To All the Cyclists out there
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Right. Strava uses the GPS in your phone.
GPS uses satellites. Each one is constantly broadcasting a message like "I'm #12, and it's 9:07 am." Your receiver knows how far it is from the satellite based on the speed of light; one satellite gives it a circle of places on earth it could be, a second narrows that down to the two overlapping points, and a third eliminates one, leaving only your true location. Your GPS does this constantly, it knows you were over there, now you're here, there's however much distance between each point you passed through.
No wheel sensor involved, that's why it works for runners and hikers too. I use a GPS watch on a bike, haven't used a wheel speed sensor in many years.1 -
Yeah, you're correct. My bad.1
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Frame can make a huge difference. Tire pressure can make a huge difference. Elevation gain will obviously drop ave speed pretty quickly. And a nice bike will also make a huge difference (my road bike frame weighs < 7 lbs for examole).0
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Highly unlikely both GPS and Strava are wrong - so yes you are cycling slowly.
Change to road tyres if you are on knobbly tyres and you will see an improvement.
Change to a road hybrid and you will see another improvement.
Change to a skinny tyred road bike and you will be faster again.
No idea where you get the idea that 20mph is an average! There's loads of serious and good standard club riders that won't manage that apart from when taking part in a time trial.
As a 5,000 miles a year cyclist 20miles in an hour was one of my big performance targets and I only managed that on a closed roads event after many years of trying. Most of my solo rides are in the 16 or 17mph range.
Agreed, I can maintain 20mph plus on my trainer (no wind, no elevation changes) at about 70% of my FTP. In the real world I'm happy if I hit that on a closed, relatively flat race course. (My goal for next year is to be able to average 30 km/h over 90 km at a half-iron distance triathlon)
OP you mentioned you're riding in San Francisco. If you're averaging 11 mph on that hilly terrain you're doing pretty well.2 -
jhanleybrown wrote: »Frame can make a huge difference. Tire pressure can make a huge difference. Elevation gain will obviously drop ave speed pretty quickly. And a nice bike will also make a huge difference (my road bike frame weighs < 7 lbs for examole).
This has to be a typo? Most road framesets come in around 900g (2 pounds).1 -
? You mean racing framesets? Road frames come in carbon, aluminum, and steel, and are traditionally not just for racing, but also touring. Try doing 100+ miles on a racing frame. Not many people can.NorthCascades wrote: »jhanleybrown wrote: »Frame can make a huge difference. Tire pressure can make a huge difference. Elevation gain will obviously drop ave speed pretty quickly. And a nice bike will also make a huge difference (my road bike frame weighs < 7 lbs for examole).
This has to be a typo? Most road framesets come in around 900g (2 pounds).
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FYI there are gravel framesets that weigh less than 850 grams.1
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I remember reading this a while back and forwarding to a friend who was getting into biking
thexfire.com/bike-weighs
I think it explains the frame weight thing really well in a succinct fashion. Well worth the one page read.
TLDR:- frame weight difference becomes insignificant, or at the least, presents diminishing returns when comparing race-level frames
- reducing the rider’s body weight, not the bike’s weight, will actually do better.
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NorthCascades wrote: »jhanleybrown wrote: »Frame can make a huge difference. Tire pressure can make a huge difference. Elevation gain will obviously drop ave speed pretty quickly. And a nice bike will also make a huge difference (my road bike frame weighs < 7 lbs for examole).
This has to be a typo? Most road framesets come in around 900g (2 pounds).
My road bike is listed as 21.1 lbs0 -
@lorrpb I think the lightest road bikes are around 13 pounds, cost a fortune, and are not especially tough. So it can't be that @jhanleybrown was telling us about a 7 pound road bike. It was that the frame weighs less than 7 pounds. And I'm confused why that would be advice about going faster when most or possibly so modern frames weigh less than that, it's like saying a bike with pneumatic tires will help you.
Also @mthwbrwn is right that bike weight isn't a very big deal in the range we're taking about in terms of going fast.1 -
NorthCascades wrote: »@lorrpb I think the lightest road bikes are around 13 pounds, cost a fortune, and are not especially tough. So it can't be that @jhanleybrown was telling us about a 7 pound road bike. It was that the frame weighs less than 7 pounds. And I'm confused why that would be advice about going faster when most or possibly so modern frames weigh less than that, it's like saying a bike with pneumatic tires will help you.
Also @mthwbrwn is right that bike weight isn't a very big deal in the range we're taking about in terms of going fast.
You countered with 900 g/2 lb, so I’m confused 🤷🏻♀️0 -
~900 grams is typical of a modern frameset. That's the frame and fork. That's why I'm wondering if < 7 pounds for the frame was a typo, or if we're talking about something else?
Wheels weigh anything from 1,000 grams (for many thousands of dollars) to about double that, they'll add up to 4 pounds, the tires about another pound, etc.1 -
My Scott weighs like 8kilos with pedals and all.1
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? You mean racing framesets? Road frames come in carbon, aluminum, and steel, and are traditionally not just for racing, but also touring. Try doing 100+ miles on a racing frame. Not many people can.NorthCascades wrote: »jhanleybrown wrote: »Frame can make a huge difference. Tire pressure can make a huge difference. Elevation gain will obviously drop ave speed pretty quickly. And a nice bike will also make a huge difference (my road bike frame weighs < 7 lbs for examole).
This has to be a typo? Most road framesets come in around 900g (2 pounds).
Doing a century on a racing frameset isn't exactly unusual. It would be significantly easier to do a century on an agressive road set up than say, a hybrid (though I've seen people do that). Then of course there's the fact that most people doing Ironmans are using TT bikes. If you had said a brevet, then yeah, touring bike here we come, but a century? Just train on a bike with the same or similar geometry as the one that you'll be riding for said century (or you know, just the same bike).
Also you missed titanium in your list of frame materials (I in fact saw someone riding titanium frame on my commute this morning).3 -
Holy guacamole guys. I wasn’t expecting this many comments. Thanks for the support! 🙂1
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Mmmmm, guacamole. Nom nom nom!0
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NorthCascades wrote: »~900 grams is typical of a modern frameset. That's the frame and fork. That's why I'm wondering if < 7 pounds for the frame was a typo, or if we're talking about something else?
Wheels weigh anything from 1,000 grams (for many thousands of dollars) to about double that, they'll add up to 4 pounds, the tires about another pound, etc.
My point to OP is that the bike can make a difference. I'm not sure what it weighs exactly but my road bike is Ti with carbon fork, carbon cranks etc. Its all in probably 12ish lbs??? (I don't know, I know its light enough..)
I have a beach cruiser (with chopper handlebars) that is probably over 40 lbs...
But a nice road bike will be faster than a heavy hybrid or mt bike.
Sure body weight is important...but you do go faster on nice equipment. I'm +1 mph faster (on same route) on a TT bike and -1 mph on a gravel bike. I no longer race but the silly pointy aero hat used to get me +1 mph on a 25 mile time trial. So equipment is a factor.1 -
Wow, I guess I said something in my post that is disagreeable...which is odd because my post just drew attention to another's article that a. I like and 2. is succinct.
Not sure what is being disagreed with, but here goes:
diminishing returns
A yield rate that after a certain point fails to increase proportionately to additional outlays of capital or investments of time and labor.
Yes you can throw a ton of money of money at frames and wheelsets (people love to talk about rotational weight on components to justify the expense) but unless you are currently at the 8-12% BF for competitive male cyclists (10-15% for women) you've got a lot more to gain by working on your body composition. That is not my opinion. That is the opinion of Edmund R. Burke, PhD who wrote Serious Cycling, pretty much the book to read if you would like to improve your cycling and do not have the benefit to team training or a coach. I can't recommend it enough(<-- See, that's my opinion, if you have a better book, post it here. I'd love to read it and no one here benefits from you simply clicking on disagree if you feel otherwise)
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Wow, I guess I said something in my post that is disagreeable...which is odd because my post just drew attention to another's article that a. I like and 2. is succinct.
Not sure what is being disagreed with, but here goes:
diminishing returns
A yield rate that after a certain point fails to increase proportionately to additional outlays of capital or investments of time and labor.
Yes you can throw a ton of money of money at frames and wheelsets (people love to talk about rotational weight on components to justify the expense) but unless you are currently at the 8-12% BF for competitive male cyclists (10-15% for women) you've got a lot more to gain by working on your body composition. That is not my opinion. That is the opinion of Edmund R. Burke, PhD who wrote Serious Cycling, pretty much the book to read if you would like to improve your cycling and do not have the benefit to team training or a coach. I can't recommend it enough(<-- See, that's my opinion, if you have a better book, post it here. I'd love to read it and no one here benefits from you simply clicking on disagree if you feel otherwise)
@mthwbrwn
You need to develop a bit of a thicker skin and BTW showing a disagree got to you invites fly by readers to click again just for fun (yeah I know, a strange kind of fun!).
There's parts of your posts I would disagree with though in context of the OP who is riding "an old one. It’s a steel frame mountain bike from the 80s".
Especially the part about heartrate if you want specifics.
The biggest initial improvement in speed for the OP would simply to ride a better bike. Yes diminishing returns applies the further up the performance ladder you go but my step up from a MTB on road tyres to a hybrid was a leap not an increment. To a better hybrid was a smaller but noticeable step, from a hybrid to a road bike was another leap forward especially on long distance rides.
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