The average speeds posted at best give you a general flavor. bike racing is dynamic. Sometimes it is very fast and sometimes its pretty slow, depending on the course, the riders, and the tactics at work. Ironically, average speeds in Cat 5 can be pretty high. The reason being that you can always count on some inexperienced Cat 5s to take off from the gun, other inexperienced Cat 5's to chase in an unorginized fashion, and still other Cat 5's to launch suicidal breaks that have to be chased down. Thus, the race is always on in virtually every cat 5 race. In higher categories, when the racing gets going it's obviously faster than in Cat 5, but there are often periods where the pack isn't working that hard.