There is a road that I ride on from time to time, no more hilly than most that I ride, same surface etc but for some reason I can't EVER get my speed above 12-14 mph. I cant come up with any logical reason. Anybody else have any roads/stretches that give you a similar challenge? Any explanations?

Haven't had that happen, but I've definately seen some dead days.

If you combined a wind corridor with an uneven surface and a false flat, it would slow you down.

I have this one road, about a 2000 foot stretch, where it looks like I'm going down hill, the land slopes downhill, the bike slopes downhill but I slow down and have to peddle harder to maintain speed. I haven't investigated further because frankly I want to get to the next stop but one these days I am going to stop and check it out a little more. Right now I just consider it my quicksand area.

Sounds like a twilght zone episode to me

There's a stretch of road on the west coast of Scotland called The Electric Brae (Brae is a Scots word meaning 'hill'.) An optical illusion caused by the surrounding terrain, gives the impression it's downhill when it's really up. You can sit in a car, take your foot off the brake and roll uphill. Very weird.

Not far from my house there's a downhill stretch on which I always have to pedal to maintain my speed. Coming up it the other way is always a bit easier than I would expect it to be. So, one time I tried the car experiment on it. Nothing. The car rolled downhill just like it should.

So...I can't explain the phenomenon. But I do know what you mean.

Yep, I have a place on my normal commute that is like that. It looks flat, but I suspect it's slightly upgrade.

Salt Lake City has a similar stretch of road in a valley near the state capital. The locals refer to it as "Gravity Road".

Are you sure it isn't any hillier?

I've done this ride a few times, included are these climbs among others. The section "Damnation Alley" LOOKS to be totally flat while riding on it. You look over and see teh other climbs and they appear to go straght up from my view. So I'm thinking I should be doing 18 on this pancake flat section but only doing 9!...but it isn't flat evehthough it appears that way on the ride. For this reason, this makes it the toughest section of this ride.

Not to mention the heat and the wind tunnel type corridor.

One ride was on a HOT day. I went through 2 large water bottles on the first 4 miles of this section. Not sure why but this section always gets me more than any other. That includes consisent 6% grades/ 20 miles long.

Something similar happened to me today - I was riding my usual route but for some reason I was doing 17-18mph when I normally doing around 16mph on the same stretch. I only figured out what was going on when I turned around at the end of that stretch - I had a very nice tailwind helping me out. I completely didn't feel it when I was riding though. Kinda of a bummer really

Do you usually ride this road in the same direction? If so just turn around and go in the opposite direction. If it's a false flat then you should be able to go faster in that direction, if on the other hand you can still only get up to 12-14 mph then it has to be the road gremlins.

I'm glad that nobody has accused me of being crazy yet... and that others have similar experiences.

I rode it the other way once, I was able to maintain my usual flat speed +/- a couple of MPH so perhaps it is a false flat. Getting to it the other way is a long & gradual climb so I suppose that it does make sense.