Today I took a longer bike route home. I started to time myself when I got to the canal and from the Laurier bridge down to hogs back and up the Rideau river to home it was 18.27 km. Average pace on the path was just shy of 24 km/h. At least I know that I'm not breaking the 30 km/h limit on the paths, but I'm slower than I thought I went. My fastest km was 28.6 km/h.
Today I started feeling like my energy tank was at 1/8, and I went as fast as I could, only slowing down north of Bank St. When I finished, I felt like I wasn't at zero energy, but maybe 1/16. I was tried. Some days I feel like I just need to burn off whatever energy I have left and empty myself out. It feels good to do that.
It's weird because I thought that I "boot it" sometimes. In the news today a professional biker did an average speed of 52 km/h over 31 km. Ya, I'm slow. That's what it feels like when I'm going on the path and I see someone on the road. They are usually faster than me, and once I timed a guy and he looked like he was moving at double my pace. Apparently that is possible.
I guess if I want to go faster I should probably fix up the old road bike I have and maybe oil the chains on all the bikes. Installing the clipless peddles would help too.
Is that 52 km/h on roads or in a velodrome? Seems awful fast. My fastest speed on they way to work this week was 44 km/h. Only sustained that for a short period though. My average speed on the trip to work that day was 30 km/h over 7 km. Check out "The Flying Scotsman" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472268/) if you want to see a good movie about cycling. Graeme Obree set a record of 51.8 km in 1 hour. That's a pretty good pace, and hard to keep that up for an hour.
ReplyDeleteThe news story about the 52 km/h guy:
ReplyDeletehttp://canadiancyclist.com/dailynews.php?id=21913
Going at 30 km/h is pretty damn fast if you ask me. I was really bummed the other day when a strong wind was behind me and I didn't start the gps because I think I would have been going 30 km/h without peddling. With the road lights, people on the paths, and me being such a wind sail, I don't feel my bike's really built for speed. But it would be nice to figure out how much faster I can go.
What kind of bike do you have?
I got a "hybrid" bike. I swapped out the tires so the tires are basically slicks. Continental GatorSkin (28c) on the front, and Continental Sport Contact (32c) on the back. The tires help to speed it up quite a bit. I got some handlebars that gave me a little more aerodynamic position, although I'm not sure how much they helped. Also, I got clipless pedals. Before I got the pedals I hit 40 km/h once with a good wind, and I felt very uncomfortable, like I was out of control. Now that I got the clipless pedals, I feel much more stable at high speeds. Mind you, I travel a lot on roads with bike lanes. I don't think I'd want to travel that fast on a bike path.
ReplyDeleteI figured out that I get a LOT more info from the online version of runkeeper than I do on the iphone app. It's got speed vs elevation, etc.
ReplyDeleteSo my top speed on the paths were closer to 35 km/h. I feel a bit better about my "top speed" now with that info, but I still have a long way to go.