If you can average 18+ mph on "hilly" courses then you'll do fine in CAT 5 races.

OP. Please disregard everything posted to date.

Seriously.

To answer you question please use some basic math.

When you are climbing your speed is lower for a longer period of time. When descending your speed increases but for a shorter period of time. Perhaps a high-school math teacher will post with the math since it is very late for me and I honestly can't be bothered to look it up.

To clarify, I use a power meter and if I look at the amount of work done, with times being equal, if the terrain is hillier then my ave speed will be lower by significant amounts (relative to the climbs involved) even though I have made the same effort when compared to a ride done on a dead flat road

The short answer: Terrain does indeed affect ave speed.

What you've already heard: Ave speed is meaningless to anyone but you.

Believe it or not, people on the internet have been known to lie. 22mph average is hauling ass for a recrreational rider. Pros normally average in the 25mph range over a long course. TT probably a bit higher. My best average speed over a 22 mile course is 19.7mph. It's a pretty flat course with about 320 feet of climb. I usually top out about 25-27mph for about a mile or two on this long, flat stretch right before the finish line. Hills aren't the only thing that slows you down. A headwind can ruin your speed run, so will slowing down for traffic and stoplights.

Hills will make a HUGE difference. I can maintain 20+ mph on flat stretches for a pretty long time, but on even moderately hilly terrain, my averages can drop to 16mph pretty quickly.

You also have to be careful what people mean when they say "average". Some computers will stop the timer when the rider drops below a certain MPH threshold. Some will call this a "moving average", others will just report it as the average. Certain iPhone apps are pretty generous on reporting their "average" times. A "real" average is calculated by dividing the miles travels by how long you were riding (in hours, from start to finish time).

^^this^^



and hills can make quite a difference in your average speed, depending of course on grade. Rollers, and easy hills, not so much, but 8% -15% grade for 6 miles, that will kill your average speed and when you post about it on here you'd better lie or we'll laugh.

RD

What about stop lights and other reasons one may have stopped for a few minutes? In a 2 hour ride I often have 5 minutes or more of "stopped" time and the difference between my average and moving average is .5 - 1 mph. No big deal really, but 16.3 on a hilly ride sounds better than 15.6 :)

With respect to computers that stop recording, does the Edge 500 do this and can you set the speed at which it stops? Some of my climbs are steep and I'm not going more than 4-5 mph and I don't want it to stop recording.

Route, weather, and a zillion other factors contribute to average speed. Terrain also makes a huge difference. What might be hard in your conditions might be easy in someone else's. Fitness/technique/preparation play a major role, and despite what people say here, the bike really does matter.

Most of the people asking about average speed are newer riders who want to compare themselves to people who ride much more than they do, know how to get more out of their time on the bike, own much better equipment, and have been cycling for many years.

If you want to open your eyes to how fast some people are, try pacing some cat 1's or pros.

My average is 13 mph. I'm happy with that. That is calculated in terms of how many miles I traveled, divided by how long it took me to get there. No bike computer. Sometimes when I calculate average speed that way, it's actually 16 or even 18 miles an hour. Sometimes it's less than 10. But over all, it's around 13.

That sounds slow according the BF claims, I know, but when I ride with my club I can be faster than all but the strongest riders, and I can almost hang with them.

OP, please disregard this post about basic math and speeds over times, this ain't math ... this is physics :)

Your total distance and your total time are the only things adding up to your average ... hills shouldn't make any difference as you will gain potential energy while climbing and you can then release this energy while descending and it will be an equal amount of energy and thus it should make no difference ...

There is ofcourse a difference and it lies in the wind resistance.
When going uphill and going slower the wind resistance will be smaller and so you will "gain" a bit of energy there compared to a flat course
Wind resistance is a cube function ... this means that when riding downhill and going really fast the wind resistance increases by huge amounts and you will lose far more energy here than you have gained while going uphill.

So the conclusion, while sounding a bit silly and unlogic, is that you actually lose time on hilly terrain but you don't lose it on the hills ... nono ... you lose it on the descents! :D

??? Not sure how you gain energy climbing, I think I EXPEND more energy climbing. Hills make you ride slower and pedal harder. Riding slower than your overall average speed will decrease your average speed. To make up the difference you have to ride faster than your average speed once you get past the hill. Riding very fast down a hill for 1 minute will not make up for riding very slowly up a hill for 5 minutes.

Do you even ride a bike?

I know there are Kols in Belgium, I've ridden there.

It's math too...

Lets say you have a 10 mile flat course and can do it in 30 mins. That's an average speed of 20 mph.

Now, lets say you have 10 mile course that is 5 miles up hill and 5 miles down hill. On the uphill you can only do 10 mph and on the down hill you can do 30 mph. It would take you 30 mins to climb and 10 mins to descend. That's a total of 40 mins and an average of 15 mph. If you can descend at 60 mph it will take you 5 mins so your total time would be 35 mins and average speed of 17.14 mph.

So 20 mph on flat and 15-17 mph on hills. Unless you can climb and descend the hills at the same speed you ride on flat ground, hills will lower your average speed. It's in the math :)

^^^Bike rider.

^^^ Another bike rider.

Yes and yes.

That's sort of true! I'm not sure if you're just being facetious, but this is interesting anyway (please don't take this as a rebuttal to your statement!).

If you normally would have covered a flat mile in say 5 minutes, but you hit a hill (1/2 mile up, 1/2 mile down) and you're so slow it takes 6 minutes on the uphill, it is impossible to make it up on the downhill because you're already behind. The slower you go on the uphill the faster (exponentially) you need to go on the downhill to make up the time, up to about light speed right before the point you totally blow it by taking more time than you need to cover the whole distance.

Incidentally, since we're talking about speed. I am a complete newbie on a cheap mountain bike given to me on a friend. I averaged around 10mph on a ride last night on a flat dirt/packed gravel trail over 10 miles. Should I expect to be able to go quite a bit faster on the street with road tires?

Actually, he got it right...
There is also the issue that you often have to brake on descents which loses even more energy....

Care to share the secret? I don't see anything on the Garmin connect site settings for stopped/moving min or similar setting.

Yes.

WTF?

Tell me where I am storing potential energy and how I can buy more.

Wind resitance at speeds lower than 30kph (climbing speeds) are negligable. That's why you don't see pros climbing mountains in the drops - it's all about wattage/mass/slope.

Descending speeds are where wind resistance comes into play (also mass/slope).

I don't know why we are even debating this. This is stuff a novice riders figure out on their own after a few rides.

I go so fast I create sonic booms. When I sprint, I go faster than the speed of light. Because I said so. No, I won't share my GPS data with you. Then I couldn't make **** up.

It's not because you don't know something and you don't understand it that other people telling you how it works are to be made fun of.
I'm not physics teacher and so I'm not going to tell you all the nifty little details about all the various forms of potential energy.
Google it :)

With the hills in this area, they don't make a big difference on average speed. You lose a couple of minutes going up, gain part of that back going down. What does cost me speed is headwinds.

On typical ride, I'll average between 15 and about 16.5 mph, occasionally higher or lower.

I said you gain "potential energy" and then afterwards you release it to go faster on the descent.
This is not some sort of magic but physics :)

Ok. Now tell me where this 'potential energy' is stored on the climb? In my waterbottle? In the Tesla thingamgiggie I have in my seat tube? In my laterally stiff but vertically compliant frame? Where?

Oh yeah, what happened to the wind resitance theory you mentioned?

This is gibberish.