I know this is loaded and a big guess but I’m curious how much You guys think I can improve my speed in 1 year. I raced this weekend in a duathlon and the bike leg was 17.25 miles. I have 238 road miles under my belt and maybe another 200 on the trainer. I averaged 16.5 mph at the race. I probably will be riding somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 miles per week for the rest of the year. If I stick to it and really work over the next year how much do you think I can improve my speed on the bike? I hear you guys talk about averaging 20+mph all the time but I also know most of you have a better bike than me and have been doing this stuff for a long time. I ask because I got my splits from the race and was surprised at my biking time. I was 57th for the first run, 28th in biking and then 41st on the second run. So apparently I’m a better biker than I am a runner, which doesn’t say a lot. Whats a realistic improvment in speed over the course of a year for a beginner?
Yeah, it is a loaded question because there are so many variables. It looks like you had very little bike experience under your belt when you did the race. It would not be a stretch to say that all other things being equal, you can hit 20mph for 17.25 miles. You don’t need a fancy bike to ride 20mph. But you do need to put in the training time. You will find that if you are putting in 75 miles a week, that after a few weeks 75 miles a week feels easy. The more time you spend on the bike the more comfortable you will feel and the better you’ll ride. Log the bike time, watch your diet, and train and race happy.
Where you’re at now, I could see alot of improvement, but it will get less and less until you ride harder or up your miles, or both. If your events don’t get longer, endurance is not a big factor, and strength takes over. Time vs. how good your bike is, will be a bigger factor than anything. I just did a nice ride over 25mph and the bike is a common road bike with aero clip ons. Normal wheels and tubes, I just had a very good day which is worth more than contraptions, course if you can pair them up. Vary what your training between short hard efforts and longer grinds and it will come.
You have to train fast in order to race fast. Make sure one of your rides every 7-10 days or so is a harder session(intervals, TT effort, roadie ride, etc…)and you’ll be fine.
You could easily get to that 20mph mark for that distance if you are consistent with your cycling.
frequency and consistency = faster times.
Do you have a recent 5k or 10k race time?
How old are you, and how long have you been training on a bike consistently?
31 yo. 1 10k last fall 1 hr even no other road races. The only thing consistent about my training was the 6 week build up before the race, which was interupted by a cold a couple of weeks before the race. I think I had 190 miles of bike time in the 6 weeks mostly trainer and 60 miles of running on the treadmill. I was consitent with my running when I started last summer but stopped doing everything at Thanksgiving and did not start exercising again until end of February.
You will get faster, no doubt.
I’m in my 30s and didn’t road bike until four years ago. In my first duathlon (5K, 18 miles, 5K), with just a couple hundred miles under my belt, I averaged about 18 mph for an 18 mile course. The next year, with a slightly faster bike and 800 miles of training I averaged nearly 20. The next year with 2,000 miles I was down to 1:04 for the bike part of a mostly flat Olympic distance. That’s about 22 mph. I’m scrawny and a decent runner, but no great shakes on the bike. Be patient. Speed will come. -TB