obsessed about my avg

[jimboalee]

The start control of my Audax DIYs is at a local Tesco ATM.
It's 2m lower than the highest point in Solihull.

Luckily, every direction from there is downhill. Not steep but lets me ride fast enough to post a good average in the first 5 miles of the DIY.

In whichever direction the DIY goes, I can clock up 14 mph average at the first control 18 miles away.

I work hard to maintain this average, or at least 13.5 mph.

The final stretch is ALWAYS up a slow gradient back to Tesco, but by this time and distance, a good average is accumulated and 12.5 mph is easily achived even if I dawdle at 10 mph the last 5 miles.

 

[Chrisc]

I'm 'in between' cycle computers at the moment. Strangely I've just done my fastest time (on stopwatch) on a 10 mile loop. I'm guessing not knowing how fast I'm going just kept me pushing hard.

Oddly enough, I left the phone at home so had no frame of reference at all on my last ride. Just noted start/finish times and used bikehike to get distance when I got back. Fastest average speed so far. The new cateye is on the bars now tho....

 

[PK99]

Problem I find with average speed, is that on a long ride, once the die has been cast, it becomes very hard to raise the average speed in the last miles of a ride.

For instance, I did a 57 mile ride this week and was hoping for a 16mph average as a minimum for a forthcoming sportive, and with about 11 miles to go, I had only achieved an average of about 14.7mph,

.... at which point you needed to average 25.6mph over the last 11 miles to hit your 16mph target.

You are quite right it is the slow draggy bits that hit the average!