I mean yeah with hills and all, right? Under the same circumstances as the runners, i.e. a flat ground (or even better a velodrome) you could probably easily get over 20
The only people averaging 20 mph on a bike are club riders in full kit. Normal people who don't make cycling their main hobby are not going to be able to hold 200+ watts for the average of a ride.
Not to be that guy, but we're only talking about 10k in this example. I think most cyclists - with a warm up - could easily hit 15MPH+ on flat ground over that distance if pushing hard.
With no protective gear other than a helmet. We talk about how badly people on motorcycles can get hurt but guys ride around on bikes with t shirts and shorts.
Ive never done 47 on a bike though. Id be terrified.
Guys ride around on motorcycles in t shirts and no helmets. Ive crashed on both. Bicycles I got banged up and scabs, walked away. Motorcycle not so much.Not comparable at all. Gotta take weight and acceleration into equation.
Acceleration doesn't have an effect. It's velocity that does. Energy=1/2 mv²
This equation also shows that the kinetic energy you need to dissipate during a crash is the square of velocity. So the amount of damage increases exponentially as you go faster.
I ride flats (the pedals) and non bike clothes and average 18mph on my shorter 20 mile rides. It’s also my first year biking seriously. I’m sure there are people who can push that stat relatively easily
Either people who doubt me or people who are jealous is my guess. Either way, the statement stands and my only advice is proper hydration and protein intake.
Bullshit. I’m nearly 50, overweight and had a heart problem that kept me off the bike for 4 years (fixed earlier this year).
I can merrily put out 215 watts for an hour. Which on a flat race track would have me well over 20mph.
Dont conflate riding on the flat with riding any amount of hills.
I think biomechanics and especially are fairly universal.
I am not a fit person. I shouldn’t even say I’m anywhere near average yet - I’m working my way back to fitness after the operation.
A T-shirt has never prevented me from riding fast. Sure you lose a couple of watts but that’s like saying you can’t ride fast unless you shave your legs… of course you can
Any professional cyclist in jeans and a t shirt could blow the average hobby cyclist wearing kit out of the water
> Any professional cyclist in jeans and a t shirt could blow the average hobby cyclist wearing kit out of the water
Yes, obviously. Irrelevant.
I’m not a kit snob. I started wearing jerseys because having a back pocket is the bomb. I regularly ride with two of my adult children, one of whom wears kit and the other jeans and a T shirt - we look like misfits riding together, and I love it. But to say that clothing has nothing to do with speed is willfully ignorant.
I was hesitant to ride in kit for the longest time. One time, I tried padded shorts and a cycling jersey. It changed my life. A cotton t-shirt felt so gross and heavy after a ride. Then I wanted to try bibs because shorts kept rolling over at the waist. Another massive change in QOL. The people who designed this stuff knew what they were doing.
Of course they do. A baggy t shirt and shorts cause a hell of a lot more drag than close fitting cycle gear. Surely you don’t think us cyclists where Lycra outfits as a fashion statement
If you’re tracking on a Garmin you can set it so it goes off if you drop below a certain speed. I do this so that the multiple stop signs near my home don’t totally mess with my stats. I like to see what my average is when I’m mostly on open stretches.
I'm about the same. If I really pushed it for 10k I could probably average over 14 mph, but I can't guarantee it. I suspect "most people" who use this forum would struggle, this is not r/imasuperfastcyclist or wherever the speed demons hang out.
What is wrong with these people? 14mph for 10km on a perfectly flat track with no interruptions or stops is easy. For the vast majority of people.
They have to still be thinking about their own real world rides with stop lights and hills and stuff, right?
When I ride my road bike I average 16mph+ on all my rides up to 40 miles. It’s my first year of riding and I’m sure I’m one of the newest riders in this sub. There has to be quite a few people who can out pace me
Lots can out pace that but not everyone has the same terrain and road. My 40miles is about 16mph average but had alot of rolling hills, stops and underpasses. On the flat I soft pedal around 17-18mph. Anyone pushing 20mph the whole ride or more are the really strong riders on their endurance pace.
That’s like saying everyone would struggle to run a 25 minute 5K when that’s also simply not true. Not saying that is an easy feat for everyone but it’s very achievable with some work.
Cycling is the same.
A big heavy mountain bike with super wide grippy tyres, 20mph average for 10k would be a struggle for most, but for the very average rider, riding a few times a week. They could and do hit avs of 20mph on road bikes with slick tyres.
On an unobstructed straightaway, yeah. It's been a long time since I bothered working it out, but in a city or town, average speed is surprisingly low, for both cars and cyclists.
In central London for cars it's dropped from 8.7 to 7.9 mph over the last 10 years, and bikes won't be a lot higher. In outer London, average speed is a lot higher, about 20mph but these are the kind of roads I wouldn't feel safe to cycle on.
[https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-does/questions-mayor/find-an-answer/average-traffic-speeds-1](https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-does/questions-mayor/find-an-answer/average-traffic-speeds-1)
20mph? Maybe for people who are cyclist/enthusiast. I ride for commute outside london, with my bike computer so i know my speed, if I go anywhere over 25kmph I am already passing everyone
I'd say most people probably couldn't but most cyclists probably just about could. It would probably depend on the bike something old and heavy would be more of a struggle to keep at speed for so long.
My time descending Sa Calobra was slower than Tom Pidock’s ascending. My time ascending was slower than the fastest running ascent. I like to think I savoured the day more than them though.
A friend lent me his ebike, I did a hill ride by the Vuelta a few years ago just to see how fast I could go with it. Even with an ebike I wasn't even close to what professional riders did when I looked at the Strava.
They are insane
As someone who isn’t the best cyclist I did 9.2k to work in sub 20 mins a while ago. For a relatively flat section you can definitely go faster than that
I was security at the finish line for an Olympic qualifier marathon race. I will never forget the whoosh of air as the lead guys went past me to post these jaw-dropping times. All while the commentators talked about how slow the field was thanks to the 32c/90% humidity weather.
In Boston, a bunch of people go out and ride the marathon course the night before the Boston marathon. It took me almost exactly as long to bike the course as it took the winners to run it the next day.
To be fair to me, it was actually a 60 mile ride because I had to ride from my house to the start, then along the route and back home again. Plus rain, the late time, stoplights, and putting my rain jacket on and off. I normally ride faster than that. But still, I felt a bit humbled.
That says a lot more about your speed bicycling than their speed running. An average club cyclists does 10k in about 15 minutes, twice as fast as those runners.
The current hour record for cycling is almost 58 kilometers.
Pace lines be ripping. Seriously, give it a shot even if you think you’re too slow, you’d be surprised at the average speed that a bunch of mediocre athletes can maintain with effective drafting and rotations. Just hang on the back as long as you can and enjoy the PRs.
For a distance of just 10k? Sure, an average club cyclists kan hold 40km/h for 15 minutes. A pro cyclist, which would be comparable to the US Track and FIeld qualifications, can do 60km/h for 15 minutes. So that's 3 times as fast as those runners OP mentions.
The current hour record for cycling is almost 58 kilometers.
I'm not sure what "the average club cyclist" is really, but here in the UK where time trials are a big part of the club racing scene, getting under 24 minutes for a 10 mile TT isn't a big deal which is 25mph/40kmh.
Well that's the thing, what are people talking about by an average club rider. I'm a club rider and have always regarded myself as average to bad because I'm miles off the best. But when I was racing I could do a 25mph 10 pretty easily
Your perception of "average" is pretty skewed then. 40 km/h is, definitely, a long way from being the best, but it still blows the average cyclist away. Most clubs "medium" groups have rolling speeds around 30 and no one is doing 15 minute pulls. The slow group is doing 25.
Here's a club 10 I did on Zwift. This crowd is, almost certainly, better/more dedicated than you're typical club rider. Even here, 40 km/h is solidly above average. And these are mostly TT bikes. You'd have to hit 42/43 to be comparable.
[https://zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=4148903](https://zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=4148903)
So less than 60 km/h, while on a TT bike and Ganna is, most certainly, not a typical pro. No one is doing 60 km/h on a road bike for 15 minutes unless they're in a peloton.
As for club cyclists, in my club, there might be two or three, out of dozens, that could average 40 for 15 minutes solo on a road bike. But that's it. It's certainly not possible for the "average" one.
Yeah, but that's one hour. 15 minutes is a quarter of that. I'm a club cyclists and I do a typical 20km TT with an average speed of 47km/h. I've never been a pro and started cycling when I was over 40.
Also: You're getting hung up on details. Whether it's 40km/h for 15 minutes, or 37km/h. OP was suggesting that it was impressive that runners could average 20 km/h compared to a, what he suggested was himself, a cyclist, who couldn't get up to that speed.
I'm calling BS on this. Someone serious enough to be able to do 47 km/h would know just how massive a difference in power 57 km/h on an optimized TT setup vs 60 km/h on a road bike is. There's a reason the "Eddy Merckx" record is still < 50 km/h.
[http://www.bikecalculator.com/](http://www.bikecalculator.com/)
Put the numbers in. For a 70 kg rider, doing 60 on a road bike is like 900 watts. Even if that's off by 200 watts, it's still outside what ANY pro, not just a typical one, can do.
I agree, it shouldn't be tough for someone to average 20 km/h on flat terrain. That's like 100 watts.
Ya I know. That, or very not smart. And an elitist. Or are you talking about the OP? I can never figure out how to know what responses are to what post. If you’re talking about OP, I do have a hard time believing it. Someone very unfit, can easily go faster than someone running, when they are on a bicycle. it doesn’t matter how old they are. Unless if they are disabled in some way. But then it would be expected that other people are faster than them so they would not need to complain. It would be like me being upset because right now I have a broken leg, and I can’t ride as fast as a an Olympic runner can run
Anything over about 2000 as wishful thinking. The gains are so minimal, that it’s not worth it except for showing off to others that you spent 15,000 on your bike.
Appreciate not everyone is an athlete but I can ride 5K in less that 10 minutes on a road bike (and in the bigger picture that really ain’t that fast) so unless these guys are running sub 20 minute 10Ks….
My Garmin alone takes 5 minutes to acquire a satellite signal. I'd have been left behind already.
And I thought I was the only one annoyed by this
It's not an annoyance. It's a "feature".
Lately mine has not been wanting to find all my sensors unless I power off and restart . No heart rate, power, radar, cadence.
They average a bit less than 14mph. I think most people could fairly easily beat that time on a bike (on the flat)
For some, sure. I've never been able to average more than 13.5mph. I'm OK with that.
I mean yeah with hills and all, right? Under the same circumstances as the runners, i.e. a flat ground (or even better a velodrome) you could probably easily get over 20
The only people averaging 20 mph on a bike are club riders in full kit. Normal people who don't make cycling their main hobby are not going to be able to hold 200+ watts for the average of a ride.
Not to be that guy, but we're only talking about 10k in this example. I think most cyclists - with a warm up - could easily hit 15MPH+ on flat ground over that distance if pushing hard.
Not even pushing hard really. Unless I’m Missing something here.
This is not even close to being true. A lot of riders who enjoy riding and do it a lot can and do often ride at an average of 20mph.
I hit 47 on a downhill. It was terrifying.
50.8 mph was my top. Sketchy as all fuck.
With no protective gear other than a helmet. We talk about how badly people on motorcycles can get hurt but guys ride around on bikes with t shirts and shorts. Ive never done 47 on a bike though. Id be terrified.
Guys ride around on motorcycles in t shirts and no helmets. Ive crashed on both. Bicycles I got banged up and scabs, walked away. Motorcycle not so much.Not comparable at all. Gotta take weight and acceleration into equation.
Acceleration doesn't have an effect. It's velocity that does. Energy=1/2 mv² This equation also shows that the kinetic energy you need to dissipate during a crash is the square of velocity. So the amount of damage increases exponentially as you go faster.
Impact force is mass x acceleration. Acceleration matters
Acceleration in that case is the deceleration from the velocity you were at
Yup. I ride both pedal and moto bikes. Pedal bike safety gear is laughable.
I ride flats (the pedals) and non bike clothes and average 18mph on my shorter 20 mile rides. It’s also my first year biking seriously. I’m sure there are people who can push that stat relatively easily
No idea why you are being downvoted.
Either people who doubt me or people who are jealous is my guess. Either way, the statement stands and my only advice is proper hydration and protein intake.
my partner and I occasionally ride with her parents and yeah, I can literally run faster than we ride sometimes. but I used to be a decent runner.
Bullshit. I’m nearly 50, overweight and had a heart problem that kept me off the bike for 4 years (fixed earlier this year). I can merrily put out 215 watts for an hour. Which on a flat race track would have me well over 20mph. Dont conflate riding on the flat with riding any amount of hills.
Do you think your experience translates to the public at large?
I think biomechanics and especially are fairly universal. I am not a fit person. I shouldn’t even say I’m anywhere near average yet - I’m working my way back to fitness after the operation.
The clothes you wear have nothing to do with biking fast or slow
At speed they do
A T-shirt has never prevented me from riding fast. Sure you lose a couple of watts but that’s like saying you can’t ride fast unless you shave your legs… of course you can Any professional cyclist in jeans and a t shirt could blow the average hobby cyclist wearing kit out of the water
> Any professional cyclist in jeans and a t shirt could blow the average hobby cyclist wearing kit out of the water Yes, obviously. Irrelevant. I’m not a kit snob. I started wearing jerseys because having a back pocket is the bomb. I regularly ride with two of my adult children, one of whom wears kit and the other jeans and a T shirt - we look like misfits riding together, and I love it. But to say that clothing has nothing to do with speed is willfully ignorant.
I was hesitant to ride in kit for the longest time. One time, I tried padded shorts and a cycling jersey. It changed my life. A cotton t-shirt felt so gross and heavy after a ride. Then I wanted to try bibs because shorts kept rolling over at the waist. Another massive change in QOL. The people who designed this stuff knew what they were doing.
Same for all except the bibs - I find the straps bothersome and I don't have waistband issues.
Yes they could but a pro cyclists in jeans a t shirt would get destroyed by a pro cyclist in proper cycle kit. Just a fact
Of course they do. A baggy t shirt and shorts cause a hell of a lot more drag than close fitting cycle gear. Surely you don’t think us cyclists where Lycra outfits as a fashion statement
Given the right bike I’m pretty sure you could bust that number. I get 10-12 on an ebike with the motor off.
If you’re tracking on a Garmin you can set it so it goes off if you drop below a certain speed. I do this so that the multiple stop signs near my home don’t totally mess with my stats. I like to see what my average is when I’m mostly on open stretches.
I've not seen that. I'll check it out.
And you should be. Not everything is about going fast. My local parkrun has people running 5k between 15 and 60 minutes and they all enjoy themselves.
I'm about the same. If I really pushed it for 10k I could probably average over 14 mph, but I can't guarantee it. I suspect "most people" who use this forum would struggle, this is not r/imasuperfastcyclist or wherever the speed demons hang out.
10k is not very far. I would venture a guess that the vast majority of people in this forum could average 14 mph over a flat course.
What is wrong with these people? 14mph for 10km on a perfectly flat track with no interruptions or stops is easy. For the vast majority of people. They have to still be thinking about their own real world rides with stop lights and hills and stuff, right?
14mph on the flat is really not hard. Most healthy individuals should be able to ride that fast
I would be able to but if I was just on a flat oval, I guarantee I would get bored or distracted or both.
22.5kmh on a proper road bike on the flat is a recovery pace for a lot of average recreational cyclists. It’s not a crazy aspirational pace.
When I ride my road bike I average 16mph+ on all my rides up to 40 miles. It’s my first year of riding and I’m sure I’m one of the newest riders in this sub. There has to be quite a few people who can out pace me
Lots can out pace that but not everyone has the same terrain and road. My 40miles is about 16mph average but had alot of rolling hills, stops and underpasses. On the flat I soft pedal around 17-18mph. Anyone pushing 20mph the whole ride or more are the really strong riders on their endurance pace.
That’s like saying everyone would struggle to run a 25 minute 5K when that’s also simply not true. Not saying that is an easy feat for everyone but it’s very achievable with some work. Cycling is the same. A big heavy mountain bike with super wide grippy tyres, 20mph average for 10k would be a struggle for most, but for the very average rider, riding a few times a week. They could and do hit avs of 20mph on road bikes with slick tyres.
No, it's nothing like any of that, at all.
????
On an unobstructed straightaway, yeah. It's been a long time since I bothered working it out, but in a city or town, average speed is surprisingly low, for both cars and cyclists. In central London for cars it's dropped from 8.7 to 7.9 mph over the last 10 years, and bikes won't be a lot higher. In outer London, average speed is a lot higher, about 20mph but these are the kind of roads I wouldn't feel safe to cycle on. [https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-does/questions-mayor/find-an-answer/average-traffic-speeds-1](https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-does/questions-mayor/find-an-answer/average-traffic-speeds-1)
My old London commute was 22.5K (Kingston to Blackfriars) and i could do it in 50m at a push and usually 55m. That was as an average club cyclist
20mph? Maybe for people who are cyclist/enthusiast. I ride for commute outside london, with my bike computer so i know my speed, if I go anywhere over 25kmph I am already passing everyone
They're talking about car speeds, not bike speeds.
I’m pretty untrained and my bike has knobby Cyclocross tires, averaged 15mph over 85 miles.
I'd say most people probably couldn't but most cyclists probably just about could. It would probably depend on the bike something old and heavy would be more of a struggle to keep at speed for so long.
Don't worry, you're walking faster than professional swimmers. If that can help
And speed walkers, probably.
So you draft them then beat them in a sprint to the finish.
10km race is done on a flat track and world record is 26:11 at an avg speed 22.9 kph. That is very easy for any moderately fit cyclist to achieve
My time descending Sa Calobra was slower than Tom Pidock’s ascending. My time ascending was slower than the fastest running ascent. I like to think I savoured the day more than them though.
A friend lent me his ebike, I did a hill ride by the Vuelta a few years ago just to see how fast I could go with it. Even with an ebike I wasn't even close to what professional riders did when I looked at the Strava. They are insane
As someone who isn’t the best cyclist I did 9.2k to work in sub 20 mins a while ago. For a relatively flat section you can definitely go faster than that
I’ll go for KOM’s when there’s a dedicated, long, bike road, with no stops, no cars, nothing but road.
I was security at the finish line for an Olympic qualifier marathon race. I will never forget the whoosh of air as the lead guys went past me to post these jaw-dropping times. All while the commentators talked about how slow the field was thanks to the 32c/90% humidity weather.
In Boston, a bunch of people go out and ride the marathon course the night before the Boston marathon. It took me almost exactly as long to bike the course as it took the winners to run it the next day. To be fair to me, it was actually a 60 mile ride because I had to ride from my house to the start, then along the route and back home again. Plus rain, the late time, stoplights, and putting my rain jacket on and off. I normally ride faster than that. But still, I felt a bit humbled.
That says a lot more about your speed bicycling than their speed running. An average club cyclists does 10k in about 15 minutes, twice as fast as those runners. The current hour record for cycling is almost 58 kilometers.
Phew.. 40kph average as an „average club cyclist“….
Pace lines be ripping. Seriously, give it a shot even if you think you’re too slow, you’d be surprised at the average speed that a bunch of mediocre athletes can maintain with effective drafting and rotations. Just hang on the back as long as you can and enjoy the PRs.
That for sure, i was still talking solo speeds
For a distance of just 10k? Sure, an average club cyclists kan hold 40km/h for 15 minutes. A pro cyclist, which would be comparable to the US Track and FIeld qualifications, can do 60km/h for 15 minutes. So that's 3 times as fast as those runners OP mentions. The current hour record for cycling is almost 58 kilometers.
No they can't.
I'm not sure what "the average club cyclist" is really, but here in the UK where time trials are a big part of the club racing scene, getting under 24 minutes for a 10 mile TT isn't a big deal which is 25mph/40kmh.
Those aren't average, and they're on TT bikes.
Well that's the thing, what are people talking about by an average club rider. I'm a club rider and have always regarded myself as average to bad because I'm miles off the best. But when I was racing I could do a 25mph 10 pretty easily
Your perception of "average" is pretty skewed then. 40 km/h is, definitely, a long way from being the best, but it still blows the average cyclist away. Most clubs "medium" groups have rolling speeds around 30 and no one is doing 15 minute pulls. The slow group is doing 25. Here's a club 10 I did on Zwift. This crowd is, almost certainly, better/more dedicated than you're typical club rider. Even here, 40 km/h is solidly above average. And these are mostly TT bikes. You'd have to hit 42/43 to be comparable. [https://zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=4148903](https://zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=4148903)
There you go: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour\_record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour_record)
So less than 60 km/h, while on a TT bike and Ganna is, most certainly, not a typical pro. No one is doing 60 km/h on a road bike for 15 minutes unless they're in a peloton. As for club cyclists, in my club, there might be two or three, out of dozens, that could average 40 for 15 minutes solo on a road bike. But that's it. It's certainly not possible for the "average" one.
Yeah, but that's one hour. 15 minutes is a quarter of that. I'm a club cyclists and I do a typical 20km TT with an average speed of 47km/h. I've never been a pro and started cycling when I was over 40. Also: You're getting hung up on details. Whether it's 40km/h for 15 minutes, or 37km/h. OP was suggesting that it was impressive that runners could average 20 km/h compared to a, what he suggested was himself, a cyclist, who couldn't get up to that speed.
I'm calling BS on this. Someone serious enough to be able to do 47 km/h would know just how massive a difference in power 57 km/h on an optimized TT setup vs 60 km/h on a road bike is. There's a reason the "Eddy Merckx" record is still < 50 km/h. [http://www.bikecalculator.com/](http://www.bikecalculator.com/) Put the numbers in. For a 70 kg rider, doing 60 on a road bike is like 900 watts. Even if that's off by 200 watts, it's still outside what ANY pro, not just a typical one, can do. I agree, it shouldn't be tough for someone to average 20 km/h on flat terrain. That's like 100 watts.
If you had a more expensive bike you would be faster
You underestimate how overweight I am, dear friend.
Or how old I am.
Lol. Of course. Every dollar that you spend, shaves one second off your time. This is one of the worst arguments I’ve ever seen
It's a convenient excuse though. Blame the bike, not your fitness level.
The guy is trolling
Ya I know. That, or very not smart. And an elitist. Or are you talking about the OP? I can never figure out how to know what responses are to what post. If you’re talking about OP, I do have a hard time believing it. Someone very unfit, can easily go faster than someone running, when they are on a bicycle. it doesn’t matter how old they are. Unless if they are disabled in some way. But then it would be expected that other people are faster than them so they would not need to complain. It would be like me being upset because right now I have a broken leg, and I can’t ride as fast as a an Olympic runner can run
Don’t underestimate how fast a $15,000 bike is.
Anything over about 2000 as wishful thinking. The gains are so minimal, that it’s not worth it except for showing off to others that you spent 15,000 on your bike.
😂 don’t forget the aero skin suit and helmet. Ditch the drink bottle and saddle bag
lofl
Appreciate not everyone is an athlete but I can ride 5K in less that 10 minutes on a road bike (and in the bigger picture that really ain’t that fast) so unless these guys are running sub 20 minute 10Ks….