go faster.

http://www.strava.com/activities/828189 ... 1689612565

Back to GT-Arrow head's point, I hit 51.1mph down a road section of Cairngorm on a Spesh Rock Hopper on 2.2" tyres. As with my above max on a road bike, and any max speed on a smartphone GPS it may be unrealistically high. Since getting a Garmin I haven't recorded much over 50mph.

So maybe a target of 65mph is reasonable for a really long steep road.

rolf_f

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

Ive decided to revive this thread... i have a question:

I got this pictured recording on Strava. This was on a 3 hour long forest ride, and about 10 minutes before the end i went really really quickly on a downhill, on the road (on a mountain bike ofcourse). I was spinning out the final gear really really quickly. But i dont know if the top speed given by Strava is a true figure or not, as the graph looks really retarded. I would have thought a speed graph would be a more steady type of curve. From what i can tell, this graph is telling me that i am accelerating and slowing down like an F1 car...

And apparently my fastest speed was 35 mph. Eventhough it says 60.8 mph on the bottom right. Confused!

You'd be better off opening the file in a text editor and looking at the numbers rather than that summary plot. But in any case, aside from the point already made about trees having an effect, you can work it out if you know you were actually pedalling at the point Strava reckons you made 60. Lets say your biggest gear is about 44-11, to achieve 60mph with 650b wheels you'd need a cadence of about 200........ 35mph sounds more sensible.

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

And i want to set myself a target, but i dont know what to set it to. Going by the bottom right, i would say 70-75 mph, but surely that cannot be right

60 mph is a more reasonable target and you may never make it. Every mph gets exponentially harder to reach. On several occasions I've managed mid 50s (and heavier people on the same ride a mph or two more) but no more. You need gradient and distance and visibility and disproportionately more and more of all three the faster you want to go and that's very hard to find. And you need it with a following wind too so if you don't live anywhere near such a place, you probably just won't have the opportunity.

bompington

3 point plan to posting a really impressive speed here:

1. Mis-set your computer so it reads way faster than the actual speed. Or pretend you didn't notice that it's reading in Km/h
2. Apply the 15% ICF* before you post
3. Just lie anyway.

With these guidelines you can't go wrong.




*Internet Correction Factor. Otherwise known as IWWF

ai_1

Rolf F wrote:

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

..........And i want to set myself a target, but i dont know what to set it to. Going by the bottom right, i would say 70-75 mph, but surely that cannot be right

60 mph is a more reasonable target and you may never make it. Every mph gets exponentially harder to reach. On several occasions I've managed mid 50s (and heavier people on the same ride a mph or two more) but no more. You need gradient and distance and visibility and disproportionately more and more of all three the faster you want to go and that's very hard to find. And you need it with a following wind too so if you don't live anywhere near such a place, you probably just won't have the opportunity.

The fastest I've recorded was 87.6km/h on fairly steep straight descent earlier this year. I spun out on a 50/11 gear somewhere in the low 80s got in a tuck and gained a few more km/h before the gradient eased towards the bottom. Then I thought, "I was a bit silly there!"

In my opinion it's a VERY bad idea to set a target for max speed.
It's a recipe for pushing too hard and making poor judgement calls which could lead to an accident.
If you have a target in mind you're going to find yourself glancing at your computer when you should be watching the road and holding off on braking until the last minute because you're nearly there, etc... Bad idea

Your max speed is whatever it is.

Edit:
In light of the previous post I appear to have posted the wrong speed. On reflection my fastest recorded speed was, let's see....87.6*1.15......100.7km/h
Seriously though, there aren't many suspiciously high max speed claims in this thread. Max speed isn't really a measure of ability, it's more a measure of the terrain you're riding on, your gearing and your tendency to ignore risk. Most of the speeds given in this thread can be reached without spinning out on a compact nevermind the additional speed available with a standard or by simply tucking and freewheeling on a suitable descent.
I have friends who never get much above 50km/h on the same descents I routinely do 70km/h+. They don't like the high speed and brake a bit. Nothing wrong with that. On the other hand my brother is fearless and has done 90km/h+ on descents where I start pulling the brakes around 75km/h. I won't deny there's a bit of sibling rivalry and I've often been tempted to try and stay with him but I usually remember I don't want to die relatively quickly.

whoof

I managed 3 * 10 to the 9 m/s.
I'll tell you more about it yesterday.

marcusjb

Ai_1 wrote:

In my opinion it's a VERY bad idea to set a target for max speed.

Your max speed is whatever it is.

I'd agree with that - you should certainly never be looking at your computer when descending anyway.

It is what it is and often going really fast down a continental descent with smooth tarmac and good sightlines is far less exhilarating than far more moderate speeds down twisty narrow lanes with interesting definitions of what tarmac should look like.

chrisaonabike

whoof wrote:

I managed 3 * 10 to the 9 m/s.
I'll tell you more about it yesterday.

Much longer ago than that. That's 10c, not c

whoof

ChrisAOnABike wrote:

whoof wrote:

I managed 3 * 10 to the 9 m/s.
I'll tell you more about it yesterday.

Much longer ago than that. That's 10c, not c

I know the idea was to travel faster than the speed of light.

Team4Luke

you should all have a hard think about what your doing