Normal speeds?
 

I am new to biking. I plan on riding with a group possibly next week with my 7.2FX. I'm concerned that I will not be able to keep up. I bought a speedometer and my top speed was 20.5.mph today......am I fast enough to keep up with other people that are riding mostly hybrids?

If they're also riding hybrids, you should be fine. Hybrid owners aren't exactly out there for speed... although an older lady passed me on her hybrid and I started to laugh. She was cookin up the road, quite impressive, really.

You don't really know until you show up. Top speed isn't usually the problem so much as average speed.

Government bikes speed limit supposed to be 20km/h
most average people go 25km/h (even GPS software bases it at 25km/h)
real life person average is 30ish km/h
my personal average is 35km/h
top 60km/h for about 500m to 1km, then i usually burn out
fastest sustainable is 45~50 km/h without burning out

Depends on the group, the destination and the individual rider. My average OTR speed on a country road, if I don't get waylaid is going to be around 15mph. City speeds are slower due to traffic, pedestrians and signals.

Most groups I ride with (very seldom BTW) we typically travel at the speed of the slowest rider. One group I rode with for a while was mixed, we had our roadies that would blow past everybody in the first mile, but the touristy types would keep cranking out the miles an would usually roll past them at the first rest stop.:lol: There was one older lady that had a very nice Raleigh International set up with fenders and Northroad bars. She would crank along all day long at 70-75 cadence at about 16 mph more than once you would find a string of racer boys on her wheel:roflmao2:

Aaron:)

impressive; do you race?

Speed is not a reliable performance metric. You want to know how good you are, get a powermeter.