Originally Posted by
banerjek
This still sounds gentle. A lot of mountain rides can requite grinding up at 7mph or less and even on bad surfaces, descents can be quite fast.
Right. In any case, my own short mountain rides with lots of 6-8% grades consistently average 12-13 mph. In my last mountain century (9800 feet of climbing) I averaged 10 mph. That was considered slow. Most people averaged 11-12. My flat rides come out around 16 mph (I could go faster but, around here, flat rides inevitably have lots of stoplights).