Originally Posted by jppe

I still enjoy riding 100 milers and have been doing one just about every weekend the last several months. Generally the 100 milers I’m doing around where I live have at least 4500’ of climbing. I’m 67 and my endurance is as good as ever. I used to average around 18 mph solo but since a hip replacement and getting older my average speed is around 16-17 mph. I’ve ridden a number of sub 5 hour 100 milers but all of those were in groups. Flatter centuries can make a huge difference in average speeds. We ridden 200 milers to the NC coast and averaged close to 20 mph with a group and flatter terrain.

One day on Tour de Wyoming several years ago we were on one road for the entire 60 miles and it was fairly flat. I decided I was going to ride the 60 miles in no longer than 3 hours and did it. It’s pretty tough because if your speed drops below 20 mph you have to ramp it up for a period of time Just to get the Overall average speed back up to 20 mph.

The fastest 100 miler I’ve done was in 4 hours 15 minutes. It was the first 100 miles of The Ride Across Indiana (RAIN) and I was in a fast group, good winds and flat terrain. I hung onto the front group where we averaged 27+ mph the first hour. I finished the one day 160 mile ride and averaged 21.7 mph for the day. Probably my best One day overall effort ever.

Depending on the size of the group, it’s not difficult to average more than 2 mph faster riding in a group versus solo.