Road Cycling - What's the fastest you have ever gone?

I was just wondering what is the fastest speed everyone has ever gone? The fastest I was ever able to get up to (keep in mind this was going downhill!) was about 68 km. And I was scared like a little girl! Yesterday I tried to break it but only got up to 63.6 km, i'm sure people on this forum have broke over 100 km but I would like to hear their stories.

50.3 mph as recorded by my FlightDeck (obviously going downhill!). Infinitely more scary than the numerous times I went over 165 mph on my motorcycle.

hehe i was gonna start a similar thread actually. My best is 45.3mph, downhill 3-30 am in the pitch black with no lights!!!!!!!!!!!! Immense fun - terrifying too.

39MPH on my first century on my 1978 Raleigh Grand Prix. Didn't find it scary at all. I was just happy to be on the down hill side of the climb! :D

We got 55.3 on our tandem.

Broke the sound barrier and a bit faster in an F-16 and an F-111A. Do these count? :p

i went 41.3 mph on my fixed gear and that was fun. i thought my legs were going to run away from me. i've only gone slightly faster on my freewheeled bike, but i've only had that for a little while. it's not the same thrill as on the fixed gear, though.

dan

56mph going dowm Palomar mtn's south grade. Scary as heck, and the guys racing motorcycles around you don't help at all.

44.8 mph and alway's trying for more,I believe 50+ will be reached soon,need to build up the legs and get a good tail wind :)

ive been 30.5 with no hands.....lol i duno if that counts or not.

-Ben

Coasting at 53 mph, altitude about 7,000 ft, in the White Mountains of Arizona, on our tandem. Same hill going UP: 4 mph! Have broken 50 mph several times on descents on a tandem, but now that we are getting a bit older (71/69), and, maybe wiser, we're not that crazy any more.
Fastest, still pedaling, on a downhill and bouncing on the saddles because of the high revs with a 120 inch gear, racing 4 other all-male tandem teams: 44 mph.
Been there, done that!

Pedal on TWogether!
Rudy and Kay, Zona tandem

I hit 38 confirmed, slight downhill (yeah right)

But when i was a kid, my grandfather and I climb a pass called 9 mile hill (Uncompagrae Mountain?SP?, outside of Grand Junction, Colorado.) Anyways, I swear he passed a truck goping down, and I stayed behind the truck, and had to keep hitting my brakes to keep from slamming into the back of him. Don't know how fast that was, but boy I remeber being pretty damn scared!

92 km/h (57.5 mph) down a very steep residential street. Totally stupid thing to do but after a 80+ km/h mountain decent my riding partner challenged me to beat my speed and said he knew the hill to do it :D

We got 55.3 on our tandem.

Broke the sound barrier and a bit faster in an F-16 and an F-111A. Do these count? :p

Yeah that counts for sure!! LOL!

47 mph and change ... damn potholes come up fast at that speed!

How about whats the fastest you've ever fallen off at? mine is 12mph but i was a nipper and it felt like 100.

What's the fastest on flat land?

in mph
50+ downhill
35+ slight downgrade
~31-32 flat, pedalling like hell, sustained for no more than 30 sec

on a fast group ride last saturday the 'peloton' was going 39.5mph for almost a mile on completely flat land, albeit with a 8mph tailwind. we then slowed to take a 90 degree turn and stomped to 29 mph in a hurry/.

41.5 down the hill from my house, i think i will need a bigger chainring to get much more, as i'm girthy and not very aero ;-)

-- michael

32mph on flat road for about a 1/2 mile on my mountain bike, running slicks.

Single - 55 mph
Tandem - 55 mph
Falling - ~24 in a race

50.9kph :/
Albeit on a mtb downhill.

Steve- I've got you beaten in 1 category: I took a spill at ~30 mph going down hill on Pierre road by hitting a fricking deer who'd jumped out of the scrubs right in front of my bike.

Deer walked away. I absolutely totalled the bike.

I hit 52mph during the century I rode last Saturday. Fastest ever was 57mph. 52 actually felt pretty comfortable,

-mark

downhill 62.1km/h just sorta taking it easy and just spinning.
my fastest fall is at 1km/h...maybe even slower. i was trying to jump over the train tracks and got stuck in them before i got a chance to jump....quite embarrassing but i kind of saw it coming.:D

Probably 45-50mph, I don't have a computer, but I know I passed up some cars with a posted speed limit of 35.

57 mph

i did 43 mph behind my dad onces... rember i was 130 pounds wet... ohh and i got u bolth on crashing i fell at 37 mph and broke my back, it felt like forever to fall finaly...

I remember 43, but that was a long time ago in hilly Seattle.

Since I got my computer back up and running after it being dead for about 10 years, I've only hit 32 in not very hilly NYC, but that's only in the last 2 weeks.

On the flats, I've averaged 26mph on the first 100 miles of a double century, so I must have been going faster at some point. The second hundred was a killer.

Man.... you guys are fast! I gotta break the 80 kph barrier to satisfy my speed craving!

Man.... you guys are fast! I gotta break the 80 kph barrier to satisfy my speed craving!


Try going down one of the roads off Mt Royal park, something with a long downhill and not too many traffic lights, you may have to help a little too. Come to think of it I may have done it that going down Decarie towards Sherbrooke in my younger days.

Try going down one of the roads off Mt Royal park, something with a long downhill and not too many traffic lights, you may have to help a little too. Come to think of it I may have done it that going down Decarie towards Sherbrooke in my younger days.

Actually my uncle mentioned Mt. Royal just the other day. It's funny because I started riding 2 years ago and have yet to ride in there, my sister and my father have rode there and say it's quite a downhill like you mentioned.

I was able to get up to 68 kph in Ste-Annes last year. On Sunday afternoon I was feeling pretty good, I thought I was going to break my record on the same small downhill but fell a little short, great ride regardless!

Thanks for the heads up!

so far 30....not too many climbe/decents near my house here in good ole Rhode Island USA

Today! on FLAT GROUND I got her up to 35mph! In city traffic. 25mph zone. People in cars were turned looking at me with dazed espressions (that I was passing!) and I know they were thinking "umm bikes aren't suppose to be able to go that fast are they?" what a rush! only lasted about a 1/4 mile though. I don't know what got into me! Ended up with an ego problem the rest of today! Maybe that GU stuff works? naaaaa.

Today! on FLAT GROUND I got her up to 35mph! In city traffic. 25mph zone. People in cars were turned looking at me with dazed espressions (that I was passing!) and I know they were thinking "umm bikes aren't suppose to be able to go that fast are they?" what a rush! only lasted about a 1/4 mile though. I don't know what got into me! Ended up with an ego problem the rest of today! Maybe that GU stuf works? naaaaa.

Isn't that the best feeling, passing cars and the look on peoples faces is priceless!

42ish mph on a nice, short downhill. Too bad there's a stop sign at the bottom otherwise I could probably hit 50. 40 mph is reached without pedaling :) 35 mph on a flat to slight uphill stretch is the fastest I've gone not going downhill (sustained for about 30 seconds, oh and with a 25 mph tailwind).

Isn't that the best feeling, passing cars and the look on peoples faces is priceless!
yeah ya just kind of laugh to yourself !

I love it when some guy in a beat up old crapper of a car yells at me for being "another slow biker", and I ride fast enough that they can't pass me by the time they hitthe next light.

I finally got good enough to clip in without any slowdown about a few weeks ago, and since then, it's been nothing but fun fun fun...Still the driver's experessions are priceless...my fave was accelrating as fast as thig guy in a honda...he wasnt racing or nothing, but up to about 25, i was right up to his passenger window....the female with him had this look on her face that was absolutely priceless :)


...she was rather cute too, but that's a bit off topic :p

Steve- I've got you beaten in 1 category: I took a spill at ~30 mph going down hill on Pierre road by hitting a fricking deer who'd jumped out of the scrubs right in front of my bike.

Deer walked away. I absolutely totalled the bike.What happened to the rider? Where's Pierre Rd., BTW?

Fastest I've ever gone? Not as fast as I'm gonna go.

Seriously, though - as measured by a computer about 38 on the flat going all out. I think I've done faster than that a few times on big downhills, though.

What's the fastest on flat land?

A little over 41mph on flat land (for no longer than a few seconds). Didn't want to look down for too long to get the exact reading.

I don't try to see how fast I can go downhill. I'm sure I could get up there pretty fast as I have aero bars and weigh around 220.

I don't try to see how fast I can go downhill. I'm sure I could get up there pretty fast as I have aero bars and weigh around 220.

This is a little off topic and I don't want to sound like a jerk... but... heavy objects don't fall faster than light ones. Your weight won't make you "fall" down a hill faster than a lighter rider. There was a famous experiment ages ago where (was it Galileo? I think...) they made two clear tubes and sucked the air out of them, to eliminate forces due to wind resistance. In one tube was a feather and in the other is a rock. Both are released at the same time. Normally, you'd expect the rock to fall faster. But in the absence of air, they both fall at exactly the same rate. My undergrad physics prof actually did this experiment and it's really trippy to watch.

Anyhow... the moral to the story is that if you drop a light cyclyist and a heavy cyclist off a cliff at the same time... negecting wind resistance... they will crash into the jagged rocks below simultaneously.

:eek:

The aero bars WILL have a huge effect, as wind resistance is the rate limiting factor in riding at high speeds.

55 kph on the flat on a mtb for about 2 k's. 70+ kph slight downhill candence through the roof I was to far over the bars to see the speedo after that, on my road bike.
Got a trike coming just looking for the right hill :) 100+ coming up.
I should be old enough to know better.

33Mph on my Mtbike with slicks. I dont think any faster is possible, I run out of gears, need to get a 52 at the front sometime....

Only advantage of being a larger cyclist is more inertia. You won't go any faster down the hill, but you will be able to carry the speed you gained a bit further once the hill ends.

Only advantage of being a larger cyclist is more inertia. You won't go any faster down the hill, but you will be able to carry the speed you gained a bit further once the hill ends.
That and we don't live in vacuums. Why do physicists always remove friction or air resistance? Just to demonstrate the underlying mathematics and theory. If you are a lightweight then the air resistance will have an easier time pushing you like a kite. If your heavy then sure you are a bigger target but you can still get aero and you will definitely drop faster. At 185lbs I see myself constantly dropping faster then others who are lighter. In the real world take two feathers of the same size and dip one of them in water then see which one hits the ground first.

I just broke my record of 52mph last week and hit 53.4 mph.
flats: I hit 35 on my fixie last week with perhaps a slight tail wind.

I'm going for a ride today, I'm going to break 80 kph today! Okay well i'll try anyways...

This is a little off topic and I don't want to sound like a jerk... but... heavy objects don't fall faster than light ones. Your weight won't make you "fall" down a hill faster than a lighter rider. There was a famous experiment ages ago where (was it Galileo? I think...) they made two clear tubes and sucked the air out of them, to eliminate forces due to wind resistance. In one tube was a feather and in the other is a rock. Both are released at the same time. Normally, you'd expect the rock to fall faster. But in the absence of air, they both fall at exactly the same rate. My undergrad physics prof actually did this experiment and it's really trippy to watch.

Anyhow... the moral to the story is that if you drop a light cyclyist and a heavy cyclist off a cliff at the same time... negecting wind resistance... they will crash into the jagged rocks below simultaneously.

:eek:

The aero bars WILL have a huge effect, as wind resistance is the rate limiting factor in riding at high speeds.

Yes, of course I'd have to agree with you if I was falling off of a cliff with my bike next to lighter riders falling off the same cliff (in a vacuum, of course). I can't tell you the physics behind it, but I can tell you that I go faster downhill without pedalling than most cyclists I ride with when they are pedalling. I've been riding long enough (and a fat ass long enough) to know that this is the case. Maybe I am a physics anomoly.

I know that this topic has been discussed here before and I can't remember the consensus from the thread. Maybe it has to do with the fact that we are not starting from a static position and larger riders are slowed down less on a downhill than smaller riders. Although this doesn't hold up as I gain speed as I go down a hill.

I don't mean to argue your point, but all I can say is that I can guarantee that I go faster than smaller riders downhill, without pedalling. Sorry to continue the hijacking of this thread, but if anyone has the answer, I'd be interested.

I hit 42mph on my hybrid with mtb tires the other day. It was on a short, STEEP, hill in North Stonington, CT.

In other news, I flew over my handlebars and slid across the pavement at a record 23mph yesterday. lol. Ouch.

I hit 42mph on my hybrid with mtb tires the other day. It was on a short, STEEP, hill in North Stonington, CT.

In other news, I flew over my handlebars and slid across the pavement at a record 23mph yesterday. lol. Ouch.
OUCH, that sounds painful. I thankfully have yet to endo, maybe it's just a matter of time?