TimothyH

54.4 MPH on a bike during a duathlon.

BobbyG

I've mentioned this before in more detail, but in 1997 I saw 49.7 mph going down a crazy, steep downhill on a 1987 Schwinn Cruiser Supreme with a triple chain ring added upfront. It looked just like the bike below but with fenders and a back rack and weighed 48 pounds with both water bottles filled. As I approached cross traffic the side-pull brakes made it known they were not up to the task and scared me so badly I rode home, removed the rack and seat and literally tossed the bike in the apartment house dumpster out back.

I was 35 years old and single. Since then I've seen 41 mph downhill on that bike's replacement, my 1997 Nishiki Blazer MTB-based commuter with the same 30-year old back rack, but 15-less pounds.

On the flats with no wind (flats are hard to find in Colorado Springs) I can hit 25 to 27 mph on all of my three bikes, but not for long. On my commute I regularly see 32 on some of the downhills when I'm not trying, and that is about the limit for my lightweight 1983 Nishiki roadbike.

I just replaced the original canti-brakes with V-brakes on my old MTB based commuter and it is super stable, especially with its month-old 26x1.85 road slicks. I have thought about trying to break 50 mph but I don't know where exactly, because there is more traffic than 20 years ago. And now at 55 years old, married with a family, kids and grand-kids, I'm also a lot more cautious.

My new commuter, a 2015 Charge Plug is also very stable and it has disc brakes. It's kind of a semi-touring, slightly longer wheelbase bike with lots of self centering. I don't know if I would try to brake 50mph with it, but I did hit 40.1 mph on a downhill and it seemed to track very well, but was still not as stable as my 20-year old mountain bike based commuter, possibly because it weighs less, or currently runs 700x28s.

cb400bill

48 mph on a down hill. 31.5 mph in a sprint.

CliffordK

I had that happen on one ride. Strava shows a max 57.7 MPH, with some zigging and zagging off the road while I was on the road. I'm pretty sure the speed was about 40 MPH.

I think so far my max "real" descent speed is just shy of 50 MPH. Hopefully I can work on that a bit, and push it over 50.

On the level, I can sometimes punch it up to 30 MPH, but I can't hold it there for more than a few seconds.

dksix

My current bike has a 100.5CM wheelbase, 74 degree head tube really get sketchy descending at higher speeds. I've gotten used to it and having a nimble quick handling bike at the speeds I can actually obtain during a normal ride is an acceptable trade off for me but for the next time around I have a better understanding of geometry beyond reach and stack.

TaintedRide

Last year on a charity ride I went 38mph downhill on my 1973 Road Bike. It was a bit of a rush for me, not sure I'd want to go much faster than that.

jeffreythree

We don't really have much elevation change around here, but there are a couple of downhill section I can get close to 40 mph. Probably faster now that I have 53/11 to work with instead of maxing out at 50/14. My favorite is a steep, perfectly banked sweeper I can take as fast as I can pedal, about 35 mph at the bottom.

Slightspeed

My modern record is 46 on Highway 246 coming into Solvang, CA. Downhill with tailwind on my 2002 Allez. Back in the day, when I wasn't very smart, my dad clocked us at 60 mph coming down White Wolf Grade, southeast of Bakersfield, CA. I was on my then new 1964 Legnano Roma, dad in his 57 Plymouth. Good times.

jefnvk

Fastest I've pedaled it out on flat ground? Peak at about 32, for extremely short periods of times. Think, 50 yards or so max after being well rested before starting, and I'm dead to even ride 7MPH the next couple minutes.

Fastest I've gone? 39MPH, on a 78 Le Tour with steel wheels in not sunny conditions, coming down the Ambassador Bridge from Canada to Detroit. Gets real exciting when CBP starts pointing and yelling at you, and well steel wheels don't stop that fast in damp condidions

(turns out they had the wrong guy, I swear!)

Regarding the Strava phone GPS, there is one section on every ride that I know it will say I'm doing 31-33MPH. I don't ride that fast on that run, so I finally tracked it down: coming out from under a bridge, it must lose signal and then pick it up, because it flatlines at 0 then spikes.

TDK08

40mph for me. Hard to go faster out here.

gregf83 

Who knows. I was actually looking at a different section of your ride. I think the one you're referring to is:

Note the GPS track is jumping all over the place and your speed (on Strava) goes from 51.5 to 91.1kph in one second which doesn't really make sense. Strava calculates speed by looking at the change in position. Given your position is jumping all over the place I wouldn't trust Strava calculated speed. Call it a glitch or just bad data.

JanMM

Are those things accurate? Rolling on our tandem through flat farmlands in Central Indiana. Maybe we had a tailwind. Dunno........

cdmurphy

Fastest legitimate speed: 48mph. Fastest Strava speed: 127mph. (On foot too!) (I forgot and left my GPS on in my pocket while I walked around in the grocery store. Somehow I crossed the store several times in a second or two.)

DrIsotope

I can't for the life of me remember what ride has the highest speed on it (something like 56mph or so) but this one is fairly recent, and I could remember it. Nothing to do with me or my fitness, AFAIC. This is gravity and a willingness to let gravity take control. Zero RPM and zero power output.

Oldguyonoldbike

According to Strava, fastest speed downhill: 46 mph, on level ground with a stiff tailwind: 36 mph. Both of those times were on a steel Colnago. These days I mainly ride a much lighter carbon Ciöcc. It scares me at 40.

chaadster

No, we're looking at the same thing, and while we agree there is a GPS data anomoly, it clearly happens before I reach terminal speed, which explains the jump you mention; that I stopped accelerating while going downhill is clearly the anomoly. Immediately before and after terminal speed, there is stability, right through to the steady decline in speed, so it does not follow that the max speed is the outlier, because if it were, we'd see the correction, which we do not.

Here's the zoomed out graphs where you can see the speed flattening out as shortly after I headed downhill. It even looks like the line of acceleration, had it progressed normally and predictably, would have continued right up to where the speed spike occurs had it not flatlined:



Anyway, as I said, the wheel speed sensor corroborated the speed as recorded on the Garmin as well, so taken all together, I'm not seeing any compelling reason for, or justification in, your reading of the data. Which is not to say it's not correct, only that it seems less likely.

In any case, I've provided far more proof of my speed claim than anyone else in the thread thus far, and whether it was 60.4mph, 60mph, 59.8mph or whatever, it's still good enough for the KOM in this BF thread, unless you want to argue that Slightspeed's 60mph as clocked by his dad in his '57 Plymouth is more likely to be accurate! Actually, I'd be happy to share the crown with him, because I don't doubt he did it; back in the mid-90's when I lived in Avon, Colorado, I used to see 60mph on my Avocet 35 coming down Wildridge Drive pretty regularly, thanks to a 56t chainring I fitted to my DB Master TG.

Speaking of big rings, as some have made the distinction between downhill and flat land top speed, while I have no idea what my flat sprint max is, I do have a honking 60t chainring on my Nano which has allowed me to whip this freaky, platform pedal equipped, 20" wheeled bike up to 31.8mph:



https://www.strava.com/activities/35...ysis/3738/3986

I can, and have, taken a proper roadie up faster, but I don't feel like digging around Strava trying to find the max episode.

Retro Grouch 

My top speed ever on a bicycle was reached on Highway T heading into Augusta, Mo on a POS Schwinn Twinn tandem that had been converted from coaster brake to 10-speed. The bike had a single pivot caliper brake on the front and an Atom hub brake on the rear so we definitely weren't over braked. The bike had a flat blade steel fork that was subject to shaking but it didn't do that on the day. I don't know if we actually hit 50 MPH or not, but the people that we were riding with said their computer said they had hit 50 so we were definitely close. It may be the stupidest thing that I've ever done and gotten away with.

speshelite

Yup strava must be accurate then.

chaadster

Do you not understand how it works, or not understand what you're saying? Strava has nothing to do with the accuracy of speed reported, because it only displays data inputted. What you're really saying is that GPS isn't accurate, which is a misleading statement. GPS can be very accurate, and GPS can be very inaccurate. I don't know if that's a surprise to anyone other than you, so I won't go into why that is the case here, unless you did not understand my earlier explanation to you and would like for me to explain again?

Juan Foote

I actually cannot recall my highest speed number, but I remember where it was. I had gone up to N GA for a vacation and took the bike from Vogel to Blairsville for the day. At that point you are pretty much already down the mountain, but there is still a decent grade. I had ridden directly out of the park and wasn't really loosened up yet. Coming down I got up to speed (I imagine around 40 or so) and developed a speed wobble that made me about crap my shorts. I was lucky enough to stop it with the knee to the top tube.

Don't really care to go downhill like that again, at least not on a DF.

capnjonny 

14 years old

Riding my new 1962 Flandria on Skyline Drive in the Oakland (ca) hills

Going as fast as I could on the downhills

Hit "dead Mans curve" going at top speed , probably over 30 mph.

Car going other way saw me coming and stopped

Bike went down, I went into his headlight

2 broken ribs, punctured lung, bruised kidney

Not wearing a helmet (what helmet, it was 1962), lucky to be alive

2 weeks in hospital

2 months out of school

Still have the scar

All you maniacs who think you are immortal, you are not!

Can't see any reason outside of testosterone poisoning to go faster than about 25 mph.

Listen and learn Younglings.

mcours2006

It's fun to go fast. If there were no danger aspect of it then it'd probably wouldn't be much fun. But the older I get the less need I have for speed.

Leebo

46 mph on a mt bike. Ever done 2 wheel drifts on a very smooth dirt road?

_ForceD_

It was about 75 mph. That's what it said on my bike-mounted GPS device. It really stunned me when I saw it...after I'd gotten home and uploaded the ride to look at on the computer...and realized that I'd left the device turned on when I drove home from the ride with the bike in the back of my pickup truck.

Dan

Oldguyonoldbike

I find that the older I get, the better I am at imagining how bad it would hurt to crash!