Have you ever gone on a ride and
every time you look down at your computer it says you're doing 18 or 19 mph,
and then at the end of the ride you check the average and it says 14 or
15? I know! What’s up with that, anyway? The thing is, every time you stop, or even just
slow down a lot to make a turn at an intersection or let slower riders catch
up, it really does a number on your average speed. And average speed is one of the key
statistics that I keep track of.
If I ever mention riding 30 or 40
miles around people who don’t ride, the question that I get asked most often
is, “How long does that take you?” And I
really don’t get that. Those of you who
golf—if you ever mention playing 18 holes around people who don’t golf, do they
ask you how long it took you? No. They might ask you how you did, or why you
would do that, or didn’t your wife mind, but I bet they don’t ask you how long
it took. And those of you who play
tennis—if you ever talk about playing 3 sets, do non-tennis-players ask you how
long it took? I bet not. But for some reason the first thing
non-cyclists ask is how long it took.
And I never know the answer to that question. I don’t keep track of time on the bike or
total elapsed time for a ride. Oh, I
know in general that most of the rides I do take longer than an hour, and
usually less than 4 hours. But more
specifically than that, I just honestly don’t know.
But I do pretty much know what my
average speed was for a given ride. Not
that average speed is a mandatory statistic for all riders on all rides. I remember talking to an “A” rider who said
he didn’t really keep track of average speed—he just went out and raced all the
other “A” riders. (He also said that,
even though he didn’t really keep track of his average speed, he knew enough to
know that if you couldn’t do at least 30 mph for long distances you wouldn’t be able to keep up
with his group.) (In case you’re
wondering—no, I never went out riding with him…) No, average speed doesn’t always really tell
the whole picture. For example, today
Brenda went out and had a very strong ride again (I’m so proud of her), doing a
whole lot of 17 & 18 mph. But her
average for the 44 miles was only 14.4 mph.
That’s because the middle part of this ride is a trail ride, which means
a lot of traffic, a bunch of cross streets, and a bunch of hard right turns,
all of which you do at about 3 – 5 mph, and all of which destroy an average speed.
But even though you can get faked
out by an average speed, I still keep track of it. It’s an easy way for me to track progress,
and somehow to me it makes more sense than keeping track of how long it
took. How long it took depends on so
much else besides the riding—how many stops you made, how long you stayed at
each one, whether or not anybody in the group had a flat tire, or whether or
not you stopped to watch some bald eagles circling overhead (which happened to
us out in Geneva this year—very cool) .
So Brenda had a 14.4 on a trail
ride today. But by listening to her talk
about it, and hearing the excitement in her voice, I know she was pulling the
group at 18-20, and that’s enough to impress me. Good ride.
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