Myself, I only had to stop and rest once on my way home from the LBS with my shiny new bike. The total trip was 0.67 miles. Yes, I had to stop and rest after a third of a mile.
At the time I was working at locations, 2 and 3½ miles away. It was about two months before I could get all the way to work without stopping to rest. In those early days, I hoped for red lights, and cursed green ones.
Mine is probably one of the more extreme cases…
That said, in five months I did my first half-century (50 miles), my first metric (100km, 62 miles) came at seven months. But at the time I was essentially stringing together a bunch of 10-mile rides.
That sounds a lot like how I started out. I was 37, 5'9" and 235 pounds and completely sedentary. I did about a mile on my first ride with the new bike and my legs were like Jello at the end of it (a couple of minor hills and my complete lack of proper shifting contributed somewhat -- Sheldon Brown helped a lot). Within a week I managed a 4 mile round trip to the light rail station and back on a Saturday. Within a month I made the 10 mile ride home. I did a metric century at 11 months and a full century at 18 months. I also lost about 40 pounds in that time. Now I'm riding about 4000 miles a year.
Originally Posted by
yuzu
I'll chime in since our situations are similar; same age, same flat commute and I just started this fall. Before that I've been pretty sedentary since high school. Mine is about 4.5 miles one way, takes me about 30 minutes depending on how many stop lights I hit. 14 to 16 mph average is pretty close, I can hold about 12 mph without over exerting myself and I hope that's something that will increase over time.
In my first year of commuting (once I worked up the fitness to ride the full 10 miles), I averaged around 12 mph on a good day. Four years later, if I really push myself I can average over 18 mph and that's still going up. At first glance it may not seem like much to go from 12 mph to 18 mph in four years, but that involved cutting nearly 20 minutes off of what was initially a 50 minute trip.