Cycling speed

okgo

Not sure I used that term?

I think the average club rider is probably someone who does 2-3 rides a week, probably not anything too hard or fast and is not racing. But it depends on the club in question, some have a far higher standard than others. The general standard of our club is high, but its because we are a competitive club all racing or time trialing vs leisure riding. The standard at some of the larges clubs can be pretty low with a few exceptions as they're not about competing.

fenix

I'd still love the OP to come back and tell us about how many doping tests he had in his football career.

markhewitt1978

okgo wrote:

Not sure I used that term?

I think the average club rider is probably someone who does 2-3 rides a week, probably not anything too hard or fast and is not racing. But it depends on the club in question, some have a far higher standard than others. The general standard of our club is high, but its because we are a competitive club all racing or time trialing vs leisure riding. The standard at some of the larges clubs can be pretty low with a few exceptions as they're not about competing.

All about perspective obviously it depends what clubs and riders you associate yourself with. But yes I would say your 'average' club rider either commutes or does a couple of rides during the week and does maybe 60-80 miles on a Sunday, and doesn't race. Maybe does the odd TT or hill climb event.

And I'm not talking about myself as I'm below even that average.

iPete

How long is a piece of string?

Actually if you had access to Stravas data warehouse you could conceivably look at Sunday morning rides across the country to come up with some kind of average.

okgo

Well looking at the bikeradar club on strava which has over 600 members, if you sort by average speed it drops off to under 17mph after the first 50 or so riders.

paul2718

According to Strava, in the UK in 2014, the average male cyclist rode 41km at a time at an average of 23kph.

Paul

fat daddy

there is a bike radar strava club !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ... why are we not told this at the beginning ... why ???? ...... what else don't I know, Do we get free cake or something, has this been help back as well ?

iPete

okgo wrote:

Well looking at the bikeradar club on strava which has over 600 members, if you sort by average speed it drops off to under 17mph after the first 50 or so riders.

Looking on my club page there's someone with 123 miles and a 24.2mph average!

Oh wait, they're in the ToB!

markhewitt1978

fat daddy wrote:

there is a bike radar strava club !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ... why are we not told this at the beginning ... why ???? ...... what else don't I know, Do we get free cake or something, has this been help back as well ?

I had no idea either! Looks like that Steven Abraham guy is up there showing off again

fat daddy

ha yes ..... he appears on some of my segments in Bristol

okgo

iPete wrote:

okgo wrote:

Well looking at the bikeradar club on strava which has over 600 members, if you sort by average speed it drops off to under 17mph after the first 50 or so riders.

Looking on my club page there's someone with 123 miles and a 24.2mph average!

Oh wait, they're in the ToB!

Ed B?

okgo

Veloviewer is good for this.

My average for 2016 is 18.4 mph apparently across the last 365 days

paul2718

okgo wrote:

Well looking at the bikeradar club on strava which has over 600 members, if you sort by average speed it drops off to under 17mph after the first 50 or so riders.

This only sorts the top 100 by distance by speed (IYSWIM) so there may be many members riding less than 150 miles a week at higher average speeds.

Paul

sigorman85

I'm grabbing the pop corn!!!

neeb

fat daddy wrote:

well if the average newbie can sustain 2.5wkg to average 20mph ...

Bit more than 2.5wkg to sustain 20mph I think? For skinny folk like me at least..

bflk

I too had no idea there was a BikeRadar Strava club so I've just joined, watch the club average speed plummet :-(

bernithebiker

Average speeds don't mean a great deal if you don't take into account;

a) altitude gain
b) total mileage done.

fat daddy

my average speed sucks .. welcome to the world of commuting, despite hitting 37.5mph on the ride in ..... my average still only hit 16mph ... which is 1-2mph more than I can normally hit

the way home is uphill, its my goal to reach an average speed of 15mph by Jan on the way home

ugo.santalucia

fat daddy wrote:

my average speed sucks .. welcome to the world of commuting, despite hitting 37.5mph on the ride in ..... my average still only hit 16mph ... which is 1-2mph more than I can normally hit

the way home is uphill, its my goal to reach an average speed of 15mph by Jan on the way home

You have to take Bikeradar with a pinch of salt. Looking at numbers here and there and results in the main national sportives, I should be in the top 25% in terms of average speed, climbing speed and all that. However, reading what people boast, I would end up thinking I am in the bottom 10%.
If you read here, everybody averages 18 mph, some do 20 mph... it might well be that Bikeradar only attract the best of the best, but I suspect many are quite confused about the meaning of average speed and rely on devices which are designed to yield high numbers, so they sell more of them (who would buy a gloomy computer that gives you a low speed reading?).

My average speed with the car (80,000 Watt power output) over 1 year is 40 mph (or so the computer says) and I do very little if any traffic... it's mostly motorway and A roads. To think that someone (250 Watt) could average half that on a bicycle on B and unclassified roads defies belief...

twist83

ugo out of curiosity. What are these devices you speak of which yield high numbers so they sell more of them?

I do agree there does seem to be a lot of speedy folk on here. Holding 300W for an Hour. Averaging 20-21mph everywhere. That is a very handy rider in my eyes.

ugo.santalucia

twist83 wrote:

ugo out of curiosity. What are these devices you speak of which yield high numbers so they sell more of them?

I do agree there does seem to be a lot of speedy folk on here. Holding 300W for an Hour. Averaging 20-21mph everywhere. That is a very handy rider in my eyes.

In 2007 the state of the art was the wireless computer, which was already designed to cut off the time you were not moving. Then the Garmin arrived and suddenly our 16 mph rides became 17.5 mph rides, like that, bit of magic!

All computers are designed to hype average speed by cutting "off time", the problem is that the way time is cut off is open to all sorts of interpretations and a very easy calculation of distance versus time gives all sorts of different results, pretty much all over hyped, some less, some more.

okgo

Yes most people have autopause enabled, but many don't (inc me) however strava still takes out stationary stuff so it does often mean whatever I average on my garmin is different to what it becomes when on strava (goes higher).

Unless its seriously hilly or I am on an easy ride then most of my rides are around 20mph, and as you say, it takes a fair amount of watts around normal roads to do that. However, on the flat, you would be surprised how little effort is required, and many rides I've done out to the west of London where there are no hills have averages 2-3mph higher than if I head down into the Surrey Lanes which are more undulating. I think if I lived down in Rye I'd probably be riding a good couple of mph faster on average all the time as its so flat!

ugo.santalucia

okgo wrote:

Yes most people have autopause enabled, but many don't (inc me) however strava still takes out stationary stuff so it does often mean whatever I average on my garmin is different to what it becomes when on strava (goes higher).

Unless its seriously hilly or I am on an easy ride then most of my rides are around 20mph, and as you say, it takes a fair amount of watts around normal roads to do that. However, on the flat, you would be surprised how little effort is required, and many rides I've done out to the west of London where there are no hills have averages 2-3mph higher than if I head down into the Surrey Lanes which are more undulating. I think if I lived down in Rye I'd probably be riding a good couple of mph faster on average all the time as its so flat!

Agree, but it is fair to say that on a time trial you are well within the 0.1% of the fastest riders in the nation...

okgo

That as maybe, but time trial bikes being what they mean that everything is 'inflated' anyway.

Point being, a lot of riders can get round at a decent lick if the terrain is friendly, even with a fairly modest power output.

Midlands Grimpeur

Point being, a lot of riders can get round at a decent lick if the terrain is friendly, even with a fairly modest power output.

I would agree, being small can also be an advantage with less power.

On a flattish course (say less than 250m of climbing per 20 miles) I can average 21/22 mph with 195 watts (AP not NP). I am 165cm in height and just under 60kg.

On a hillier course, 19/20mph is still doable because I can put out 300+ watts on anything around 2-3km in length.

twist83

Surely though people understand that if you have Auto Pause enabled that it will be moving speed average?

fat daddy

in someways autopause is a better way of tracking it anyway ... after all how can you compare yourself to yourself yesterday, or anyone else for that matter if yesterdays journey took 5 mins longer due to being caught at 2 sets of lights.

Was I really faster than Tom White on a section today .... or was it because he got held up by the 3 minutes of lights by the Arches ?

with autopause enabled for both of us, it would narrow that error as the stop would be removed leaving only the slowing downa dn speeding up for the lights

ugo.santalucia

Read what I said above. Autopause is OK, the problem is how it is implemented... it makes a huge difference, much more difference than you can bridge by going/training harder. As above, autopause on wireless computers gave us 16 mph, autopause on Garmin gave us 17.5 mph... try and go 1.5 mph faster on a 60 miles hilly course and tell me how easy it is...

cookeeemonster

I think autopause is less of an issue on longer, non commuting rides. My garmin and strava match up pretty closely if not exactly for those...for commuting, they can be way out (stop/starting 30 times has something to do with it )

bernithebiker

CookeeeMonster wrote:

I think autopause is less of an issue on longer, non commuting rides. My garmin and strava match up pretty closely if not exactly for those...for commuting, they can be way out (stop/starting 30 times has something to do with it )

I was going to say the same thing.

Where I ride it's unusual to have the autopause (mine is set to 5km/h) kick in even once (over a 2 to 3 hour ride).