Hopefully this should be encouraging for other n00bs as well.

I rode a lot from last October to December, but over New Years Weekend I sprained my foot pretty bad and subsequently took a few months off. I started back up on April 1st on the bike, so I'll consider that my starting point, and that's also when I started logging every single ride.

My average speed is up tremendously every month, as well as my time on the bike and my distances per month are way up. I look at this as a very encouraging sign and hope to keep the improvement up every month.

When I first picked the bike back up, I was really out of shape and looked at my results and became discouraged. It would have been easy to give up quickly, but I kept at it. I'm by no means a fast rider, but I've lost 20lbs and I continue to improve.

Any of you n00bs who aren't satisfied with your improvement after 15, 30, 45 days, stick with it. As you can see here, it takes a n00b a couple of months to start showing improvement, and then it comes fast.

Good for you! I know some of the hardcore guys won't be impressed but I think that's pat-on-the-back worthy.

What program are you using to log your rides?

Way to go and keep at it.

Like you I started around April of last year. By around this this time last year I was averaging around 16 mph also. Rode through the winter and have continued to shed weight.

I started at 238 and am now 166. Have logged over 4500 miles since the 1st of January, every bit of it on the road. Have rode several solo centuries and last Saturday did a 112 mile "century" with close to 8,000 feet of climbing. Then this week I logged my fastest two 20 mile solo rides averaging better than 20 mph for each. Today I held a 20 mph average for a 40 mile ride, a first for me also.

Point is not to brag but to encourage others to keep at it. I started with 4 mile round trip rides that totally killed me. Now about a year and a half later I am a completely different type of rider and looking for more improvements. Oh, and I'm over 45 so even us older guys can do this and see significant improvements.

Congrats on the progress. It looks like Garmin Connect.

yes it is Garmin Connect sorry for forgetting to respond.

Thanks kenji and all but I really just want to show other new people to the sport that you can really seem slow to progress at first and want to give up, but then the progress happens fast. Those first few rides I went on were brutal. I'd ride 15 mph for 4 miles then have to stop for 5 minutes to catch my breath, and now last night I didn't stop in 25 miles unless I hit a stop light... but even then I used to get pissed about stop lights, now I just try to catch them all green.

My new-found inspiration. I've only logged 1800 miles since April and shed about 15 lbs. I hope to be down to 170 lb by end of September
Keep up the great work, both of you

Very impressive. Keep it up!

Logging all my rides (i use bikejournal.com) provides me with lots of motivation. Just seeing my progress helps to keep me going. And when I'm not progressing, it's a reminder to push harder or switch up my training. I don't compete with anyone but myself.

OP, what did you change between June and July that so significantly increased your average speed?
Change in diet, form on the bike, different bike, riding with a group?

???

Well done. Keep it up.

I decided to be more of a man. Same bike. Same diet. Same solo rides. Same everything else.

I just started biking this year.. not quite the mileage you have in but I have other activities in there as well.. swim/run/gym.. didn't do much extra curricular riding in July because I had a lot of events.

I read your graph downwards and thought, "The guy is slowing down... Huh?" Haha. Great job!

Nice job. You should upload your garmin files to Strava and it'll show you the history of your speed/time over specific segments of your route. Even if you have 100 rides all different, all the ones that include road segment X in them will show up in the history. This is important because the mph average means a little more when its the same road going in the same direction every time.

Again, nice work on the progress.

Congrats! That initial sense of accomplishment in cycling feels pretty good yes!?!