Many of these tips concern ways to reduce your frontal area and your drag so you slice more easily through the wind. The simplest of all is to slightly lower your body position on the bike.
Instead of sitting up straight in the saddle and catching a lot of wind, try lowering your body closer to the bars by bending and tucking in your elbows. This is a tricky one because here at Cycling Weekly we think you need all your senses to cycle safely and that riding with music reduces your ability to hear the traffic around you. However, the National Cycle Training Standards has actually recommended trying it in the past, so that you become aware of the need to check over your shoulder at frequent intervals — something that is reduced when riders think they can hear cars.
There are also several headphone brands out there which promise to let outside sound in, too. Safety aside, there is plenty of research that shows listening to fast-paced, uplifting music reduces your perceived effort levels. It can reduce our perception of effort by as much as 10 per cent. Using music that has a beat similar to an optimal cycling cadence will help you to pedal faster if you can match your cadence to the rhythm. If you don't want to plug in when on the road, you can do so when cycling indoors - and reap the benefits with a few structured training sessions.
You might consider this cheating but riding with other people will increase your average speed in several ways. Firstly if you take it in turns to ride in front and share the work of cutting through the wind you will travel faster as a group than on your own.
Riding with others will also encourage you to lift your effort level, trying to keep up with someone a bit faster than you will help increase your average not just on that ride but help build your fitness for future rides. Enter a sportive with our sister company, UK Cycling Events.
Way-marking, feed stations, mechanical support and the motivation of others around you. See the events here. Correctly inflated tyres will roll faster. You should check your tyre pressure before every ride as changes in temperature and slight seeping of air can mean that they go soft without necessarily being punctured. Check the side-wall of your tyre for the recommended pressure. Invest in a track pump so that you can easily get the pressure you need, a mini-pump is best kept only for emergencies out on the road.
Try braking less. Braking slows you down and requires you to pedal harder to accelerate back up to speed. Unnecessary braking is a waste of energy and momentum. So how do you improve?
This occurs when you are rolling along a fast road or downhill and you start to go a little bit quicker than you are used to. Braking to get your speed down to a level you feel comfortable with is fine but take a good look around first, if the road surface is good, clear of obstructions and relatively straight there is no reason to slow down so let the bike roll and enjoy some free speed.
The next place to improve confidence is during cornering. Braking later will help you hold your speed for longer. Remember to always brake in a straight line so you are at a comfortable cornering speed before you start to turn. If you are riding a drop-handled bar sports bike how often do you use the drops? Chances are not that much but getting down lower improves your bike handling, reduces your aerodynamic drag and will help you corner and descend with confidence.
Riding on the drops lowers wind resistance by 20 per cent compared with riding on the tops. Two main things stop people riding in the drops — not being able to reach the brakes and not feeling comfortable. Both of these things can be addressed with bike set-up. If your bike fits you properly you should be able to ride in the drop position for large parts of your ride. You may also need to do some stretching as tight hamstrings and an inflexible lower back makes it harder.
You may have spotted other commuters and bike couriers balancing, seemingly effortlessly, at traffic lights and thought that they were just showing off their superhuman bike skills.
Track standing does require practice and this is not best done in front of a van driver during the Monday morning rush hour. When you stop for food or are hanging around waiting for your mates, start playing around with the technique. To learn this find a slight incline, the gradient helps find your balance point. If you normally ride clipped in switch to trainers for confidence.
Start by riding really slowly in tight circles. This will help you get a sense of how to balance your weight. Go as slow and tight as you can and try to use smooth movements.
From first time riders to seasoned cyclists can find a hybrid that suits their needs and riding style. Most hybrid bikes can come close to the speed of a road bike, but they also have the comfort of a MTB or Dutch style bike with their upright riding position. They are also easily maneuverable. There are other bike types too which are good commuters, such as cyclocross, gravel bikes just to name two. In terms of average speed they are usually between hybrids and road bikes. The type of road you ride on also impacts your average speed.
The highest speeds can be reached and sustained on straight flat paved roads. In cities you will constantly slow down and stop at traffic lights, road signs, traffic, pedestrians. Even if you reach higher speeds during a part of your bike commute, your average speed is greatly affected by this. My commute is in the city of Budapest. Between the ideal conditions on country roads and busy city extreme there are a lot of variations. The road surface, elevation, road conditions all play role in just how quick you can be on your bike.
Wind is very hard to beat. Even without wind aerodynamic drag accounts for over half of your energy spent on the bike. The faster you go the more this becomes evident and the higher the percentage. On the other hand, having the wind at your back helps you reduce aerodynamic drag and helps you reach a higher average speed on your bike, which is really enjoyable.
The worst thing about rain is that it gets into your face, and the raindrops can irritate your eyes. It makes visibility even worse. Glasses can keep the water out of your eyes, but you have to deal with the drops on the glasses as a trade-off. As a bike commuter, you will quickly find out that riding your bike to work is actually the most enjoyable part of your work day regardless of speed. Here are some of the products I love using for bike commuting.
They make riding so much more fun and enjoyable. Ergon GP5 Bar End Grips : These are super comfortable, ergonomic grips that offer me two extra hand positions on my flat bar bicycle.
They also offer a much more comfortable grip that helps distribute my weight on the handlebar better. Active 3 years, 3 months ago. Viewed k times. Improve this question. Mike Samuel 1, 11 11 silver badges 17 17 bronze badges. Jonny, I will update the question but if I want to be more generic what should I say?
Amos: I think "road". Sadly our countries are divided by a common language. Slabs are a particular format of concrete that a building might be built on, or possibly a large piece of bacon. Technically the common road surface is "asphalt concrete" composed of tar thick oil and aggregates, but typically only engineers use that term. Try Strava - strava. Show 2 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Ronnie W 1 1 gold badge 7 7 silver badges 19 19 bronze badges.
A bit off wind, that would drop considerably eve though it was a loop- you would think you would get back on the down wind what you lost on the up wind Same ride in a bunch would add more speed.
This matches up with my experience and the people I see on Strava. The fastest people who aren't part of a pro cycling club average around 36Kmh.. Also, mean average is fairly meaningless, as said traffic lights etc make a huge difference to a mean average.
So I find that the longer the ride, the faster the pace, because my short rides have more traffic and possibly more hills as I have more choice of route when I'm riding further — Chris H. Add a comment. Average speed is extremely dependant on: Your fitness main factor Weather particularly wind Road surface quality Interruptions like traffic lights, dog-walkers on bike-lanes Accumulated fatigue over multiple days How hilly the terrain is although this can be balanced out by the faster descent As you mentioned, best way to see is using a GPS and seeing how fast you go..
These numbers are all specific to me, and even still they vary particularly over time : These averages are spread over a few different bikes start to April was on a hybrid bike, April to mid May was on one road bike, and the rest was on a different road bike - but, the spikes are almost all related to either terrain there's a large dip in July related to a Strava hill-climbing challenge , fatigue the dip in August was another Strava challenge, to cycle long distances over consecutive days , or other factors mentioned above Sorry for the rather rambly answer, but it hopefully conveys that average speed depends on a lot of factors, and it's hard to give a specific answer.
Are these rides on the same bike? Samuel Russell Samuel Russell 7 7 silver badges 21 21 bronze badges. Good point, and well worth pointing out the differences between average speed to get from A to B, versus average rolling speed that many use e. Did a first Audax week before last and k took me 11 hours, whereas my average rolling speed reported by the computer was I've no connection to the website, apart from being a satisfied, paying customer.
Unsliced Unsliced Strava, good find — Carson Reinke. The only caution is that Strava users tend to be more serious riders and thus faster than average. On my commute my rolling average with lots of braking and accelerating, is a good mph or two lower than training rides further, but quieter roads with race pace being another mph or two higher; cyclo-cross and off-road is completely terrain dependent so your mileage really will vary enormously And if you have professional road aspirations, you'll want to average at least mph.
Don't be put off by these fast sounding averages.. I got much quicker in just a few months of trying to be as fast as someone else on Strava. Most of it's just in your head. I also recently got an HRM so I could get a handle on how much effort I was putting in - it's very easy to think you're trying fairly hard when you're simply not, it's quite fun. The linked article gives a very thorough list, including commuting speeds, world records, and averages for different races over time.
That was very interesting. Eric S Eric S 5 5 silver badges 12 12 bronze badges. I thought this would be a duplicate answer, but its not. Good spotting! Ian Ian 5, 4 4 gold badges 29 29 silver badges 51 51 bronze badges. Sorry, I meant pavement interms of the surface in North America it would be correct to say: "our roads are made of pavement".
What would you you call the material that the road is made out of?
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