How to speed up a commute

[MrJamie]

It takes quite a lot to go that bit faster, 16 miles in 1 hour is 16mph but down to 50mins youd need to average 19.2mph and Id guess wind resistance and the upright position would be the main issue. I cant imagine dropping from the 35mm urban tyres i think it comes with making a vast difference, but id guess itd help a little. Im in a similar position with my hybrid, looking at some of the cross bikes, maybe worth looking at a Specialized Tricross or Boardman CX, theyre kind of inbetween what youve got and a road bike... lighter, drop bars, no front suspension, mtb-ish gears and iirc can still take panniers/guards, not cheap but gives you an idea of whats out there.

 

[IanSmithCSE]

Good morning

I did Worcester to Evesham for about a year, this was 17.2 miles door to door.

There were very few traffic lights and junctions, but they would incur at least five minutes of idle time and even coming home pretty much flat out I could only just manage 50 minutes. In these cases I was very hot and sweaty.

A more normal time coming home was around the hour mark, and going into work where the only washing opportunity is a flannel in the disabled toilets the time was usually 65-75 minutes.

I was riding a 1980s 531 steel racing bike with 700x23 and these were very puncture prone, at least one an week, often two or three. No matter how hard I pumped up the tyres (even with a track pump) the really big pot holes would cause pinch flats. I wouldn’t recommend 23 or 25 wide for commuting, and if the job hadn’t ended I would have bought new wheels to allow me to fit 32s but wouldn't I expect a time difference from this change.

I am fairly cycling fit, but on a commute there is no warm up time, so your first few miles are a warm up, especially in the morning when you may by stiff from just having crawled out of bed, the faster you want to go, the greater the loss from this.

If you go back and look at the times taken for 25 mile time trails by normal club members in the late 1970s and early 1980s before bikes became time trail specialised and then add in a bit of time for warming up, traffic lights, remember that time trials usually go there and back so they get a head and tail wind you will quickly see that you need to be pretty serious to get a commute speed of 20mph.

I can’t prove this, but having ridden with people on hybrids, my gut feeling is that around 18mph is the point where flat handlebars start to be a real disadvantage. So if you are looking for flat sections of your commute to be at 22-24mph to make up the time need then drops will be a great help.

Bye

 

[fossyant]

23mm tyres are fine for commuting BTW.

Other option is road bike with panniers and guards !

16 mph is good, especially when you add in traffic light stops. Are you talking door to door time, i.e. inclusive of traffic light stops, as they can add an extra 10 minutes.

 

[Twilkes]

It's not that I want to go faster, it's that I'd want to spend less time doing it, or use less effort - or for the distance to be less but the Ordnance Survey have already refused this request. 12 miles each way I could do every day without thinking about it, but the extra few makes all the difference.

I'm 6ft5 so upright I'm probably a fairly big target for the wind. I've never ridden drop bars so might try to borrow a road bike and see how I get on.

Also, I have flat pedals that don't have a lot of friction on them. If I changed them to clips or the old-fashioned foot-loops, how much of a difference would that make? I read a description of spinning yesterday, tried to recreate it on my current bike and could feel the difference (almost pushing the pedals backwards and forwards and not just up and down), including using muscles I'd never used on a bike before, so maybe that's something to explore.

Thanks for the advice,

 

[doddy73]

This is the middle part of the route from Google: Glasgow to East Kilbride

Only part I'm not sure about is the A749 - is there space to the left of the left lane, or a decent pavement there? I know there's NCN756 but I can't find a map and they're usually stop/start going through residential streets.

The 1-hour thing is psychological - 50 minutes is only just over 45 minutes, which is very close to the 40 minutes it would take me to drive.

Having said all that, I haven't got the job yet.

I can't open your link but funnily enough I commute East Kilbride - Glasgow and back daily, 11 miles each way. EK is approximately 600ish meters of climbing from the city centre so it's the return journey that's slower. Takes me about 35/40 minutes in, 45/55 going back.

You can follow NCN 756 (there's a pavement/cycle track next to the dual carriageway) or stick to the roads. I tend to use the roads in the summer then switch to the cycle tracks and back roads in the winter, always cutting through Glasgow Green. If you get the job then pm me and I'll supply details and a few alternatives.

As for bikes on this route... my road bike took some serious punishment on this route so switched to a hybrid for the winter months. A cyclo cross bike would be the ideal choice I suppose.

 

[Dave Angel Eco Warrior]

I have been having similar thoughts, I have a 16.8 mile commute that I can do in 1hr 12mins (absolute best time on the way home, slightly down hill) but usually 1hr 22mins. So well done on your time already! I would like to get under the 1 hr mark as it just feels psychologically better not to be commuting for more than one hour.

I too am looking at a cross bike to replace my hybrid, I like the idea of the drop bars on my long straight sections and also the secondary brake levers for when I am in traffic. I did see some dropped bar ends that could be fitted to a flat bar bike, I even saw a chap with aero bars fitted to his mountain bike, he flew past me on the trans Pennine trail.

Quick wins I have found include, tyres, I went from 25mm near slicks to 28mm treaded marathon plus, I know that the M+ is a slower tyre because of the P****** protection. I was definitely slowed on the M+ but need the added protection (there is a strava segment on my route called ‘burnt out car slalom’ where joy riders dump and set fire to cars, lots of glass and shards of metal.) So this is a compromise I have to make.

Play with your route, I have a lot of those A frame gates that are supposed to keep motorbikes of the tracks, when the local authority leave a vehicle gate open or the local chavs have broken down a gate I have a noticeable time benefit.

Also think about road surface, I have a road that I will go up hill on the way in but not down on the way home as it is too lumpy with repaired tarmac, it is faster for me to go slightly further but I get a smoother and faster decent of the hill. You can make similar judgements on traffic lights or junctions that you may want to avoid. There are many factors that make a route fast or slow other than just plane distance.

Leave stuff at work to lighten your load, laptops, chargers, meeting books, etc.

Eat breakfast, 16 miles is not a short commute, so you will need to fuel yourself, have a snack before coming home too.

Read these forums, I have been a long term reader of this site before I ever posted anything, and it has definitely helped make my cycling more enjoyable, faster and safer.

 

[Twilkes]

Is something like this a reasonable cyclocross bike for £500? Is it advisable to spend less than that?

http://www.hargreaves-cycles.co.uk/products.php?plid=m5b2s23p539&rs=gb&vid=2334

 

[Andrew_P]

I best suggestion is to just keep doing it, I did my commute all through last winter (first time ever), and I slowed down during the winter but came in to the early spring fitter and faster and my average speed went up and time down all through the summer. You will get slower days but currently I can predict my travelling time to within 2-3 minutes.

 

[Twilkes]

Okay, first day doing this new route, and a number of observations:

* 16-miles each way took me 1hr15 today - minus 5 minutes for taking wrong turns on each trip (see route familiarisation) so with some leg practice I can probably get it down to 1hr5, and maybe hit the 1hr mark on the way home (big downhill).

* Route familiarisation - I can probably still tweak the route to avoid a couple of long waits at traffic lights, and also once I get to know the sequences of the lights I'll be able to judge whether it's worth getting off and crossing with the pedestrians, or taking the cyclepath along the Clyde instead of staying on the road. For some reason, red lights are less frequent going into town than out of town, so my morning route may well be different to my evening route.

* My previous 16-mile route only had two sets of traffic lights which is probably why that was only an hour most days.

* I changed to 700x28 tyres, from 32 on the rear and 35 on the front. As far as I can tell this has changed my normal cruising gear from 38/18 to 38/15 at a comfortable power output, presumably. increasing my average speed Towards the end of the morning journey I'd convinced myself that the bike shop must have put on different cog ratios when they changed the drive train, but I counted this evening and the crank is definitely 28/38/48, and the cassette is definitely 18/15 in those gears. (Incidentally did anyone ever have a Megarange? The biggest cog was 34, not enormous, but the gap to the next cog made it look gigantic: http://www.globalbikesonline.com/catalog/images/mega range 7 speed.jpeg)

* Was probably a bit over-paranoid about the tyres slipping on leaves, but there were definitely bumps and raised paving slabs that the tyres struggled with that the old ones would have just ridden over, particularly when the difference in height was in the direction of travel. I have no idea what it must be like to ride on 700x23 tyres.

* Slick tyres are good, slick shoes are not, visit to shops soon. (don't think I'd ever go to clipless as I'm not keen on being attached to the bike, in case of slippage etc)

* Although East Kilbride is roundabout-town, there are some good (quiet) paths next to almost all of these main roads, so I can pick and choose which roads I want to ride on. It seemed easier to ride the more traffic there was, even at night, as they couldn't just open up the accelerator.

* Even at this morning's temperature (probably 5ºC) I ended up with just shorts and a long sleeve top, after removing a thin cycle jersey, a thin waterproof jacket, and some threadbare joggies that end up round my knees if I try to walk in them.

* I'm taking this far too seriously.

Think I'd forgotten how easy cycling longer distances actually is as hadn't done it for a while, cheers for the help,

 

[GlasgowGaryH]

I am an all year round commuter in Glasgow. Try to average over a 20 miles a day. Average time is 14-15 miles an hour over year. Roads are crap so have to watch out for potholes all the time. I wear shorts all the time unless temp is below -2 degrees. Hope you enjoy tthe commute to EK

 

[doddy73]

You'll get the route back down reduced by at least 10-15 mins mate, EK is almost 700m above the city..... easily hit 30mph on the Cathkin bypass once the weather brightens up.
And yes, the path alongside the Clyde will cut out many a traffic light, just weave in and out of the junkies