I submit this without comment.
Without shame.
Only to say - it seems to deal in generalities.
Is there a skew with ridewithgps?
Take it for simplistic, but valid?

How Far Should You Be Able To Bike? Here’s What the Data Says

60-70©Photo: This age group sees a noticeable leap in distance, averaging 22 miles per ride – that’s 35.4 km.

The 70–80 age group tops the chart at 22.3 miles or 35.9 km per ride.

Even in their 80s, many cyclists are averaging 19.2 miles – roughly 30.9 km.


Wow. Big numbers. How many miles on roads?, or on flat trails?

Remember - Opinions are your own.

I'm almost 74. Soon to start 75 revs around the Sun. 15 miles three/four times per week with a session of hard aerobic and strenuous climb in each satisfies my basic needs. But it is all from home on local semi-rural roads. Trails that are muchly flat or gentle would raise the mileage. 100 miles/wk was always a realistic goal in my 60's. 60/70mi/wk is closer these days to being realistic, 100 mI if the e-bike is used exclusively.

Until I retire, my 3.5 mile morning commute and 5 mile evening commute are going to skew my per ride average distance. I expect that impacts the per age statistics.

This thing shows up every 3 or 4 months or so on my news feed, and I really don't set a lot by it.

Sure, a +65 year old pulling better than 20 mile rides sounds impressive on the surface, but there's no data showing how these rides are accomplished.

A ride day for me that's over 20 miles includes coffee breaks and rest stops, stops for taking pictures, etc etc.
I think a better barometer of the differences between age groups should center around time spent on the bike.
To me it really doesn't matter.
The important data to me personally is speed average, and total daily distances.

-D.S.

I have no idea what any of that means. I am about to be 79 in June and am no longer interested in riding for hours on my bike. My rides are aimed at gaining fitness and health. I am happy to do 1-2 hr rides at 14-15 mph.

A lot of us have years of baseline miles put in. I'm almost 72 and have been riding for 15-20 years and I'm sure many of you have ridden longer and more intensely. I don't go out unless I can get at least 20 miles in. For a few reasons, big one being susceptible to svt's, I don't ride too hard. That might change, fingers crossed. I'm focusing on other exercise for now, but try to ride 3 days a week. For me, 25 miles keeping heart rate in zone 2-3 is kind of easy even if I've not ridden for a bit. I don't consider it hard and and do it more to get outside on a nice day than for exercise. It's more like slow walking. Doing the same ride intensely at high HR is real exercise, even training. Just saying that if you've been doing it for a while you can almost always do a gentle 25 miles or so. The numbers you posted are not surprising to me.

Boy … I must be getting old. Not because of the cycling, but because I had a hard time figuring out how to read that article.

Distance per ride seems like an odd metric to me. Too many confounding factors involved.

FWIW, I ride about 25 miles or so a day during the week, and a longer ride on weekends. That’s down from my pre-retirement daily commuting distance of 34 miles a day, but it includes about 2500 feet of daily climbing, and my commute had virtually no climbing.

My endurance is definitely waning and I’m not as tolerant of heat as I used to be either. Getting soft, I guess.

In the genre of marginally meaningful statistics, I find the Eddington Number interesting. The largest number of miles you have cycled or walked on the same number of days. It can be calculated over any period of time; typically over lifetime and annually.

My lifetime is 125, meaning I've ridden 125 rides of 125 or more miles. That's due to many 200km randonneuring rides. I need eight more rides of 126 or more, to increase it to 126. That'll happen, but I'll likely never top 130. I need 32 more rides of 131 miles to reach 131. The next randonneuring distance is 300km, and I don't see myself doing 32 more 300k rides. Or maybe I will, who knows. Eventually that lifetime number will top out, and the annual number will become the one to watch. My biggest annual number was 2023 where at 63 it was 41. I can imagine a bump on that number after retirement.

Interesting, but meaningless.

I agree, a 25 mile ride with 3,000 feet of climbing is more difficult for me than a 50-mile flat/light roller ride. Lot's of caveats.

Year to date (April 18): 77 ride days. 169 hours. 2479 miles. 190,736 feet.

Averages: 32.2 miles, 2.2 hours, 2477 feet.

Not very useful data, IMO.

I'm 74 and ride 15-20 miles over rolling hills almost every day. My fitness goal is 100+ miles a week, and I rarely miss that. I do occasional longer rides, including a Century every Fall just because... well, at this point I'm not sure why except just to do it. I could ride more, but I already feel that I'm spending a lot of time on the bike and can't really afford more.

LOL! After a quick look around I couldn't/wouldn't bother to try to go further.
With this stuff and cell phone use, my user IQ is about the same as my waistline, not my weight !!!! LOL !

Somewhere along the line, in chatting about riding the bike, we get stuck on speed, then miles (early on) and then we move to 'hills' or 'climbs', then time, and then Heart Rate, VO2 Max and Watts... all well and good.
I thin some of the 'Best' miles I ever did was when my kids were young enough to both fit into the Burley Bugger, and off we'd go... Never did any serious up and certainly nothing very steep or long 'down'. But turning and seeing their faces on the downhills was so Great ! And, of course when wee past a pasture, we had to stop... I remember Gerry, the Lama, spitting into my son's face... LOL!
now, knowing what some of you riders are doing, does encourage me to consider, review and maybe put more of something into some of my rides...
... but ultimately, riding is a singular thing, even in a group...
it's about you riding the bike, a singular thing, in a group or alone, it's always yours, like few other things (there are some. others...) which are Always Yours...
...We have a standing Saturday Group of old racers (and a few others...) for 10:30 coffee, after 'the ride'.... most of us are not riding in a 'group', the fast 8:30 group, but we all ride or come to the 10:30 meeting, to meet. no one ever asks about what anyone's ride was, we do talk 'riding' and 'racing', and tariffs and religion and our latest afflictions.
But we all ride... Our Ride... and we're all always getting there, with a big SEG !
... I can Obsess on my Numbers... but I try not to, anymore... their never what I hope for... LOL!
But I do very much enjoy my rides....
Ride On
Yuri

If you haven't read any of Maynard Hershon's stories, I highly recommend any and all... "Tales From the Bike Shop"

Year to date (April 21) 77 Rides, 99 hours, 1,572 miles, gain 65,318, longest ride 87 miles.

Averages per ride: 28 miles, 1053 feet. Can only see this dramatically increasing with the nicer weather on the way.

Even less useful data for comparison. But kind of interesting to me.

Doesn’t the person with the lowest scores win? Oh and aged 70.

73 ride a fat tire bike, 5 miles or more every day, neighborhood streets. Got my Dolomite in 2016, 14,500 miles so far.

Last October I did a 65 mile ride on my 65th birthday.

In my case, average ride distance is not meaningful I think. At 73, on a given month I can do rides from 5 to 170kms. Average would be about 30-33kms a day (but sometimes I do more than 1 short ride a day).

April 27, 2020 at 1:25AM and mile 34 of 100 that night I was hit by a Wild Hog and crashed. Got up and friend held bike while I mounted, rode 4 miles home then wife took me to ER. Had 2 cracked ribs + punctured lung + cracked scapula + shoulder trauma. Ortho cleared me to ride carefully 2 weeks later and then on July 10th I rode 141 miles for my 70th birthday.

July 26, 2022 at 3:04AM and mile 30 of another 100 mile night ride I was T-boned by another Wild Hog fracturing my left tibia by ankle. Off bike for months and have not recovered totally due to that injury and Prostate Cancer.

This SUNDAY is the NEW MOON and 5 years since first Wild Hog crash. I will ride the same 4 miles to the crash spot that I took to get home and be there at 1:25AM then HOPE to complete 30 more miles for 34 total.

Up until 2020 I was doubling my age without issues but Cancer TREATMENT and Crashes and AGE makes it difficult to ride 25 miles but working hard to improve.

It's time. Retired folks have more time for life. And then the riding window closes.

Age 76, 1489 miles, 44,396 climbing and 126 hours year to date. That does not include track (velodrome) miles only road and Zwift.

The total hours contain gym workouts which vary but generally are 2 to 3 strength workouts per week and many times I split workouts so I may go more times to the gym.

My mileage is lower this year but I attribute that to more Zwift riding where I am doing structured intervals twice per week and 3 weeks of skiing. Today, I am doing tempo climbing. Since I live on a mountain, I will start the ride on the Zwift and ride with a zone 2 bot. Then do my tempo climbing. When finished, go back on Zwift for a cool down. That workout is not going to yield a lot of miles.

The article was difficult to read with all the ads flashing.

I'm typically riding 3-4 days a week when not away on vacation with rides in the 40-70 mile range usually and 1500-3000' climbing. Before I retired, I got in short rides in the early morning but now I'm lazy and don't want to bother unless I can ride for at least a couple hours.

Or maybe we want to do other things. We have 3 weeks of skiing this year with no riding but the skiing and altitude was good altitude training. Not withstanding that, we looked into fat bike riding on the cross country ski course in Vail. Snow conditions were not great so we passed.

We had friends who retired and moved to Telluride. After skiing a lot, they found that only new fresh snow interested them. So it goes.

Finally somebody with similar riding routines as me. Waited a week for it.
Although my rides rarely exceed 60 - typically averaging 45, three times weekly, with roughly 48ft/mile elevation gain.
It works best for me by inserting a rest day or two in there. At age 67, it's hard to ride daily.

After years of dealing with osteoarthritis in knees, back, wrist's, etc. it is all about managing pain, improving joint function, and slowing disease progression and avoiding surgery. For the last 18 months I have managed to average an annual rate of just over 3500 miles w/o cortisone or a single visit to my orthopedic surgeon.

Meet someone I’ve known for years on the trail last week and he say’s your still doing this. I said what else is there to do.

Been at it longer than most. Mostly dirt these days. Don’t have to look out for cars, just horses and ebikes.

Last Sunday I did a 76 mile ride for my 71st birthday. Rode with 2 friends who took it easy on me. Stopped for snacks and felt pretty good.
Went through this valley.

Me followed by e-biker.

Dang ! Those are some skinny tires ! LOL!
Ride On
Yuri