Let go of the idiot trolls you encountered. I'm of the opinion that that hostility comes mostly from people who have no real accomplishments or skills, or are trying to sell their own nonsense.
No pain, no gain is a myth. If you're getting faster and riding longer without soreness, consider yourself lucky. Pain is a side-effect of hard work, not something to be pursued. It used to be believed that damaging muscles was necessary for muscles to grow. That's been disproved. I've gotten to the point where I can ride more than 100 miles at a pretty good clip without experiencing any significant muscle pain. I'm going to laugh at anyone who wants to tell me that isn't a good workout.
Enjoy the efforts you're making, keep pushing yourself for the sake of personal accomplishment, and feel free to ask basic questions here. There's a couple of posters here who might attack you that way, but the moderators here are very good at banning such people. We'll do our best to answer your question, then savagely attack each other when we disagree.
I can ride 20 miles at 22-23 mph and still end up taking well over an hour depending on the route. There's these things called traffic lights and stop signs. Also, speed isn't always a good indicator of effort. Some of my toughest workouts have been rides into a headwind, and times on those are awful. With a tailwind, I can lollygag, and still look like I was really pushing it. And, of course, there's hills.
I see people post speeds like yours, making it obvious that is maximum effort for their level of fitness, and 99% of the responses will be polite and try to be helpful. I disagree with the above poster, there's no problem with describing what you're doing as "full gas.". That gives us some perspective of where you are in your development, which is pretty important in tailoring advice.
Eff red it. Who cares what they think?