My Cat Eye Odometer/Speedometer thingy says my average is usually between 15 and 17 mph on my 16 mile commute. Single Speed bike.

There's a bike club that goes for rides on the weekends, and they say that their 'slow' group averages 15mph, and their faster group averages 20-25mph. I'm guessing these are geared bikes.

I don't want to ride with the slow group. I want to ride with the big boys, but I don't want a geared bike.

Should I load up on frozen spinach and caffeine?

I hope you weren't the guy on the singlespeed I rudely drafted off of and then passed up on an ascent on the way home from work yesterday. I did ask permission to draft then offered to pull, but took the lead too quickly and dropped whomever it was sort of by accident. Gotta pay better attention to the rear when taking the lead on an ascent. My excuse is that I was in a rush as my son was on his way to the doctor (he's fine). Another reason I did that was the rider looked strong and I didn't want to hold up the show.

If that was you, sorry. If not, sorry to whoever you are.

Good question in the OP.

Sometimes I ride my SS road bike on fast training rides with geared roadies. What I do is run a really high gear-like 52/16 and just stand up in the hills. It works fine, but your legs will be sore the next day. Give it a shot.

not me - -wish it was though! meaning, i wish i had been able to ride yesterday!

do you know what your average speed is with that gearing?

If you fit/strong and geared right the only place you will be dropped on club rides is down very long or very steep downhills. Then you have to work like hell to close the gap.

edit: This is fixed, perhaps SS you can keep up downhill, not sure.

Al

Not sure, I don't have a cycle computer. That gearing is a little too high for me riding solo to work, where I probably average 30 km/hr (18.5 mph) or so in traffic.

More thoughts...
Your commute average speed and the average speed the group says they ride really have nothing in common, nor are they a measure of if you can keep up.
Your commute average speed probably includes many more stops, slowing, no drafting.
The club reported average speed is probably what they most often see when they check their speed during a typical paceline.
What will determine if you can keep up is if you can sustain (while drafting) their cruising speed and how fast (and long) you can go for bursts of speed. (sprints, downhills)
Al

great points and food for thought!!! thanks!!!!

toronto -- ever been to The Orbit Room? i've never been to Toronto, but have my eye on that place when I DO get there! (naturally, my favourite band since I was a kid is RUSH.... and Alex Lifeson is co-owner of that club....)

When I was riding 48/16 I could keep up with a 20-25 mph paceline. It was harder on the SS, but not much harder. If the group got up around 27 or 28mph it got a little tough - I'd fall to the back of the pack and pedal like hell. With my new 46/16 commuter, I can keep up with a 20 to 22 mph ride OK. I think 25 might be a little "spinny" for me though.

Hope that helps.

I ride 52/20 SS, my cyclometer read 13.5 avg with laptop on my difficult (hilly) route. on the easy route with no laptop I usually average a one to 1.2 mph faster. If I'm racing sunset to get home, I see something like 15.8 as my average for a ride home (above averages are for the round trip)

I'd say my modal speed(the speed I see on the computer the most) is 17-20...the hills and stoplights eat my average.

I am however, hauling a heavy bike, rider and backpack

on my 12 mile stop and go, nyc commute, i got a readout of roughly 13, 14/15 mph on a good day, with hitting alot of greens, and blowing reds, on my fixed/ss/track bike, however, on my road bike ive been seeing 17/18 miles per hour easily. Anyways, gears help when trying to keep pace with others, no matter how you slice it, i found it very hard to keep pace with packs on my century ride on my ss bike, however my road bike made it a breeze to keep up, and even setting pace every now and then for some groups. I feel ss/fixed is awesome for setting ones own pace, but otherwise they tend to fall behind, for its harder to be consistently paced , and consistently fast on ss/fixed.

Keep in mind that when a bike club talks about averages, they are talking about actual average speed (or even thier average speed ignoring any slow bits due to traffic). So if you have a computer that starts and stops automatically, that will match thier speed more or less. But if you're taking distance vs. time (which includes lights, stops, etc) that is going to be quite a bit slower than a club ride average.

I disagree (and agree with Al).

When someone says "we average 20-25", that makes no sense. It's an enormous range, too wide to be actual average speed from a computer for a group ride that rides with any kind of consistency.

It's probably the range that covers the speeds they typically see when they look down at their computer when they're going all out.

Right, I guess that's what I meant when I said ignoring the slow segments, but I stated it poorly. Ussually (especially on flat, fast rides) clubs seem to state thier "usual" speed, not the average.

25 mph is much, much faster than 20. Few can sustain a speed of 25 from what I've seen.

It really depends what route I take...it can range from 18mph to 22mph. I tend to be slightly faster with my geared bike but only be a few tenths of a mph on average.