Lovely commute and a few other nutters about!

[Kiwiavenger]

got up nice and early to stretch my saturday morning commute out (direct route is 4 miles) and also thought id speed test my bike down a bit of downhill dual carriageway near my house! only got 27 mph on that bit but did have a bit of a headwind! took a nice little 16 mile loop with 600 ft of climbing, just need to get faster going up them! saw a few other nutters out on their bikes and got a few nods, managed to get up to 34 MPH and maintain it for a bit which pleased me

its getting a bit easier to maintain the speed on flats and slight inclines but the hills really get me!! i think im on about 8MPH half way up them!

ah well, will try a 30 miler on my next saturday commute (2 weeks time)

 

[palinurus]

I wouldn't worry about your speed uphill too much.

There's a hill on my local hilly time trial course that has me down to about 8 mph. I put some black tape over the speed readout so I don't either get discouraged or tempted to try too hard. Or both.

 

[Hip Priest]

When I'm on really big hills, anything above 0mph will do me. As for descending, I've yet to better 31mph. Some people are just more comfortable descending than others. My lass hardly ever cycles but she loves flying downhill and would leave me standing.

 

[Kiwiavenger]

I hit a max of 42 mph on the descents! Shallow uphills are fine just the longer ones and the really steep ones

 

[summerdays]

I'm appalling at cycling uphill - I can go down to 3 or 4 mph (yes I know - walking speed), so I prefer to take a longer route if I can go up a shallower hill or on a quieter road.

Downhill is fine and if I know the road then usually happy to do about 30 mph but not looking at the speed as I go along the road.

 

[DCLane]

Uphill I'm 4-5mph slowest, downhill it's 50+. However I tend not to think about the implications until I've hit got to the bottom.

 

[Col5632]

8mph up hills is about my average speed, over my 45 mile commute i hit 30ish mph and my slowest is about 7-8mph, average works out at 12mph, like others have said try not worry too much about speed, speed will come with distance

 

[Nearly there]

Im slow on hills too average between 5-8mph depending on how steep it is.

 

[blazed]

I wouldn't worry about your speed uphill too much.

There's a hill on my local hilly time trial course that has me down to about 8 mph. I put some black tape over the speed readout so I don't either get discouraged or tempted to try too hard. Or both.

Hills are one of the things you want to work at the most. Any idiot can zip downhill.

 

[palinurus]

Oh yeah, work at them for sure. Great benefits to be had, and not only uphill.

What I was getting at is that- if you are the sort of rider who cares about how fast you can go- then relative speed is what counts uphill. 8 mph might be pretty good in some circumstances.

 

[Kiwiavenger]

cheers guys i reckon i just have TDF syndrome and want to get over it! lol.