Racing Speed

I was taking a look at some of the road racing results from last year. The Halton Road Race held an Elite class event. Elite road racers are around 20 years of age. They did an 88k race and the winner held an average speed of 37.5 kph.

CHIN International held a 35k race for the Master class. The Master road racers for this event were 40 plus years of age. The winner held a very strong average speed of 41.9 kph.

Riding solo over rolling hills with low to moderate winds should allow a serious rider the opportunity to maintain an average speed near the 30 kph mark.

Group rides may support higher averages.

I did some research in this area as I had an interesting discussion about speed and distance with someone yesterday. I have done a lot of training over the years and when I was racing it was always a challenge to keep a pace in the 35 – 40 kph range. And that was in a group setting in an organized race.

The reality is that training loops on mixed traffic roads with hills and winds will slow the average pace down for the solo rider. Perhaps as low as 26 – 28 kph. Whenever I hear numbers above 35 kph I think strong tailwinds and long downhill stretches. I remember one such loop near Montreal. It was roughly 80k and it featured about 30 percent of the loop ascending and the balance descending. Some of the slopes made me quite nervous and I was around 17 years old at the time. But the rate of speed was remarkable. Going back uphill would have been a different story.