Bro, I routinely hit those numbers in an hour long spin class, and that's while dealing with hills and surges and whatever else the instructor throws at us. Not a big deal at all.
You didn't average 20mph on a mountain bike, stop lying.
I'm not lying. A ton of people in this thread (even older athletes) saying they do that pace easily on road bikes, so I don't know why you would think a fit college age guy couldn't do it on a mountain bike. Especially since I admitted I was hammering and I said "I would try to finish in under an hour." Sometimes I was successful, sometimes I wasn't, but by the end I was always going all-out like it was a race.
And to be clear, I was riding the mountain bike on the roads. I wasn't using the bike on trails.
Yeah that’s cus they’re racing and on time trial bikes.
Obviously that’s way different than biking easy on a road bike and I’m sure Teare could go way faster in a time trial as well.
20 mph is not equal to 8:30 idiot
I'd say it's more like 7:00 pace. And I think that's a good way to think about the ride. If someone tells you they ran 7:00 pace for an hour, what do you think? It's certainly a good run. If it's an elite male endurance athlete running in a race, it's not particularly impressive, perhaps even bad. If it's a steady run from a relatively-new runner, it might suggest quite a lot of talent! And even many elite runners run 7:00 pace or slower on their recovery runs.
The other relevant aspect is conditions/pacing. Depending on exactly where Teare lives, it could easily be 10-15 minutes of stop-and-go to get to where he can really ride, then 30-40 minutes averaging 25 mph, and then 10-15 minutes home, which would really show quite a bit of talent, especially since he's probably not very aerodynamic. Or perhaps the route was very hilly. Given that his max speed was only 27.8, my guess is that neither was the case, but it's possible.
Agree with all of this except there is no way he can average 25mph for 30-40 minutes (people should realize that this does take real training). Totally understand getting to where you can actually ride but maybe it's more like sub-20 mph to 21-22mph. My guess is that he had pretty clean riding (drove somewhere to ride, started at a decent time). Either way, it wouldn't take long in Eugene to get somewhere with good riding. But it's not a simple knee jerk reaction to be like an hour @ 20mph is fast or slow. It's perfectly solid. I agree with 7ish minute pace, maybe a little faster. Not crazy for a top level endurance athlete but still shows some talent/skill. Running to biking is something that translates decently well. Biking isn't as form dependent as something like swimming is. If you have good endurance you can ride a bike. This is still worlds away from what top cyclists can do. I would also caution comparing this to a spin bike. Who knows about the watts on those things & riding outside is pretty different when you actually have to handle the bike. I do agree that ~200w for an hour is plausible for a lot of well trained runners. I just don't get the immediate jump to categorizing it as good/bad, hard/ez. If you can do it & you think it's easy, maybe that's because you're well trained. It's still difficult for some riders.
This post was edited 5 minutes after it was posted.
FTP (threshold power) - I'm guessing 3.0-3.50. Above 4.0 is semi pro level, I think. Teare, obviously has a great engine. If he transitioned to cycling, like the Canadian 3:56 miler....who is a fixture....he could, possibly attain pro level...
He’s barely a pro runner. No way he could be a pro cyclist. Maybe get to sub elite cycling level and that’s a big maybe.
I don't know sht about cycling and even I know this isn't impressive. When I was in college and injured, I had a 20 mile route I would try to finish in under an hour on my crappy mountain bike. Granted I was hammering it, but it was a hilly route. I would expect a pro endurance athlete on a road bike to do that in his sleep.
No way you were coming close to doing 20 miles in an hour on a mountain bike.
Not impossible on a mtb, but would take slicks and a good position.
agree that 20mph is around 7mm. It’s definitely not an impressive pace. I used ride 200-250 miles per week and would average between 20-22mph, although probably half of that was with a group. Solo recovery rides were 18.5-20 mph. A long solo breakaway in a race is often 23-26 mph and it’s not going to stick at the low end of that range.
I love that this blatantly TROLL of a thread has nothing but serious responses lol
Okay, the fact that this thread is still trending has baited me into responding.
Take this into consideration:
Keegan Swensen (albeit, the best of the best right now) puts up 10+ races/rides per year over 100mi on gravel and MTB set-ups and averages over 20mph, and a lot of times he’s riding solo off the front without drafting. Heck, his Leadville 100 MTB CR is right around 18mph at an average elevation of 11,000ft and 10k elevation gain.
The only reason the 🤯 emoji is appropriate for this thread is because it’s now reached 3 pages of responses.
edit: I now see with 2 responses myself that I am perhaps the part of the issue I am female dogging about
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
Reason provided:
Calling myself out
If this was the max he could do, then he is really bad at riding. Was he on a good bike, what was the terrain like, etc. I was a pretty good runner (2:35, 8 years early and did some hill climbs on the bike and was good at that). As a workout when I was teaching at Oregon State at 38 I did (solo) a rolling route that had few stops signs to slow me down but a non-trivial number of climbs (last one 400' vertical three miles from the end) and rode 49.6 (~80km) miles in 2:01:02 using a five year old good road bike). At the time I could run 35-flat for 10k. That was 36 years ago so none of the bike tech, no monitors, just a watch.
i'm like a 1:30 half marathon person who did basically this same bike ride workout a few times a week with pretty moderate effort a few years ago when i was cycling as cross training