burnthesheep

Time for a commuter could vary based on probability of hitting lights green or red. But speed in between the stops would be valuable to define your optimal route to/from work or a frequent errand.

If you do it some 200 days a year, 200x even two minutes a day difference is a LOT of time back in your pocket.

Perhaps two routes are equally as safe and equal stoplight or waiting time probability, but one you track your speed on and you're 2mph faster due to less hills or whatever reason.

So long as you enable autopause, you'll get both total time for your commute AND your average speed along the moving parts. Without math of moving time versus total time if you don't. So then you can make informed decisions about which ways around town are faster.

I don't commute, but I research the safest/fastest way OUT of town to do training rides. Optimize my fun time out there. Instead of banging my head around just getting there, and back.

RChung

"Deprecating," not "depricating."

big john

I had a guy on this forum try to argue that a hilly ride would equal out to or be as easy as a flat ride because the rider rests on the descents.

Personally, I stopped using a bike computer more than 20 years ago. In that time I have done over 2000 club rides with lots of red-lining and chasing and hammering and getting dropped and realizing I cannot follow people half my age and 3/4 my weight. It was fun while it lasted but I'll be 68 in a couple weeks.

merlinextraligh

Comparing your own average speed from different days on the same route over time can have some value as a measure of progress. However, as pointed out, all the variables limits its value, and you shouldn’t get hung up on it.

The problem, I, and many others who have posted on this topic over the years, have is that focusing too much on average speed is counterproductive. In the most simplest way it discourages you from properly warming up and cooling down.

More importantly if your just focusing on average speed, you’ll ride at one steady pace which will after a short time not make you any faster.

The most basic way to get faster is doing intervals, and interval workouts do not result in high average speeds for those rides.

Thus ironically, focusing on your average speed, and your 20 mph goal is actually hurting your progress in obtaining that goal.

So, it’s fine to do your own time trial, and measure your average speed against your previous efforts. But if you want to get faster, forget about average speed for most of your rides, and focus,on doing intervals, and doing rides with people that are faster than you.

urbanknight

The schwa has got to be one of the most annoying things about the English language. Why have 5 different vowels (and sometimes 6) if they're all going to sound the same half the time?

Bearhawker

It could be a lot worse - we could have inherited the grammatical gender from English's Germanic root and from all the Norman-French influences later. Never mind the loan-words from everything else.

RChung

That's a fair thought, although I've always found it tough to work through all the variants in the ways "ough" ought to be pronounced. Just reading that sentence right now made me cough.

VegasJen

Spelling is not my forte. I generally look for the little red squiggly line. Saw it when I typed that but forgot to go back and correct it. Spell check has made us lazy.
English is a bear. I do feel for people who try to learn that are not native speakers. We have several different rules that originated from different languages like Latin, German and one other I can't recall right now. It's a wonder natives can master it, let alone anyone who started off with a language that has a universal structure.

SoSmellyAir

Most natives seem to have mastered pronunciation (per their respective regional dialects and/or accents) but not grammar or spelling.

SoSmellyAir

Yeah. I do wonder how anyone who chooses a pronoun does so in other languages which have masculine and feminine versions of "they".

RChung

In written French I've seen the neologistic pronoun "iel" which is derived from "il" and "elle." When spoken, it's one syllable so "il," "elle," and "iel" sound pretty similar and they don't mess up the cadence or tempo of speech.

urbanknight

I bought a snack and sat on the bough, and thought thoroughly about howthat really ought to be less tough

caloso

I've seen "elle" in Spanish, but I've never heard anyone actually use it.

genejockey 

How did you manage through the drought? Any water in the trough?

Seattle Forrest

If the bough was made of cow, would Batman and Robin say kerpow?

Seattle Forrest

Better question: did somebody finally manage to get LSD into the water supply?

VegasJen

That does tend to be a problem for me. I grew up in the South so we would often pronounce a word with an 'a' sound even if spelled with an 'e', or vice versa. Same thing with other vowel sounds. One of the reasons I have such a hard time with spelling. Always seem to be the vowels that get me.

Bearhawker

Watching YT videos all day while i work from home I've been tracking some interesting vowel shifts in the US.

Not sure where the north-south boundary fro this is but it seems to be from Florida to California where the letter "o" is tending to be more nasal in words like nose, hose, etc. One guy I watch a lot of videos from Michigan is really pronounced but he's the only one from a northern State that I've regularly noticed.

Also funny to see a super-short word like "on" being said as differently as "awn" through "oh-wan"

But back to tracking speed... I would have to ride more to actually track it. If the cold/wet weather *ever* stops here I'll be back to tracking. 1 ride so far this year (I no longer ride when the roads are icy...)

WhyFi

Oh boy, this is like an invitation for me to post a video from my man crush Erik Singer -

VegasJen

I've always joked that the funny thing about the South is we can turn something as simple as "and" into a three syllable word. ae-un-duh

urbanknight

That makes sense. In your earlier post, the problem with "deprecating" is that the second vowel sounds a schwa, and spelling it "depricating" would sound exactly the same. Growing up, I hated when I asked a teacher how to spell something and they would respond "sound it out". If I spelled all those words like they sounded, I'd be labeled a moron.

VegasJen

I have a serious issue with spelling that, to this day, I struggle with (I know, don't end a sentence with a preposition!). Even now, at 52, I want to spell things phonetically. When I'm rushing, I will still occasionally spell "of" ove. As I'm thinking about it right now, "of" is the only word that gives an F a V sound. Could be wrong about that, but it's the only one I can think of right now.

Now that I am thinking about it, it's kind of funny.
Can you imagine if the proper spelling of some words was lof (love), glof (glove), dof (dove)? Sounds really odd, but people don't even think about that F making a V sound in 'of'.

GBK233

Wind is my nemesis. It’s physically and mentally draining,

VegasJen

I agree. Here, the only thing worse than wind is the heat. But I already know not to expect to ride much in the summer. But the spring and fall can be so deceptive. Temps look OK, bright and sunny, feeling great. And then I get out there and I'm riding into a 30mph headwind.

CoogansBluff

Well stated.


To hear some here tell it, it would be pointless to time a horse race. Sure, maybe the horse set a course record, but that doesn't mean anything. Maybe he had a tail wind, or maybe the track had perfect texture and firmness that day, or maybe the horse was just lucky to avoid traffic. Totally meaningless.


Just because there's more to the story doesn't mean something is meaningless. I check my average speed on every ride. It tells me a lot. For example, I know my PR on the 3-4 courses that I frequent. If I'm consistently 1 mph off those PR's, when I'm trying to go fast, them I'm pretty confident that I'm not as fit or fast as when I consistently challenged those PR's. And that helps me decide which group rides to join. What else should I be basing it on if not speed comparisons?