Yo-

So what's your average speed for the day when you go on a tour lasting longer than 4 days. I'm talking about from the morning you wake up till the time you put your gead down to go to sleep. What does the bike computer say is the average speed?

Machka 

Because your criteria was from morning (when I take my first pedal stroke?) to night (when I lean my bicycle up against the tree in the camping area?) and includes any and all breaks I might take during the day, my average speed is usually somewhere down around 10 km/h.

Just as a reference number, when I'm cycling along with my fully loaded touring bicycle, and I look down at my comupter, the speeds usually range between about 16-18km/h (unless I'm climbing some monster hill when it drops to about 5 km/h)

coconut in IA

Not to sure how popular this answer will be but here it goes.... I threw my odomiter into a corn field about 3 years ago and have never had one sense. I like not knowing how fast I am going or how far I have gone. It makes it that much more of an adventure. It also allows you to just go with the flow and never think about other things. Plus they day I did it was when I was going down hill into a head wind and having to peddle still just to go over 5 mph..... I WAS PISSY!!!! But once again everyone has there own way of doing things... The less I know the better.....


Cheers,

Coco

Machka 

Mine flew off when I hit a bump mid-way through my tour in Australia and I went for about 2 weeks without it. I didn't miss knowing my speed at all. The things I did miss were the time feature (I don't wear a watch), and the distance feature (it is nice knowing how far the next town is, especially late in the day).

BikePackin

On level decent all day long pavement, okay weather, from the time I start rolling (fully-loaded & solo self-contained), including breaks, to when I stop rolling to pitch camp/make motel - I'm good for a consistent 10mph.

In continuous climbing my production runs 3 mph.

When in continuous mountain with 50% ascents and 50% descents, then 6mph (I have found I do not anywhere near regain counter balancing speed/distance on descents cause I have to keep it under 25 mph max. for control when fully loaded.).

roadfix

I'm with you there, EXCEPT.....the computer is on my tour bike only and not on my other more frequently ridden bikes. I threw them out years ago....

NoReg

I seem to average about 13 miles an hour, of actual cycling, but less than that over the day because of stops. That is loaded, but I only had about 40 pounds in the bags. My lowest mileage was 40 miles in a day I left before 8, and stopped at 3, literally. The wind was so strong, I couldn't advance in my lowest 22.5 inch gear. I wish I had had a lower gear, which was 24x30, and a 28" wheel, or might be 26x30. Not because I wanted to carry on that particular day, though.

I just remembered. My db4lw has an average speed indicator and it reads 9.9 MPH. That is for 1001 miles, includes some pretty good climbing days over the Adirondacks, or whatever they call them In my native land. And about 6 days of headwinds and rain out of 14 days. That is pretty amazing! Without any knowledge base, I had predicted 100 hours for the trip.

I'm 46, and have to do most of my cycling with my left leg. Your mileage may vary.

gpsblake

From the time I pack up my tent in the morning (around 7am) until the time I set it up in the evening (around 7pm), I averaged 70 miles over 12 hours. So about 5.8mph total.

jamawani 

I done 3000 to 4000 to 5000 mile tours for twenty years. After all those miles it seems that 10 mph is a good average for travel time - i.e. you leave at 8:30 in the morning and get to your lunch stop - 40 miles later - at 12:30. That includes banana breaks, pictures, etc. I guess the average speed while pedalling is in the 11-12 mph range. (I biked for a week with a guy from France who had a speedometer that only averaged speed while pedalling.) I wouldn't know for sure since I threw away my speedometer 18 years ago.

Of course, if you are doing mountains or have a big headwind your speed will drop. In fact, you'll do 10 flat miles far more quickly than 5 up and 5 down. But while you can eventually get to the top of a pass, even if you have a few false summits, you can never beat a killer headwind. My best advice on those days is to find a nice campsite or small town motel and call it quits.

Best - J

gregw

I felt lucky when the new bike computer I bought for $12 did not give average speed. I found that to be an un-necessary function. Distance traveled however is a useful tool, and I do make use of it daily. Speed is not an issue I care about within normal bike limits. Now....... if I were a speed demon, I would want to know my maximum speed down some of the steep hills of the Ozarks, but I'm a big chicken, and I start breaking in the mid-30's.
www.loa2004.crazyguyonabike.com

NoReg

I was the opposite I like to know speed as a motor diagnostic thing, while distance felt like it took me out of the moment.

cyclintom

Between 10 and 12 mph depending on load and terrain. On very hilly terrain much slower if loaded down.

14-17 mph if having support vehicles, riding a normal road bike and not having to carry anything other than the water bottles.

Shifty

I've never had a computer on my touring bike. I'm more in it for the total experience. I'm a fully loaded camping rider, so I'm usually only interested in getting where I want to be by the end of the day, anywhere from 50 to 100 miles. Like others have said, more concerned about starting time and time I have to wander, rather than speed. I like to tour in the mountain west and west coast, so speed is often determined by hills, wind and cherry pie stops.

roosmachine

I'm a gadget and number ***** at times so I was able to find myself a discounted speedometer with altimeter and thermometer to boot (cateye at100). But during my recent tour I always had the thing set up so that the speed was not visible. I also set it up to calculate the average speed including all stops.

On a tour across Canada I averaged 145kms/day, taking an average 10hrs 40 minutes from the moment I started to the moment I finished each day. I beleive that worked out to about 14km/hr. I had a low of 9.1kms/hr one day, and two days later a high of 22.1 kms/hr. On the fast day, a riding buddy that set his speedometer up to only count the actual moving time got 30km/hr for that day.

I did check both my average speed and distance on a regular basis to calculate the time needed to get where I wanted to be at the end of the day.


I knew the spreadsheet of distances, times, speeds and statistics would come in handy for more than just my obsessive nature over numbers.

roopurt

grolby

I'm not sure about average speed from first start to final stop, as on my first big tour this summer, we had the computer set to read our average speed only while we were actually moving. We usually ran at around 11 mph. Our fastest day showed a blistering average of 12.3 mph over 56 miles!

mikewarren

i don't have a bike computer, but based on my friend's on the last long tour I did this spring,
we did ~1600km in ~65 hours of riding time (i.e. on-bike time) so about 25km/h. Of course, this
doesn't include stops nor the days where we didn't do a whole lot of riding. It also includes two
unloaded side-trip days.

Baz

That's a difficult question to answer. My bike computer only figures out average rolling speed, which seems to me a more reasonable number than "pillow-to-pillow" speed you're asking.

I tend to stay awake 15 hours a day every day, no matter how far I ride, so my average "pillow-to-pillow" speed is entirely dependent on my distance for the day. If I go 100km, then my p-to-p speed is 6.67km/h. If I only go 15 km my average speed is 1km/hr.

My average rolling speed, however (calculated London-Istanbul, ~5200km) is about 19km/hr.

Belugadave

Fully loaded my average riding speed is 12-13mph, taking into account stops that average drops to about 8.5-9mph. All my tours are with 2-4 other people which can make for a slower day. On my last tour which was only 4 days, one friend of mine broke a spoke every day so I got used to taking little naps each time we had to stop to repair his wheel. I love having my bike computer and I like to keep track of all my ride mileage and average speeds. That's part of the fun for me and I don't think it takes away from just enjoying the ride. When I'm just riding on my road bike with no racks or panniers and taking into account all my rides during a year, my average speed is 15.5mph.

Camel

With breaks, I average 10Kmh. I take a lot of breaks, between seeing sites and snacks to just stopping to drink water (on tour I usually don't eat or drink while riding) to stoppin to smoke a cigarette. Without breaks, my actuall riding average would go up by quite a bit.

I consider my daily distance more important than my average speed. I average about 100Km/day (perhaps a bit more), but when I go considerabley farther one day-I'm wiped out for the following few days.

nilabike

My average speed (fully loaded) is around 18to 22 kms over an eight hour day.

bikemonton

My top speed was riding down the hill this summer as I was going East into Kamloops at 75km/h fully loaded

pur1138

Looks like you're asking 2 questions.
My daily average speed, sunup to sundown was less that 10 miles a day,or about 1 mph.
I like to camp a lot
Bike's average speed was about 9.3mph.
This was on a 41 day tour this summer. 400 some odd miles.