What is the average speed of a bike

So, keep your weight in mind when looking at how your average speed changes over time. Thanks to different hormones in males and females, we form muscles differently under the same conditions.

Men tend to grow larger muscles than women. So, on average, they tend to be able to pedal with more power than women going through the same training. On the flip side, though, women tend to be smaller. That makes them more lightweight and aerodynamic than men. Generally speaking, a female of the same training as a male is only going to be mph slower.

There are plenty of technical skills and knowledge to be had as well. Confidence on a bike is built by practicing getting in and out of more difficult riding situations. A big crack in the road could slow you down, but you can maintain your speed if you know how to hop over it.

If you have no clue what could be around the next turn, you should take it more slowly. So, stay safe and be ready to stop quickly. Remember to look well ahead of you and plan out how to get past it. For example, there is a section of one of my routes that goes over a road with a rough patch. Once I had ridden it a few times, I found a path through it that let me speed along with only a few bumps.

While some people enjoy riding alone, there is plenty of evidence to show that riding in a group will result in a faster ride. Drafting is when you get close behind another rider while riding quickly. The rider in the front will cut through the air and make it easier for you to follow. When a team shares the front position over the course of the ride, everyone is able to go faster. That being said, make sure to help the group and do your fair share to leading.

When riding with a group, you also get the benefit of friendly competition, which is sure to come up at some point. Whether competing with others or with ourselves, we can use that sense of competition to drive everyone to perform better than last time. So, we all do our best to speed up. I hope that this empowers you to know what your average speed is really saying about your ride, and to have other metrics to judge your ride by and be confident in.

I make content that empowers people to enjoy riding their bikes. Are you interested in learning more about that? I'll send content straight to your inbox. Our mile road bike ride was We had a fun ride one day where she was just feeling froggy and we hit 19 mph over the last 20 miles of a 40 mile ride. That being said, I have found that varying the distance seems to do a lot for me. I do about 15 miles on my road bike almost every day 5 days a week , which really is a rather short distance for a road bike by any standards.

I do this mainly because I want excercise on regular basis, but need it to fit my schedule, especially during the week. But on weekends or holidays, I like to do longer distances of about 45 miles or more.

I have found that I regularly could improve my average speed on shorter distances after longer rides. Maybe this helps some of you who are interested to put a few mph on top, if you are interested. If not, just be a happy rider and keep on going anyway! Have fun! John from Manchester. What a old fart community? I am 69 years old. I started riding about 12 years ago when I was still working. It was more for fun. I would average around 10 miles over several sessions per week.

The bike was to replace jogging. In December I suffered a heart attack while riding my bike. I crashed and burned on the road. Two stints and I made a full recovery. Currently, I am riding 80 — miles a week in 3 or 4 sessions. I start out with a mile goal. I ride mostly in town so my miles per hour. I take each ride as an adventure.

I started at an average speed of I try to ride everyday. Since the beginning of the pandemic I was furloughed and rather than sit at home wallowing in self pity I decided to take up cycling again. I have loved every minute of it. I started off slowly averaging mph doing short 20 miles plus rides in the winter months. I have since added a smart trainer to my training regimen which is so beneficial.

It has improved my cadence, speed and endurance on the road. I look forward to the long Sunday rides which are usually about miles long depends on time constraints. My average speed on these rides is I have started doing weights as well in the gym as I want to shift some of the weight to help me climb better. Cycling is as every knows, a low impact exercise so I need to mix it up.

So anyone reading this and feels disillusioned, remember how I felt. Cycling saved me. Not having a teaspoonful of sugar in your tea three or four times a day would be enough to lose 0.

Riding an extra 30 minutes, three times per week would enable you to drop as much as 1lb a month. The fastest way to increase your average speed is to train at speeds above it.

Instead coaches recommend interval training. This allows you to cycle for short bursts at speeds above your usual average pace and then slow down and recover before going fast again.

Fartlek training was designed by a Swedish coach and basically means playing with speed. You might choose to ride as fast as you can to the end of the road and then recover until you pass five lampposts before going fast again. Use any markers you like from your environment; parked cars, road signs, gateways. Pick your target and pedal hard till you reach it, then ease off.

Make sure the road is safe and that no matter how hard you are trying keep your head up to spot any hazards - or try completing session cycling indoors where you can concentrate on the efforts alone.

If you want a more structured session try this one. If we assume you usually average 14mph on the flat, ride for minutes to warm up before finding a reasonably flat stretch of road. When you get there cycle for two minutes at 16mph. Choose a harder gear, and maintain the same cadence rather than trying to pedal faster.

After pedalling hard for two minutes change back into your easier gear, slow down and take it easy for five minutes — but keep your legs pedalling, this helps the recovery process. If it feels too easy next time aim to go 3, 4 or 5mph quicker during your interval than you would normally ride. After a few trips out you will know what works for you. No problem at all, since that is not the challenge. The challenge is to slowly get you and your legs used to cycling at 16mph instead of 14mph.

You can gain strength with specific gym training - but building up your cycling muscles and developing your efficiency as a bike rider takes place over a long period of time, there is no substitute for time on the bike when it comes to improving cycling fitness.

If you ride regularly your average speed will gradually increase as will the distance that you feel comfortable riding. However, to speed up your development and to establish good techniques and help build some cycling muscle there are exercises you can practice while on the bike.

Fast pedalling has greater dependency on your cardiovascular system than slow pedalling in a heavy gear. Fast pedalling helps you to be more efficient as well. Therefore you need to do both types of training in your cycling — fast legs and big gears — so that when you put them both together you get the speed you need.

Pushing very big gears at very low speeds works in much the same way as the weight lifter who lifts heavy weights very slowly. Instead of building up one fibre of a muscle and making it stronger, it adds more fibres to the muscle making it far stronger. After a good warm up, find a steady drag with a shallow gradient and pick a gear that requires you to pedal slowly to keep it turning. You should be doing around 50rpm, less and you may strain your knees so be careful.

As you pedal you will feel all your leg muscles working. After a minute of this switch to an easier gear and pedal fast, once you feel recovered repeat. Do this up to 10 times in your ride once or twice a week. This involves all that mentioned above and more but on regular basis at least times a week. Experienced riders generally prefer to go as fast as possible while still maintains the maximum level of comfort. Professionals racers on other hand easy maintain 25 mph on average.

They achieve this by regular practice, working their leg muscles, and tuning their bike to get the maximum speed possible. You can too increase your average biking speed making a few changes. But first, you should learn about the key factors that determine your average speed. So you can know how to achieve more speed manipulating a few of them. There are many things that impact cycling speed, too many to cover in full detail in any single article.

However, these factors fall into larger categories that allow us to organize and make sense of them. Our bodies are the engines that make a bicycle move. Our conditioning plays an obvious role in how much speed we can generate while riding, and how well we sustain this speed.

There are many elements, some completely beyond our control, that shape this statistic for us. As we grow older, our bodies decline in many measurable ways relevant to our cycling performance.

The ability to deliver oxygen to the muscles is reduced as the tissues of the heart harden the ventricles thicken, lessening the volume of blood flow. Yet, the cyclist who keep up their training and riding beyond 30 can dramatically reduce these performance losses. Avid riders can expect to lose about a mile off of their average speed between the ages of 20 and 60, though that figure is about a half-mile higher for older male riders on long trips.

Speaking of the difference between male and female numbers, the rule of thumb is that men tend to have higher average speeds than women. This has to do with physiological differences. Women have less hemoglobin, which is the protein that carries oxygen around in the blood. Women also generally have less blood than men. These things together mean that women have a lower cardiovascular performance ceiling than men. Men also have the advantage of testosterone, which boosts performance even further.

Women, on the other hand, have to contend with hormonal changes, particularly as they age and enter menopause. This impacts their ability to retain muscle mass, even if they are training hard.

Women tend to have average speeds miles slower than men in their same age group, though the gap lessens with age. Your physical conditioning is the one physiological factor over which you have influence, and it has the largest impact on your average cycling speed.

To maximize speed, cyclists need to train their leg muscles for both power and speed. Pedaling in heavy gears is made easier by building new muscle and increasing overall strength. Fast-pedaling in high gears benefits from training fast-twitch muscle fibers and your nervous system response.

Weight is also important, and lean cyclists with minimal body fat have an advantage over their heavier competitors. Fitness is what accounts for the average speed of a pro cyclist being roughly twice that of a beginner. The wrong perception can cause you to cut back on your effort before you have reached your peak. You can become demoralized from the very sight of a hill ahead, and slow down preemptively.

Fixating on your aching muscles can enlarge the pain and discomfort in your mind. This effect has been proven using an interesting method: music. A cyclist who ride while listening to fast paced music ride faster for longer. The music distracts them from the discomfort they would normally feel. Likewise, focusing on energy output versus perceived effort has proven helpful to many.

For instance, when riding up a hill, it is possible to maintain the same energy output as when riding on flat ground. Seeing your numbers on a tracker provides objectivity and the motivation to continue.