Originally Posted by
DScott
It makes me wonder if they do much climbing, then. My example is true when there's an equal amount of climbing/descending, like if you do an out and back.
When you climb these long mountain roads as slowly as I do, you have alot of time to consider such things...
Agreed. But as for the twice the slowest speed part I think that is just in the math as the downhill speed approaches infinity or even just a ridiculously high speed. Take a look at this example from a couple pages back.
12.5 MPH up a 3% hill
31.6 MPH down a 3% hill
17.9 MPH average
You will approach 25 mph average, mathematically, as the downhill speed gets large.
2 / ((1 / 12.5) + (1 / 1000)) = 24.691358
So, the real question then is when I have a 15 mph average speed with significant climbing, does that mean my average over flat ground would have been close to 30 mph? I think I'll choose to believe that as it makes me awesome.