Originally Posted by
runnergoneridin
So from what you guys are saying, I just need more time with the gearing I have and work into it. And the better I get at riding, the closer I'll be to optimizing my average speed with the bike the way it currently is set up. Makes sense, and is simple enough to understand.
At the very least, it seems like I'm right in line for my level of experience. For the most part I was between 16 and 19.5 mph where I was riding.
Plus, I'm not completely comfortable on the bike yet, either - I need a new seat or something, because this one sucks donkey balls.
For a little perspective - I rode 100 miles in 5 hours flat (20mph) 40 years ago as a racer in the best shape of my life on a pure racing bike. (Training wheels and tires but still a lot lighter and faster than most wheels out there today.) That was after years of riding, a 5000 mile post college year where I rode from Boston to and up Mt. Washington and back. Next summer I started racing. Rode 10,500 miles that year. The next I was doing rides like that 100 miler routinely. But ... you can see I didn't get there overnight. Yes, the bike helped a lot. But the bike didn't get me there. The years of riding did. Then I just needed a bike that wouldn't slow me down.
And more perspective - use this time on your current bike to observe your position on the bike. Watch others,. If you have a chance to ride with racers or other good riders, ask for their opinions on your position on the bike. Listen - to them, to your body. Getting your body in condition to ride fast and putting it in a position to do so is by far the most important thing. The bike is just a tool. Good tools are better but good tools don't make a carpenter.
I did my first year of racing on a biketha tfit me poorly. I didn't know. That year of being fast, I worked in a bike shop. The mechanic encouraged me to buy last year's best bike, still boxed up in the basement. I did. It fit. And my riding times plummeted and kept falling all that summer. But without the riding I did over the previous years on that poor fitting bike, I would not have been there. (And those times fell and speed increased riding the same gears, wheels and tires of my older bike. It wasn't that the bike was "faster". It was that it fit.
Oh, and just to show what race incentive and race conditions (a field of 120 riders) can do: that summer of the 5 hour 100 miler, I rode a 105 mile much hillier race with a very competitive field. First 30 of us averaged 26.6 mph! Race speeds are a different animal.
Ben