Commuting - How fast do you ride?

I don't mean this in a competitive way. I know I ride slower than racers or even scenic riders, because some of them have passed me, but I suspect I ride a bit slower than some of you, too. On the other hand, I see a guy going the other way many mornings at what must be about 10 MPH, so I'm wondering how wide the range is. In good weather, I can average between 14-15, but more often it's 13 something, 12 something in bad weather. I suppose it also depends a lot on your ratio of stoplights to open stretches. I have about 1 red light or stop sign per mile (averaging it out).

I wonder what else influences speed. I have a hybrid, and I know that the upright position generally gives less power than leaning over. No pedal clips. And I wear everyday clothes, not biking duds, so I guess I'm not as streamlined.

There's one downhill on my route where I have gotten up to 30 for a few glorious seconds. Of course going up the same hill the other way slows me down to 8 sometimes!

To school, 15-23mph.

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=82033 very fast.

In the morning, all fresh and warmed up, I can easily cruise about 17-18 mph for most of the 13 miles to work.

The ride home is a little bit slower at 15-16 mph.

I wonder why?

In the morning, all fresh and warmed up, I can easily cruise about 17-18 mph for most of the 13 miles to work.

The ride home is a little bit slower at 15-16 mph.

I wonder why?
Downhill, uphill? Prevailing winds? Your relative energy level?

Depends on the weather and which bikes I use. In a dry weather with my Orbea with little traffic stops, roughy about 16 to 17 mph average. Typical pace speed is about 17 mph to 19 mph. Over 17 miles, I can get to work within 1 hour and 10 minutes or so. With my bad weather MTB added with frequent traffic stops, the one way commute can take me about 1 hour and 25 minutes. Average speed is about, maybe, 14 or 15.

I average around 15mph cold and rainy, about 16mph above freezing, about 17mph when it's warm on my mtb. Ironically, same speeds on my roadbike due to the fact that I plow over a lot more broken pavement and everything on my mtb and I keep going.
I have about 1 light every block, which is about 15-20 lights per mile. But I have to slow down a lot to run a lot of em. Plus a lot of traffic to deal with. What influences speed most usually though is the temperature and day of week. I start out the week fresh and lose about .5-1mph average by the end of the week. I try to maintain the same speed but it's a lot easier when it's warm.

My commute is on varied terrain, and I would say I average about 16 mph. I ride a steel hybrid sitting in a very upright position, with toe clips, a hefty rack back, lock, and tools in tow, probably 40 pounds overall.

The first 1.5 miles of my ride in the morning is on a very fast road, with about 3 lights. Then I'm on an extremely winding and sometimes sandy bike path for the next 3.5 miles, so I'm slowing down a lot. On the flats I go 18-20.

I'll let you know in a few days, when I get my computer :)

Especially during the summer months I allow plenty of time and go at a very easy pace as I hate to walk into my shop drenched in sweat. I usually stop at a coffee house, relax, and cool down a bit a mile or so before arriving at my shop.

I typically average in the 14's most of the time. It has been in the low 13's to the high 15's depending on environmental factors and traffic.

'bent Brian

I took the computer off my commuter a couple of years ago and never put it back on. I would say I cruise around 14-15. I used to go faster, but I have become more of a touring commuter. I enjoy the commute more when I noodle along observing my surroundings.

Nice topic.

I average about 15 mph over a 15 mile stretch - half country road with nice bike lane and half city (still with bike lanes but includes lights.) I have a Cateye computer and it seems that I (we) can affect our averages if we don't coast to stops or lights. (as indicated by the intermittent revolving dial showing that the computer is calculating) Of course, I do coast to stops because I'm more concerned with a nice ride to and fro than setting personal speed records.

Does anybody hurry into stops so as to maintain the highest possible average?

Treker

Now in the winter on the slippery roads, bumpy snow-packed bike paths & my winter clothing & boots I'm doing good if I average more than 10mph.

In the summer my average speed is more like 15.5mph. I'm hoping the winter riding will be good conditioning. My goal is to be able to average 18-20mph this summer.

(I ride a commute equiped hybrid bike)

My area to working is hilly, so I average 13-15 avg. On the flat I can do 16-17mph loaded with panniers on a steel touring frame bike, equipped with lights and all.
Corsaire

I generally try to keep it above 17, but i also find the way back to take longer, maybe its in my head

I'm always quicker going home than going to work. Must be that I prefer my wife to my boss!!

18mph normally over 11 miles but up to 21mph with tailwind and green lights all the way.

As fast as possible on a sit-up-and-beg bike, which means, no such thing as "fast." After all, I'm riding to work in a skirt and boots.
My Terror Machine has three speeds:
1. Sedate
2. Less Sedate
3. Damn, a hill!

Flat surface no wind, somewhere around 20 (without pushing - I'm lazy.)

Rock hard packed, pockmarked-by-pedestrians, re-frozen snow, about 4MPH on my MTB. (As demonstrated on my morning commute today.)

Consistently in “normal conditions” 25 to 35 miles @ 13 ~ 15 MPH

My bench mark speed with no wind in the Summer is 18mph over 13 miles one way. Add or subract from that as the wind dictates. I have no stop lights, and two very optional stop signs. (I think I actually had to stop once in the last 6 months!)

Winter months with slicks my bench mark speed is 16.5 with studs 14.5

In the summer, I try to get my average round trip speed over 30 km/hr (19mph), and if the wind and traffic isn't bad I can usually do it. Now, in the winter, I'm down to around 24 km/hr (15mph)average, on a good day, less if the weather is poor. You could try some road tires on your hybrid, should get you another 1 or 2 mph.

My cruising speed is between 18 and 23 mph. Average with traffic, lights, and so on is 15 to 18 mph.

I've got a horrible sore throat so I took the subway today. 1hr 25 min. I can bike to work consistently in 40 min. I can maintain about 8 mph jogging. It's 12 miles or so to work. Which means I can consistently JOG to work in about the same time as public transportation.

Around 20mph. At least that's what my gf says. I don't use a computer.

Since getting the track ride, I've been working on a medium-speed leisurely pace that flows with the traffic and with very few stops.
If the traffic pace picks up, so do I. Sometimes as fast as the cranks will allow...




1hr 25 min. I can bike to work consistently in 40 min. I can maintain about 8 mph jogging. It's 12 miles or so to work. Which means I can consistently JOG to work in about the same time as public transportation.

Isn't that just flat out absurd? I cannot stand the morning train commute, esp. using the trains what pass thru the Atlantic Ave. hub.
I'd rather ride for 40-50 mins in the cold than spend 90 minutes on a crowded stinky slow-ass train.

Does anybody hurry into stops so as to maintain the highest possible average?


I learned to time all the lights on my route when I was riding brakeless - there wasn't really an option of hurrying into the stops. I think the avg speed is higher when you don't stop at all. I altered the route some (turning a block earlier, etc) to make sure that I hit as many green lights as I can...

It's usually between 15-20min to get to work (3.75 miles) which is 11-15mph.

My commute is about 5-6 miles and takes around 30 minutes. There are about 20 stop sighns and stoplights on my route. Therefore, my speed is something over 10 mph. Beyond that, I don't know.

Paul

In the morning I book it to about 20mph+. I usually weave through cars/traffic and don't stop for any stop signs or redlights. I can do my whole commute without putting me feet down.
Of course my commute is short around 1.5mi.

On my Cannondale R300 road bike I have good days that the average speed is 18-mph, however, on windy days (in my face all the way) I can get a light-speed average of 10-mph, ok make that 6-mph. I have one hill that I like to push my self and the most I got was 40-mph with loaded pack and without my pack 45-mph for about a half a mile at most (I do stop at the lights so my average will drop). Then on the bike path I try to keep it at 20-mph. The turns slow me down.
I am lucky that some of my commute is bike path by a nice river, there I have to slow down for the geese and ducks that enjoy the path as well. If it is not the birds, its all the crap they put on the path.
My wife and I like to keep the tamdem speed at an average 17-mph but we do not go further than about 18 to 20 mile round trip.
One day on our tandem (cannondale RT1000) we came across a local team of cyclist and found ourselves pushing it at 30+ mph and really enjoying it. Thank god we only had 4 miles at that speed. It was fun. We held lead a few times and each time they would form 2 draft lines behind us and load up on their water and eats. I felt we help in some way.

So I finally got my computer, hooked it up, and went out for a short 7 mile ride, and averaged 14.3mph. I guess I'm slow.

My average speed is 10-12 mph. Top speed downhill ever was 35 mph: Randolph Road heading for town from Wendover Road. Whatta rush! ...and the cagers were looking out their window at the biker keeping up with them! :D

Notfred, that is not too bad for the distance. I average in the 14's myself over 17+ miles during my commutes. Not fast but just steady.

'bent Brian

Depends on the weather mostly but I did a "time trial" run on the last work day of the year in 2004. My door to door average was 16.5 MPH going in and 15.5 MPH going home. Most of my ride is on trails until I hit the bridge into DC then its all city streets. I was averaging 18.5 MPH before I crossed the bridge then I hit a couple of lights and it was all over. :-(

I don't have a computer, but I can figure my average on my most frequent commute at 16mph. 4.1 relatively flat miles with one decent hill each way. 9 actual stop lights, 5 effective stop lights (right turns that I rarely have to stop at, parking lots that I can cut through). One heavy commuter bicycle. Don't really want to know how heavy--heavy enough to make an lbs guy go "damn!" when he tried to pick it up loaded. Books are heavy. I know the ride seems much easier than when I started riding/commuting a few months ago, and now I do the same ride a couple of minutes faster.
Sometimes when I try to arrive without sweating at all I will go at what feels like a crawl, but I find it doesn't take much longer. I think this has something to do with wind drag increasing exponentially as speed increases. Does anybody know where to find stats on that? or have a physics degree they'd like to put to use? Just curious.

Wind resistance increases as the square of velocity. Not exponential but polynomial which is still pretty heinous.

As for slow versus fast, it's probably largely an artifact of a 4mi commute. At 16mph it takes you 15 minutes to cover 4 miles. Drop your speed by 25% and you cover the same distance in 20 minutes, a 5 minute increase. You might spend that 5 minutes in the bathroom plus an unluckly stop light, so it's not really such a significant increase. But I know what you mean about feeling like you're just crawling and finding out that fast or slow are pretty relative things.

Interesting discussion. Depends of course on terrain, wind, amount of junk..er ah stuff carried. One other factor that makes a huge difference is whether one's computer is auto start or not (assuming a computer is used). My commuter has an old Cateye Micro that has a start stop button and no auto start. With stop signs and lights and rolling terrain I average about 15mph over 10 miles. I tried stopping the computer when waiting for lights at intersections and restarting again on the green and my average bumped up to 17. Auto start computers usually do just that.
Interestingly enough I can increase my average about 2mph in the heat of summer (I hate cold weather...).