Cycling UK Forum

Hi,

I am doing a cycling tour and we are being split into groups. To go into the correct group, I have been asked for my "avg speed on a flat ride."

I don't do flat rides, all my rides have elevation. How can I roughly calculate my avg speed on a flat based off of a recent ride which has elevation?
For example a recent ride on Strava is:
41 km
1:39:25 moving time
601m elevation
24.8km/h avg speed

What would the flat road equivalent be? Or in the cycling world, 600m over 41km is relatively flat, and so this is the figure to go with?

i would of thought your ride of a 1,000' ascent every 12.5 mile was a fairly hilly ride, my typical is 1,000' evey 20 mile
I would have thought your av for that ride puts you in a fairly fit group. I would guess you could comfortably av 17.5mph on flatish terrain (ie 1,000' ascent evry 40 mile)

uhhu wrote: ↑28 Mar 2024, 11:50am I am doing a cycling tour and we are being split into groups. To go into the correct group, I have been asked for my "avg speed on a flat ride."

What would the flat road equivalent be? Or in the cycling world, 600m over 41km is relatively flat, and so this is the figure to go with?

What are the Tour company calling "flat"? Just asking cos I've seen tours aimed at the more leisurely cyclist where the longest day is ranked as "tough" at 60km with 400m climbing and tours aimed at club-level riders where the average distance is 180km a day and a "flat" day is around 2500m climbing (with a hilly day coming in at 4000m!) so it'd be good to get some idea of where your tour sits in that spectrum.

Also what are the speed options being offered to you? The ride leading I've done has usually benchmarked 12, 14 and 16mph as the approximate slow, medium, fast although it does allow a degree of flexibility for (eg) weather and traffic.

British Cycling produced a grading system for Sportives which looked at distance and climbing to produce a matrix of difficulty:

uhhu wrote: ↑28 Mar 2024, 11:50am Hi,

I am doing a cycling tour and we are being split into groups. To go into the correct group, I have been asked for my "avg speed on a flat ride."

I don't do flat rides, all my rides have elevation. How can I roughly calculate my avg speed on a flat based off of a recent ride which has elevation?
...

If you are concerned to get into the right group for the 1st ride I'd ask if they have decided on the speed bands yet (or if they are waiting on answers to make equal group sizes). Might be that when you see the from-to for each group they are wide enough that it is obvious which group you are best suited to e.g hypothetically say av. sepped Group A up to 10 mph, Group B 10-20 mph and Group C above 20 mph might be easy to work out your group.

Ian

The request is to absolve the company of blame if you cannot keep up with the group you are assigned to ( I.e. insurance against macho pig headedness). So just pick a speed that won't bore you, but is a comfortable ride for you and which allows you to have a good look around, which is the whole point of a tour.

Why not put in the 24.8 kph and then you are unlikely to be put in a too fast group.

I'll put in 28 km/h as per one post, and if it's too fast I can drop back to the group behind. Whereas, if the group is too slow, there is no way of getting to other group until following day.
It's London to Amsterdam and will have a day where we do 1500m elevation.

uhhu wrote: ↑28 Mar 2024, 11:50amHow can I roughly calculate my avg speed on a flat based off of a recent ride which has elevation?

If you've already got a load of data on Strava that you can cut & paste into Excel, it's simple enough to calculate your own personal "Naismith's Rule" if you download the regression add-in.

uhhu wrote: ↑28 Mar 2024, 4:45pm It's London to Amsterdam and will have a day where we do 1500m elevation.

It'll be the headwind that the issue. not the elevation!

uhhu wrote: ↑28 Mar 2024, 11:50am Hi,

I am doing a cycling tour and we are being split into groups. To go into the correct group, I have been asked for my "avg speed on a flat ride."

I don't do flat rides, all my rides have elevation. How can I roughly calculate my avg speed on a flat based off of a recent ride which has elevation?
For example a recent ride on Strava is:
41 km
1:39:25 moving time
601m elevation
24.8km/h avg speed

What would the flat road equivalent be? Or in the cycling world, 600m over 41km is relatively flat, and so this is the figure to go with?

I'd classify the ride you quoted as moderately hilly. It's about as hilly as we have in our part of Sweden if you're sticking to asphalt and there is plenty of climbing there.

A flat ride for me is one with less than 75m/10km of climbing. I've got a Strava friend in NW Germany and his most recent ride had only 75m elevation for 167km.

So to compare, if you're comfortable at about 25kph on your 150m/10km route, a flat ride should be comfortable at 26-27kph. Maybe a touch faster with favourable winds, but as another posted alluded to, headwinds can be unrelenting on flat terrain.

Jon in Sweden wrote: ↑30 Mar 2024, 7:01am
A flat ride for me is one with less than 75m/10km of climbing. I've got a Strava friend in NW Germany and his most recent ride had only 75m elevation for 167km.

that is flatter than a snooker table.
(snooker table max slope is ¼" over 12 foot, which would be equivalent to 290m over 167km)

What goes up must come down. I thought it would pan out to be roughly similar, but thinking about my own rides, it is lower on hilly rides. I'd probably need to multiply my hilly average speed by 1.25 to get a rough idea of what it would be on the flat.

Based on the data from a 1400 mile 27 day tour in 2011:

Moving time is 5m26/mile plus an additional 26min for each 1000' of climbing, and

Total time including rest stops is 6m26/mile & 43min/1000'

So the effect of climbing 4,500' on total ride time is the equivalent of cycling about 30 extra miles on the flat.

(Another 880 mile 20 day tour two years previously was very similar.)

Manc33 wrote: ↑30 Mar 2024, 6:37pm What goes up must come down. I thought it would pan out to be roughly similar, but thinking about my own rides, it is lower on hilly rides. I'd probably need to multiply my hilly average speed by 1.25 to get a rough idea of what it would be on the flat.

On a good day I can manage 15mph on flat terrain. If there's a hill that's 10% up for 1 mile followed by 10% down for 1 mile then it would take 8 minutes for the 2 miles if the hill wasn't there. However, I'll only manage 5mph at best, and probably 4mph) on that 10% uphill so that will be 12 to 15 minutes of climbing, so already more time than 2 miles on the flat. If zooming downhill at 60mph (which I would never do - once over 40mph I start thinking about what might go wrong), the descent will take a minute with 2 minutes more likely, with the total time for the 2 miles of 14 to 17 minutes. Do your own sums according to your own abilities but this calculation makes my average speed of 12mph on my local 25 mile circuit with 550m of climbing look better.