riding stationary bike question

Just think about all the miles/kilometers those athletes are doing in the Tour de France .. or the Olympics .. they aren't putzing around .. they're pumping it closer to 25 mph.

They do 20mph+ going up hills

....and they're not short hills

I'll let you in on a training secret of almost every elite athlete you will meet:
Time matters more than miles.

A one hour ride with 3 sets of intervals of 3x1:00 each
A two hour ride with 45 minutes of sustained threshold work
A 90 minute ride with 20x0:30 intervals

It's all based on time, not distance. The miles are just a bit of trivia that come along for the ride (along with terrain, temperature, and wind speed).

Hi guys, I wonder if you can help me. I have been working out on a stationary bike and have seen a lot of stuff online (including upwards in this thread) about people routinely managing 10 miles in 30 mins. I can manage 4 miles in 33 minutes, and that's if i'm really gunning for it. Could someone let me know how many rpms they are reaching? I am going at around 80rpm which feels quite fast, but I have only begun fairly recently - last few months - so maybe I will be able to attain this further down the line.

Thanks for reading!
Gill

GillOrmsby1 wrote: »

Hi guys, I wonder if you can help me. I have been working out on a stationary bike and have seen a lot of stuff online (including upwards in this thread) about people routinely managing 10 miles in 30 mins. I can manage 4 miles in 33 minutes, and that's if i'm really gunning for it. Could someone let me know how many rpms they are reaching? I am going at around 80rpm which feels quite fast, but I have only begun fairly recently - last few months - so maybe I will be able to attain this further down the line.

Thanks for reading!
Gill

It comes down to cadence. To hit 10 miles in 30 minutes, you need a cadence in the mid 90's....so somewhere around 95 revolutions per minute.

Likely not comparable to mileage outside. If you are using it as measure of one stationary or spin session to another its worthwhile. If you're measuring a spin session as what you could reasonably do outside it's pretty unlikely.

Arrabindi wrote: »

Does it even make sense to make about mileage on a stationary bike? 1) When you're on a real bike the mileage depends on so many factors, 2) that are probably not accounted for on a stationary bike, like air resistance, gear, wheel diameter, weight of the bike and yourself, etc.
I think it's difficult to compare a stationary bike to a real one, so I think you should just compete against on yourself on the stationary bike and aim to do better than you did last week and not worry about how it compares to real biking.

1) A mile is a mile, regardless of if you're a Time Trial machine, an Aero Bike, A Mountain Bike, BMX, or Commuter bike. A mile is a mile is a mile. You cannot change that fact that 5,280 feet are one mile.

2) The manufacturer accounted for the size of the flywheel into the logarithm that the computer uses to figure out how far a mile is. Just like a 700c tire/wheel combo has a different circumference that a 650b tire/wheel combo has.

I will overall agree with you on the Air Resistance, Gearing and weight [esp when it comes to climbing], but the distance thing... a mile is a mile is a mile.

Are you sure your bike isn't measuring in kilometres? I do 11 kilometres in 30 mins... works out at 6 miles

Riley1511riley wrote: »

Just hit my 8 month record of 14.41 miles in 35 min with 621 cal burned do yes really possible in think that's around 24.7 mph average maybe little higher

On a stationary bike or on a real bicycle?

To state the obvious - stationary bikes don't move!

Some purely count the pedal revolutions so if you have minimal resistance you can spin the crank in a blur of legs doing very little real work and burning not a lot of energy but register a good distance.
If they are taking the sensor from the flywheel speed then resistance (gearing effectively) will be taken into account then they have a better chance of being proportionate to your effort (power).
You can test that yourself by keeping cadence steady and varying the resistance and seeing what difference it makes to the "speed".

More sophisticated bikes are better and measure power and then can give a reasonable but still rough estimate of speed.
Last night I saw 22.8 virtual miles on a WattbikePro (with an accurate power meter) doing effectively a one hour time trial to exhaustion.
I couldn't do that speed outside on my local roads but perhaps if I was in a velodrome or found a 20+ mile stretch of perfect road......

I hit 20 miles or so in 50 to 55 minutes on the stationary bike at the gym. It changes the resistance at various times throughout the time I'm doing it. I know I probably wouldn't go that fast on a real bike but I do go hard at the gym to keep a good pace.