Really the only reason I posted any of this crap is because someone at work just bought a single speed bike and then asked me what parts they could get to "make it go faster". Rather than focus on answering that completely dumb and utterly pointless question I decided to answer this one and get in some good training in the process

Well the answer to that is simple. Tell him to get a 53x16.

Good suggestion, I told him to sell it and get a bike with gears. Apparently though, having gears makes you weak becasue you can just shift and make it easier.

Electric hub motor.

Fixed gears and hills don't make you srong. You can put on an easier gear but you come down that same hill. The choices are learning to climb in a big gear or spin at 130 rpm going down

Its his gym boy mentality I think. 15 reps of a huge gear before 5 minutes rest makes him think he is a strong cyclist. I dont get it.

Come to think of it I dont get this thread either, what an utterly pointless baffelingly stupid attempt to answer a question which has no meaning or relavence.

The video posted above was entirely appropriate.

At least it is upping my post count to make me feel special

Looks like this stupid thread failed on all counts. My post count is still in 3 figures and Ive got less than 2 pages of flaming.

At least no one told me my fit was wrong

Ok this is it, after a absolute let down of a build up to my 1000th post, it is time to bust out the most ground breaking study in history. Post 1000 is an all out clanger of a fredtastic average speed frenzy......


And the answer is..........(yes meaningless i know).................20.008 mph

Thats right, an average cyclist on an averge day riding averagely flat and without much wind on an out and back route CRUISES solo at 32.2 km/h

Therefore from now on my answer to any average cruising speed thread is 20.008 mph / 32.2 km/h. Sure I gave it a little more than cruising effort through town at the start to get throught the lights but this is about averages.

enjoy:

You said you rode for a few hours, but that graph shows less than 2 hours of riding? Since when does an hour and some minutes equal a few hours? Now I feel gyped by this thread...

I'm sorry I failed you. I also aimed for IF = 0.8 and missed by a fraction.

I'm just not pro enough for this thread

Murphy's Law must be different where you live. Where I am, headwind always turns into headwind when I turn around.

-_- do you realize how many people here (that I consider average) do not average 20. I have a 21mi loop I do with about 500ft of climbing and to do a 20.1 mph solo ride I have to push it fairly hard. I think you're out of sync with what cruising means.

I did some real cruising yesterday, which was around speeds of 18-19mph because we did sprint drills and a strava segment, before I did the sprints and segment the avg was 16...just 16...but thats an average...during the actual cruising portion we were at 18-19 and thats what I see as relevant...climbs/wind and slowing aside I think its safe to say the AVERAGE rider wont be cruising at 20. Just go to any group ride that has an A B and C group...the A group is almost always smaller than both the B and C groups, meaning they aren't the average. The B and C groups will be pushing it at 20mph

Oh man, I didn't realize you guys were spending so much time on this. You should've just asked me.

Cruising speed is 18 mph. That's just a fact!

How many is an average number of stoplight/junctions ... where someone would actually have to stop?

Where I live and cycle, that would usually, on average, be 0.

How about you?

Hmmmm .... maybe that would be a thread of its own.

Each yellow spike is power pulling away from a stop light/junction/something that slowed me down. I wasnt accellerating that hard but getting going again so heart rate didnt drop. As for cruising the previous thread defined it as IF = 0.8 which I think is probably a firm cruise but it relates to 80% HR max so its not that OTT. I could have done it at a slower cruise or I could have gone all out and done it a fair bit quicker but that results in a choppy graph which is a sign of pushing it hard and not cruising. To get a flat HR you need to be in a comfortable cruising zone.

Dont forget this is cruising speed, not average ride speed, the warm up and cool down was separate and would have blown the 20 figure to bits.

On the contrary, the bottom speed is the most important. Excluding coming to a stop or slowing around transient obstacles obviously. Do the numbers some time and you'll see, no matter what your top speed is you'll get there quicker if you put that energy into upping the slow speed. Which will give you a higher average speed​ and that's what we all really care about, right?

This thread failed, I give hard data, from a controlled average speed ride and everyone goes to another average speed thread to argue about all the factors that make ave speed useless like inteval rides giving the same ave speed as recovery. Get with it Freds, the king of the MUP competition will always be won by average cruising speed.

my speed has gone up from an average of 16.5 to about 18 or so just with some discipline and increasing cadence. But for the sake of fitting in here on this forum, I have to, for the record, state that my average speed is about 35mph, and that's with a steady 15 mph headwind, on a 5% grade.