What's your average speed and do you set yourself targets?

[Red Light]

I threw away my cycle computer a few years ago and now just enjoy the ride without the tyranny of trying to maintain some speed or average.

 

[numbnuts]

My routes are hilly and I'm old so on a good day 12.5mph that's over 25-35 miles

 

[Globalti]

Riding alone on the very hilly terrain around here I always average 14.2 mph. Riding with my buddy in hilly terrain we do 15.6 mph. Riding alone on a long flat ride, say the A6 to the south Lakes, I can average 17.5 mph.

 

[ohnovino]

I found that examining my average speed could suck all the fun out of a ride.

Now I have one loop that I do against the clock (designed to take me around 60 minutes, but I won't admit to how long it is!) but every other ride is done at whatever pace I find the most enjoyable.

 

[Rickshaw Phil]

I generally average from 12 to 14mph depending on which route I ride and which of my bikes I use, though it can be as low as 10mph on a seriously hilly route or up to 15mph on a flatter ride.

I always set out with the intention of just enjoying the ride but quite often find that after a few miles I'm trying to match or better my pace from the last time I rode that route. I don't mean to - it just happens, honest.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

I no longer set myself targets, as for average speed I don't take that very seriously these days, I look at it from time to time to give an idea as to how my fitness is. I'm just coming back from serious illness and the average is down to 13-14 mph, when my fitness is OK its usually somewhere around 15-16mph.

 

[Glenn]

1st commute into work today, 15.5 miles in 69 minutes, but I hadn't been near my bike for a few months, it feels like it too. I hope to take 10 - 15 minutes off that over the next few weeks.

 

[totallyfixed]

The one thing that has always puzzled me on these threads, is for those that average around 19mph, how exactly do you measure that? I ask because it takes me around 11 miles to warm up and fellow club men / women at least 5 or 6 miles. If someone leaves the house for anything less than a 30 mile ride and averages these speeds I can only suggest that they may be damaging their health.
I've just got back from a relatively short 26 mile training ride, I'm injured at the moment [gets excuses in] but nevertheless on a rolling course for the first 9 miles my average was only just over 15mph and didn't get settled into a hard rhythm until well after that, in the end I finished with 17.52mph average.
The next bit is a request for one of the fast people to run a forum ride and advertise it as a quick ride, ought to be quite a few takers, yes?

 

[GrasB]

There's 2 stages to warming up. One is to get loosened up & to the point you're not doing damage when getting power into your legs. This can be done with proper stretching & minimal bike time if the ambient temp is high. The second is to get full power out of your muscles consistently for sustained periods.

For me 2 or 3 min of stretching then a 5min blast on the turbo gets me to stage 1. From there I can get to 165-180w ave over the first 5 miles simply by holding a high cadence, 110-125rpm, that's a fairly nice pace when it's flat. Once I'm much beyond 5 miles the cadence starts to fall to a more reasonable 95-110rpm & the power stars to increase as does the speed. This is how I manage near 1h 25 mile commutes from home to work.

 

[snorri]

I record my mileage religiously, but seldom notice speed and ignore average speed. The most regular run I do takes about 20 minutes outward, I can't remember ever noticing how long the return leg takes but would imagine on average it would be considerably less due to the prevailing wind.

 

[Hacienda71]

I averaged less than 8mph - in a race. Granted it was the muddiest and hilliest of last season's cyclocross races, but the average in no way reflected that I spent the hour at 95% HRmax

Hope you didn't carry the bike for any of that !!!!

 

[fatblokish]

12.9 mph over my 63 mile journey today. But more importantly, isn't the weather just dandy.

 

[Nebulous]

Hmm - I'm an oldie just over a year into cycling, and I measure my speed on a door-to-door basis. I don't warm up, though my ride starts off uphill and I'm certainly not at full throttle immediately. My final bit on the way home is a fairly long downhill- where I do some cranking, but partly just tuck down. So I suppose as a fortunate by product of geography I have a bit of a warm-up and cool down built in. My holy grail is a 20mph average - again door to door. I haven't made it yet, but I still hope to!

So what harm am I doing by not being more structured in my warm-up?

My commute is pretty much the same route, but is only 2 miles, and I often push hard for the whole of it. Again am I doing any harm with that?

 

[totallyfixed]

For any exercise that involves hard muscular activity a period of gradual warm up is necessary to achieve maximum output without tearing muscle fibres. In general the shorter the period of exercise, the longer the warm up relative to that exercise.

 

[Alien8]

My normal ride home is a touch under 12miles of flat riding which during the better months I'll do at an average typically between 19/21mph. If this is damaging my health how will it notice it? Note that this is hard riding but I don't feel I'm flogging myself to death.