Increasing overall speed

milemuncher1

awavey wrote:

Milemuncher1 wrote:

Imposter wrote:

ProjectObject wrote:

Are you making the best use of your gears?

If you were able to describe what 'best use' is, then he might be in a better position to answer...?

Are you using your gears in a way that ensures your Powahhhh / heart rate is as constant as possible, without great big variations, that is to say, if you plotted a graph of Powwwaaaahhh against points on your route, would it look like an electrocardiograph, or a gently undulating sine wave, or in the best case scenario, completely flat for each stretch of the route, with some steps up where required to deal with terrain, is what I think he's alluding to, when he says "are you making best use of your gears".

but how would you possibly know that without measuring the power accurately, Id assumed you were going to suggest something like work out your cadence, which you can just count how many times your knee goes up whilst pedalling across 15seconds, quadruple it to give a rough ballpark figure and keep it around 80-90 on the flat and 60-80 up hills, and change gear accordingly to maintain it.

That would do, if you didn't want to go through the ( relative ) expense, and faff factor of power meters and FTP determination with something like a Watt bike, yes.

ProjectObject

Keep it simple fellas. No need to get too scientific. By best use of gears, I meant the correct gear for the circumstance. I see so many people spinning away and not really achieving any speed. If they moved a gear or two their speed would increase. I also see people on the small cog. When they probably should be on the big one.
Having said that, so long as they are enjoying the ride. Who really cares what gear they are in.

bobmcstuff

Choose a flatter route.

Pick a windy day, do a point to point ride with it behind you.

milemuncher1

'Speed' is a bit of a crap Metric with which to gauge performance/ improvement. There are too many uncontrollable external circumstances that will invariably influence your 'speed'. Normalised power is a better metric, as the figure, and the increase in the figure you achieve over time, is more about how you are improving, and isn't influenced in the same way as your speed can be, by ( for example) traffic / road / weather and a niriad of other things, beyond your control.

Joshgav

Push yourself harder. You'll be surprised how much more work/extra speed you can do if you understand that it may be (should be) slightly uncomfortable.

milemuncher1

burnthesheep wrote:

Not to beat a dead horse, but last night my ride was a great example of avg speed being very misleading.

Avg of 14.5 mph for 50 mi and 2700 ft and a avg of 145 fake Strava watts. Seems low to me. But digging into the segments and actual hills and times spent pedaling I was close to around 200 watts avg. and 17 to 18 mph.

Why?

I had to roll at like 8-10 mph for a couple miles around a lake with tons of pedestrians. Got lost 3x and had to fart around in the street trying to decipher my route map. Had to carry my bike around a piece of trail that the recent flooding had lifted and moved 10 feet over. Rolled kinda slow on about 1 mile of sidewalk to bypass a busy 4-lane road without bike lanes.

So, this is some reasons why I abandoned my speed goals and now have different "metrics" for improvement.

Cheers and good luck!

A very good example right there, of why average / overall speeds can be misleading. I've recently moved from an area where going to find anything even remotely resembling a proper climb / hill, meant trekking miles out of my way, most of the routes I used were relatively flat. Now I've moved to an area surrounded by some big ( by British standards ) hills / climbs. My average speeds are lower, but my normalised power, is much higher than it was. Therefore, if I was only concentrating on speeds, I could ( wrongly ) conclude that I was not only not improving, but getting worse.