Drew Eckhardt 

It depends on where you start.

I more than doubled my power since noticing I couldn't finish my 10 mile commute at 15MPH which was a lot slower than the 17-18 I could sustain over a century in my youth. After some work I could manage 16.5 MPH on flat ground for 45 minutes; with more it's 20.5 MPH for an hour and a 16.5 MPH metric century with 2000 feet of hills is easy.

12 MPH is a very low starting point.

Joel Friel says people should be able to attain a FTP twice their body weight, less 0.5% for each year past 35, minus an extra 10% for females.

100 pounds * 2 = 200W * (1 - 25 * .005 for 60 years old) * (1 - .1 for being female) = 158W.

Assume .3 m^2 Sd, .8 Cd, .004 Crr, and a 20 pound bike and you get 22 MPH on flat ground at 158W for an hour.

Joel's formula produces 4.2W/kg for a 42 year old guy which is a lot; although 3.5W/kg was three months of training for me starting with a decent base.

158W scales to 132W with the same correction factor which is still 20.5 MPH on flat ground.

With the same parameters, 17 MPH takes 81W which is a 60% recovery or all-day pace.

Obviously a small female requires more fitness to sustain that effort, although having seen fairly small females that fast on 40-60 mile rides and done the math I don't think 17 MPH is unreasonable.

She did not specify whether her speed was on terrain with hills or flat ground.

"Flat" rides also often aren't. An extra 20 pounds for me at .3 m^2 CdA, 138 pounds with an 18 pound bike, .004 Crr, and 150W easy pace calculates out to 0.5 MPH on a 1% grade

That's still 153W from your wife. Assuming your sprint was more than a few minutes she could have a FTP in the 130W range.

Carbonfiberboy 

A few minutes is not a sprint, it's an interval. Try 33 seconds. Her FTP is probably about 70 watts after 40 years of hiking, 25 years of riding, and 7 of real bike training. My wife is not going to get any faster. 12 mph works out to ~57 watts, so she's not too far off the OP's mark. OP is probably younger and probably does have room for a 25% improvement. That would take her up to 71 watts or 13.1 mph. Your assumption that she is way overweight, besides being out of line, only takes her up to 13.6 mph on a slightly rolling course. You have no idea of what it's like to be short a few mitochondria.

Joe Friel also has no idea, having only a very small pool of high performance individuals in his experience.

I also know females who are capable of riding RAMROD in less than 10 hours, very fast for a man. There is a wide range of aerobic ability.

erig007

Yes it could affect. If i give you 50 pounds extra to carry on your bike. For each and every time you will have to climb, you will lose lots of strength for the remaining part of the ride being flat or not.

Don't know for you but for me a stiff 1 mile hill with some extra load on my bike will burn more energy than riding 15 miles or so riding on the flat. After that i may not have much energy left for the flat part.

So saying it doesn't affect on the flat isn't the case as our body has memory to what we did before.

Drew Eckhardt 

Hardly. Cyclists tend to average about 25-30kj per mile, for a 375-600kj total over 15-20 miles.

With about 90% of your energy climbing spent dragging your carcass to the top that's leaves 338-540kj creating potential energy.

Assuming a 10% grade that mile long hill is only 528 feet which is 161 meters high. With potential energy mass * height * gravity, total mass of you + bike + extras would need to be weigh 338000 / (161 * 9.8) = 214kg to 540000 / (161 * 9.8) = 342kg, or 471 to 752 pounds.

bikesd

You folks are all awesome. I have learned so much from all of your posts. I was expecting something in the "do some squats" range of answers but you have all provided very thoughtful, very educational replies.

Thank you so much for all of the time and thought that you put in to your responses.

I hadn't thought about the fact that toting around extra lbs makes me slower and that losing will have a real impact - I can definitely do some work there (of course, my partner is about 90 lbs over weight so if he loses too, I'm totally hosed).

I also hadn't ever seriously thought about the tandem option. We spent about 1,000 yards on a rented tandem 2 years ago and I nearly had a heart attack, so I don't know if I'm up for that - I also seriously doubt I could talk him in to getting on one (or on buying a new $$$ bike).

I plan to re-read your comments and try intervals/losing lbs and some of the other ideas (I also like the partner weight penalty - I think he'd kind of like that).

Thanks again, all!

erig007

There are lots of unknowns.

Your 25-30kj per mile is based on what riding a road bike? I'm riding an heavy hybrid.
I'm riding an IGH bike with lots of friction in the drivetrain (probably more than necessary since i bent the crankset axle years ago and never replaced it, same goes for the IGH so there is slightly extra friction)
When going uphill my velocity change, i'm going slower and i change speeds
When going uphill most weight shift on the rear tire, how does it affect the rolling resistance? (I also have at least 3 layers of puncture protection in my tires)
Riding slower also means air resistance change
Riding position change

muscle fibers: i have probably more type 2 muscle fibers than type 1

experience, technique, mindset....
And the total weight rider + bike + load isn't too far off from the min you've got, not close neither.

macbride

I do not doubt your numbers. However, its all in the assumptions one make before computing.
Do you assume a robotic rider? How does the observation that lighter bikes with higher end wheel sets make accelerating to a higher speed easier, especially with a climb?

Carbonfiberboy 

For now, if you don't already have one, get a heart rate monitor (HRM). A cheapie is fine to start with. Learn to use it. Then buy a copy of The Cyclist's Training Bible by Friel. Read it all through. Most folks start with these two things. Then try to develop some sort of training plan. Kinda doesn't matter exactly what, just add some method to your cycling and try to ride more miles per week. Think "training" rather than simply "riding."

If you want to lose weight, the easiest way is to simply reduce portion sizes at every meal, but slowly. Very gradually cut back. You may have to add in a snack in the afternoon, which is fine.

The exact bike you ride isn't nearly as critical as how much you ride it.

Somewhere down the road you may want to quantify your efforts so you can track your progress. Simplest way to do that is through a website, TrainingPeaks.com. You'll need a HRM with an upload capability to make use of it, more money.

You and your partner may become more interested in a tandem. We bought our $7000 tandem used for $3000. Less expensive machines are even less, used. It takes time to find one that suits you, maybe years, but looking is cheap.

Heathpack 

These numbers seem really low to me. I know your wife is older than me and probably smaller (I'm 140 lbs), but I rode a 4500 ft century at 17 mph and my ave power was 138 watts. I did have a good bit of drafting in there but I also took my share of pulls.

I remember wishing I could ride for an hour at 10 mph and that was a little more than 2 years ago. It's hard to say what my average speed is now because all my rides are different, lots of climbing and different intensities of rides depending on the objective for the day. But I can ride a flattish hundred at 17 mph and a flattish two hundred at 16 mph. Of course I'm over the top and completely obsessed. But it's doable, at least for 1 person (ie me), with a few years of pretty hard work. (And a good pace line, lol.)

Drew Eckhardt 

Expectation bias has significant effects on people.

Extreme examples of varying inertial load do impact maximum power output in some people, although inertial load changes between different bicycle wheels are far less than ones which don't like transitioning from level road to a false flat.

Machka 

Especially have a closer look at the Time Trial Tag game I posted ... the first one in the list. I was doing that with my cycling partner at the time once or twice a week over the summer, and I saw some definite improvements ... surprised him one day, when he just couldn't catch me. We had to adjust the game so that I was starting only 200 or 300 metres ahead of him.

It's not something you'd want to do every time you go out, but it was a fun way for both of us to get a good workout together.

Athens80

Nice post. That might be worth a sticky!

ParkingTheBus

My opinion? Just ride. I used to really lag behind my friends (still do a bit) however I started riding a lot. 5 days a week to work (50 km), a couple recreational rides a week (50-60 km each) and intense mountain biking every so often along with my spin bike during the winter.

Yes, this may not seem like a lot to most people, but it really helped me. Each ride I would try to go faster and maintain a certain speed. In my personal experience, as your body builds up endurance and stamina, speed follows naturally.

I don't even own a road bike (I own a hybrid and a mtb), but my friend lent me his the other day and we biked 125 km at an average speed of 16-18 mph. For him, that's average, however for me it was impressive, especially considering the fact that it was my second century and I don't own a road bike...

LoriRose

Interesting. Can you elaborate?

chaadster

12mph seems awfully slow for a normal adult on a sport ride. OP, are you working on your rides? I mean, as in breathing hard? In my experience, women can be more averse to sweating and getting in a workout than men, and this describes the speed discrepancies moreso than physical ability.

If the partner is 90lbs overweight cruising at 17mph, y'all arent in a hilly area, so if you're just cruising at 12mph on the flat, ai believe you can ride much faster just by working harder. Your heart will pound, you'll breathe hard, and you'll feel your muscles work...and you'll love it!

RR3

12 mph would require only about 50 watts to the pavement; however, poor tires, worn bearnings, and a poorly maintained chain COULD consume/waste 30-40 watts. IF these maintenance items are an issue, once rectified, your speed would be more in the 14-15 mph range just by eliminating unnecessary losses. Fast tires are the best investment for slower riders.....inferior tires can easily cost 2 mph.

sam_cyclist

Like others, I am curious as to what you and your partner ride. Do you have a mountain bike or a bike with wider tires and/or knobbies? Does your partner have a road bike? Do you both ride road bikes?

Heathpack 

Um. No.

The speed discrepancies are due to inherent differences in muscle mass (men have more), the relative % body fat (men have less and thus have more metabolically active tissue and less dead weight to lug around), the ability to build muscle/respond to training (men respond more quickly because they have more testosterone), and V02max differences (men on average have higher V02max).

If a man starts out inherently stronger and then responds more quickly to training, he will just wind up farther along say six months down the road and the differences will become further accentuated over time.

Of course there are women who are stronger riders than men. Some women are more muscular or have better V02max to start with. Some women have a great work ethic and can compensate that way. Some women are smart and train more effectively- for example, you can outride people with greater muscle strength if you can work at a higher intensity for longer periods of time. Maybe as a woman you become better at patience and pacing and you can accomplish a lot with that.

Dont get me wrong, I hear what you're saying. I rarely ride with my original beginner (mostly women) cycling group any more because everyone is too nice, they stop politely and wait any time anyone lags behind and the result is they are not pushing each other and improvement is very slow. But it's also frustrating as a newby woman, you might want to ride with a men's group but they are so much faster than you that you have no hope of hanging. So it's really hard to learn from other people, as a woman you have to figure it out to a greater extent on your own.

Not complaining at all, I love my cycling life. When I show up at a group ride and hang with the boys, I'm such a novelty that they love it and are way nicer to me that your newcomer male.

But for you to be one of the "haves" in the world of cycling, to have more muscle, a faster response to training and maybe a better V02max and to not appreciate that you were essentially born with a silver spoon in your mouth, well, that's just not right. Appreciate the advantages you have and don't assume you're faster than a woman because she doesn't know what intensity is.

Carbonfiberboy 

longhorn is incorrect about the Walmart bike. However, I think that the difference between any of the bikes in the pro pelaton would be smaller than the difference between platforms and clipless. In tests lasting less than 30 minutes, there is no difference between rider efficiency between clipless and platforms. However riders who've learned to pedal circles with clipless have considerably greater endurance than riders using platforms. The only good study that I know of is here:
https://www.radlabor.de/fileadmin/PDF...MSS_-_2011.pdf

chaadster

Respect! I hear you, understand, and agree. I ride with women every week in my club, some accomplished triathletes in the 'masters' age range, and currently just one sub-30 university team road racer, so I know full well what being a big male confers me in advantage when we're all working at max. I didn't mean to minimize that (or ignore it), and was rather speaking with more specificity to the OP and 12mph average context. I'm very confident she's not working that hard to achieve that, and if she is, I'm similarly confident that bike setup, equipment, fit or something is not optimized for achieving speed and maintaining it on the road.

Heathpack 

I am just always surprised at how many men are actually unaware of the physiologic reasons that account for the differences in cycling performance between men and women. Its just something they never really think about. As a woman, you think about it a little more, you know how much more work it takes for you ride at a level that many men can do without really putting that much into it. Its just a different experience for men v women in cycling and its really easy to make assumptions about someone else's cycling when you assume their experience is the same as yours.

Lenkearney

Any studies on the effectiveness of a wind screen?

Len

chaadster

Do you mean aside from the entire field of Aerodynamics?!?!

Lenkearney

Ouch! well, yeah I deserved that one!

How about some feedback on the actual results from using a windscreen?

zonatandem

Yup, get a tandem! He can't lose you no matter how hard he tries!
After 40 years of tandeming and almost a quarter million miles TWOgether we still ride regularly at age 82 and 80.