frankiee

What are average times for biking 170KM in one day on a mountain bike.
The ride would be 100Km then a boat ride for 2 hours then 70 Km
I don't long ride very often but last summer we did two 100KM days in the trails. Those took 12 hours and 12 hours because we were in the fields , swamps, ski-hills, trails, rocks, etc.
I think if I stuck to the nice easy cruising on the road that I should be able to make it.
Could I here some average times from people and if those times are on a road bike or mountain bike please.
I am a hard mountain biker and I do a lot of trails and rocks for hours but I dont do roads so I dont know times. The bike will be a X-country bike. Brodie Bandit with 2.10 tires an 55 psi presure.
Yes I have my HAWWG hydration pac and a cell in case of breakdown

Six jours

A reasonably fit rider should be able to complete 100Km in four hours or less, including stops, at a comfortable pace, on a road bike, in my experience. I have never tried to cover any distance on a mountain bike on the road, so can't say anything intelligent on the matter.

supcom

You have too many variables to predict this. the best thing is for you to go out this week and ride 30-40 miles on the road and find out your average speed. Subtract 1-2 mph from that to account for the distance and you should be in the ballpark for average speed riding.

BTW, if your ride is all on paved roads, using slick tires will make for a faster and more enjoyable ride.

Krink

2.1 tires?

You're my kind of long distance rider.

It'll take the average man all day. Average woman a bit less.

Are those knobby tires? If so, I'd say swap and get narrower tires while you're at it.

hairytoes

Frankiee, some different tyres will make your day. If I'm covering rough tarmac roads and offroad trails, I use Vittoria Randonneur Cross tyres (they are quite cheap) - only 1.75", but very high volume. Run them at 70 psi on the road, and you'll be able to cruise at 25Kph.

Hezz

If you are a fit mountain biker you should be able to do 100km on the road on a road bike at 18-20 mph average. So lets say 3.5 hours of actual ride time (not including stops for water,etc). On a mountain bike with good but wide road tires minus 1 mph average from your time to estimate it because the mountain bike will not be as efficient and fast as a road bike. With mountain bike tires minus 2-3 mph from your average to estimate it.

Also, you may not be used to sustained efforts at moderate wattages so you need to try it.

Ballpark figures for 100km: 4 hours on road bike, 5 hours on mountain bike with good wide fast rolling tires. 6 hours for mountain bike with off road tires mounted.

thebulls

The most useful reply you've gotten so far is the advice to go out and do a test ride and to get narrower, slick 26" tires. Given that you haven't told us the terrain you'll be riding, the estimated times people have posted so far seem highly optimistic about how fast the "average" person can ride that distance on a road bike, let alone a mountain bike.

The _average_ time to completion of a 200K among people riding with the DC Randonneurs was just under 10 hours from 1993 to 2006 (see https://www.dcrand.org/results/hist_rslts.html). For reference, in the last couple of years, the average climbing on our rides has been about 8800 feet per 200K. These are typically experienced long-distance riders on road bikes. The fastest riders typically finished our 200K's in around 8 hours; some of these are RAAM riders who train with us in the early season.

So for a 170K with proportionately as much climbing, you'd expect the average DC Randonneur to finish in 8-1/2 hours. For a 100K, the average rider might ride somewhat faster, but probably not enough to get them very far under 5 hours.

On a mountain bike with big, fat, knobby tires, you'll be considerably slower, particularly if there is much climbing.

In the summer, I can commute to work and back on road bike with road tires in 80 minutes (21 miles, a thousand feet of climbing). In the winter, when I'm on mountain bike with big, fat, knobby tires, it takes me 95 minutes if the bike path is clear (much longer if there's four inches of soft, melting snow on top of a base of two inches of ice with random footprints--but that's a different story). So if I were estimating my time to completion of a 200K on my mountain bike, I'd add twenty percent to my typical road bike time.

IronMac

+1. I just finished a 200 km ride this past weekend and my friend and I took much longer than expected! She's very fast so she could probably have finished much earlier but I'm an "average" rider...I can do very long distances but not very fast.

Our route was pretty flat but we faced a strong headwind for quite a bit of the distance. Coming back it helped some but we checked my friend's Garmin numbers the next day and that tailwind was half the strength of the headwind. @#$%

Cadillac

The average rider will NOT ride 18-20 mph as Hezz suggests.
Instead, he/she would ride 18-20 kilometers per hour. (perhaps Hezz had a typo).
At 18-20 mph average a rider could do a century in 5 hours (or a little more) which is the goal of a lot of experienced riders.
170 km is just a shade more than a Century (161 km) and most new riders with some strength can do a century in about 8 to 10 hours.
The mtb tires will slow you down a little.

Machka 

I'm a reasonably fit female cyclist and I do 100 kms in about 5 hours, and 100 miles (162 kms) in about 8 hours, unless I run into bad weather, in which case it can be considerably longer.

So a decent average speed for me is about 20 km/h.

I'm a little bit slower than other riders I ride with ... but having observed others who do the same centuries and 200K rides I do (mainly in Manitoba, where it is completely flat), most don't do them any faster than 25 km/h (~15 mph).

Richard Cranium

Yeah, 8 hours or else two days........

wsmith

Do your homework before you swap out the knobbies. Last Spring, I switched into skinny road slick type 26" tires, but I lost top speed and I lost circumference: Not happy. This Spring, I switched into 2.1 fatter pseudo-slicks and am much happier. They are the Continental Town+Country tires which have an alternating side tread but keep the same size/dimensions as the knobs.

True, the heavy mountain bike with fat tires make it more challenging on the climbs, but I enjoy the challenge. I rode a 100mi century with roughly 8,300ft of climb last month and did it in a very respectable 6.5 hours; respectable given the elevation and the bike limitations. Oh, it has fenders, rear rack and travel bag too.

All that to say to do your homework before you swap into some skinny slicks.

Six jours

The only way this could make sense to me is if you habitually ride around in your top gear at maximum RPM, and discovered that the loss of a centimeter or two of circumference cost you half a mile per hour.

And I use the term "make sense" in the loosest possible way. *scratching head*

wsmith

The skinny slicks are more than a few centimeters smaller re: circumference than the fatter town tires. I can't back it up with any scientific data; just personal experience.

Six jours

I still don't get it. You can offset the loss of circumference by selecting a larger gear. If you do not have any larger gears left, perhaps you have unexplored career options ahead of you. Team Discovery, for instance.

hairytoes

I can kind of understand what wsmith is getting at.

I've tried 1.3" slicks and 1.75 vittoria on my bike. The 1.3" have a circ of 194cm. The 1.75" treads have a circ of 203cm.

I found the treaded tyres rolled much more easily over uneven road surfaces.

The 1.3" slicks cost me on rough surfaces, 'bouncing' hard and wasting energy.

I'm now using 1.5" pasela (which are treaded like a trad touring tyre) and find them as fast as the 1.3" slicks, even at 15psi less.

Oh, and I wouldn't use a tyre like a town + country on fast rides. Anything like that with tread on the shoulders is very unreliable when cornering at speed. The tread knobs tend to 'walk' sideways. Very very disconcerting.

Hezz

One of the best wide semi slick tires that I have used for road use on a mountain bike are an inexpensive pair of Avenir bike path tires. They look like sport bike motorcycle tires. They roll and corner very well on smooth even surfaces like cement and pavement and are inexpensive.

I to have found that road tires don't work very well on uneven dirt roads. In this situation you need less air pressure and a tire that rolls well when deforming more. With hard slick tires you are just lifting your own weight every time the tire goes over a little uneven rise because the tire doesn't deform enough to adapt to the road surface.

jcm

This is the MTB that I've ridden on numerous 100 mile rides, note the tires:
https://i17.tinypic.com/5x8flo1.jpg
Dressed down like this means the weather is good. When the weather is crap, it looks like this, but maybe with a single Ortieb on the back:
https://i18.tinypic.com/4zu6a85.jpg

In good weather, head up, feeling great, it takes about 7 hours to go 160kms. Bad weather, head down, cursing and wishing I were somewhre else, about 7.75 or 8 hours.

On my Trek 520, fendered, with a single Ortlieb, about 6.5 hours, with ease.
On my Sequoia Elite, with a 5lb bar bag, an easy 6 even.

I'm not your average rider, whatever that is anyway. I'm 51, and I weight 235 at 6', and I'm pretty strong as far as stamina is concerned.

Zero_Enigma

Frankiee,

I've not done 170km before but I have almost done a Canadian century before. I stopped at 89km in my log books. I ride a MTB with 26" rims, 26x2.1" tires (stock,IRC Methos heavy knobs), 26x1.75" (semi-slicks, higher PSI), front shocks (XC setup), and a rear rack.

I started riding seriously near the end of 2005 but was cut short by the cold and winter. When spring 2006 came I was a serious rider and recently clocked 5000km so far as I build myself up strength wise.

My original long distance on the stock tires was ~60km along the Toronto, Lakeshore trail but I turned back when it was getting dark and I was not really in the best shape then just pushing it.

Later I changed my tires to semi-slick Continential Travel Contacts 26x1.75" and clocked my personal best record of 89km in about 9hrs (overall, not actual riding time) for a round trip.

I'm sure if you changed the tires to higher PSI tires like a 1.75" (good balance of higher PSI plus width for grip) you can go faster, farther, and in less time.

I believe my avg. time for the 89km was ~18kph with about 50% hills (and about 3% really steep hills).

Hezz

Perhaps I am not average. But I am 46 and still 40 pounds over weight. I do 60 miles (roughly 100 kilometer) In a little under four hours of riding time. I usually ride flat sections at 19-22 mph but hills and headwinds are a lot slower for me. Usually my average riding speed is between 16.5 - 18 mph with all the hills and slow sections averaged in for a generally flatish course with no really big climbs.

I figure a younger fit mountain biker should be able to ride at least as fast as I do on a road bike. With times adjusted for bike/tire setup.

Six jours

Well, the "average" man cannot ride a bicycle 170 km in one day unless perhaps there is a gun to his head, so I assumed that the OP meant the "average man who is capable of riding 170 km in one day". IMO, that cyclist should be able to average a bit more than 25 km per hour, at least on a road bike. As I mentioned, I have no idea what a good average for a mountain bike is because a mountain bike is a poor tool for that job and I can't really imagine anyone wanting to do long road miles on one. But then I see people driving around on the freeway in Hummers so I apparently don't know much.

USAZorro

Does your Mountain bike have a suspension? (no is the preferred answer here)

john bono

Terrain and tires are going to have a huge impact on your time. Knobbies will play havoc with your speed, especially on descents. Personally, I have found that having slicks on a mtb is the best thing you can do to improve speed.

Terrain has a big impact as well. During the Tour of the Litchfield Hills, I averaged 11.1mph over a 77 mile course. The course had 3 700'+ climbs which played havoc with my borderline uberclyde physique. Take the climbs out, and I'm averagine 13 mph easily. Put them back in, and I'm lucky to break 11.

Also, I'd consider trying to do something during the boat ride to prevent muscles from seizing up during the break. Bring some ben-gay, keep walking, whatever. Being off the bike for 20 minutes won't slow you down much later. Two hours might be enough time for aches and pains to start taking effect.

Scummer

I just finished 150km in 6 hours flat on my roadie. But that was all on good tarmac, no dirt roads. I was cruising at 15.4mph avg.

lazzarello

last weekend I got in a solo 210k in about 10.5 hours with relatively long (45-60 minutes) breakfast and dinner stops. This was on a road bike + pavement (tarmac to the english) with about 6000 feet of elevation gain but no steep gradients.