# You have to see this Strava data to believe it



## richj8990 (Apr 4, 2017)

I've been following a lot of the top 10 local dudes (and one female) lately, about 1/3 of them road bike a lot too, the rest seem more or less 100% off-road. As far as too good to be true data, none of them that I know of have e-bikes, maybe 1-2 but I don't think any of them post it as a mountain bike ride. Some guys ride 20-30 miles every other day, so they rack up a lot of yearly miles, but most of that is on pavement.

I finally decided to follow one guy (Halo Team Rider) that has gone on a lot of the remote stuff that I like to try (whether it's worth it or not is a different story). Some top 10 rides have very impressive climbing and overall speeds, but this guy's ride two days ago is hard to believe. This dude must be in olympic shape. I'm basically done with the ride after doing about 1/3 of what he did. Check out the mph vs. the elevation for the miles he did, dude is a biking machine. He had three separate climbs of 500 feet or more, and one climb of 3000 feet. The first few miles were on pavement, the rest was on dirt, WTF!!!


47.11miDistance

4:13:08 Moving Time

6,073ftElevation


190WEstimated Avg Power

2,884kJEnergy Output
Show Less

AvgMaxSpeed11.2mi/h36.0mi/hCalories3,216 Elapsed Time4:45:22 


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

I know some people who are fast (not sure if they're THAT fast or not - hard to know without seeing the terrain), and have tried to keep up with them on occasion, so I have a reasonable concept of the pace you have to sustain for that stuff. I don't have that kind of fitness.

This existed for awhile, but it seems the site is defunct now.

https://road.cc/content/news/84868-digital-epo-smash-your-strava-times…-cheating


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## J.B. Weld (Aug 13, 2012)

That is pretty fast for that much climbing, definitely believable though. A lot depends on the tread, smooth hardpack is a lot different than soft loam, sand, chunky gravel, etc, which is one reason why strava's estimated watts aren't that accurate but 200w for a 4+ hour ride is pretty tough. 

Really the best way to see how much effort went into a ride is to look for riders with a lightning bolt next to their power data, which means they were using a power meter.


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

J.B. Weld said:


> That is pretty fast for that much climbing, definitely believable though. A lot depends on the tread, smooth hardpack is a lot different than soft loam, sand, chunky gravel, etc, which is one reason why strava's estimated watts aren't that accurate but 200w for a 4+ hour ride is pretty tough.
> 
> Really the best way to see how much effort went into a ride is to look for riders with a lightning bolt next to their power data, which means they were using a power meter.


My "estimated" power on most rides is about half that. On sub-2hr rides, I close that gap somewhat, but yeah.

That climbing/distance is at the low end for what I deal with where I live, though.

I was browsing some of the local segment-leaders on Strava just for giggles. One guy has a power meter on his road bike, but not his mtb. Saw a 70mi road ride in abt 4hrs with 4500-ish ft of climbing (point-to-point, mostly downhill) with a weighted avg power of 219W.

Also found an enduro guy who shuttles/takes chairlifts frequently on his other rides with a top speed nearly 7mph faster than the next person on the leaderboard, and I'm pretty sure he left his Garmin running while he shuttled to the top of the gravel road segment I was looking at.


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## J.B. Weld (Aug 13, 2012)

Harold said:


> That climbing/distance is at the low end for what I deal with where I live, though.


Dang, do you shuttle dowm instead of up? 

Anything approaching 100'/mile avg for a ride feels like a lot of climbing me.


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

J.B. Weld said:


> Dang, do you shuttle dowm instead of up?
> 
> Anything approaching 100'/mile avg for a ride feels like a lot of climbing me.


Lol. Not hard to build mtb rides around here with 200 or 300ft/mile. 100ft/mi is at the low end. You can get a little less, but that's really hard to find. avg is probably 150-200ft/mi.

Road rides usually have lower totals since there aren't many roads up in the mtns, but there's plenty of gravel, so gravel routes are often brutal.

True, once you get past 25mi or so, the averages drop a bit because invariably you'll have to spend some time on something flat in a valley or on a ridgetop to connect to more climbing or descending.

and yeah, even "intermediate" locals are blisteringly fast after they've been riding this stuff regularly for years and years.


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## slapheadmofo (Jun 9, 2006)

J.B. Weld said:


> Dang, do you shuttle dowm instead of up?
> 
> Anything approaching 100'/mile avg for a ride feels like a lot of climbing me.


That's about average in my area.


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## Sidewalk (May 18, 2015)

It's really hard to comprehend how fast fast guys are. I'm above average, but not what I would call 'fast'.



richj8990 said:


> I've been following a lot of the top 10 local dudes (and one female) lately, about 1/3 of them road bike a lot too, the rest seem more or less 100% off-road. As far as too good to be true data, none of them that I know of have e-bikes, maybe 1-2 but I don't think any of them post it as a mountain bike ride. Some guys ride 20-30 miles every other day, so they rack up a lot of yearly miles, but most of that is on pavement.
> 
> I finally decided to follow one guy (Halo Team Rider) that has gone on a lot of the remote stuff that I like to try (whether it's worth it or not is a different story). Some top 10 rides have very impressive climbing and overall speeds, but this guy's ride two days ago is hard to believe. This dude must be in olympic shape. I'm basically done with the ride after doing about 1/3 of what he did. Check out the mph vs. the elevation for the miles he did, dude is a biking machine. He had three separate climbs of 500 feet or more, and one climb of 3000 feet. The first few miles were on pavement, the rest was on dirt, WTF!!!


Hard to compare numbers with so little data, but it sounds a little faster than me. But not a lot. I recently did a ride that had more than one 3000+' climb, as well as a bunch of other smaller ones. I get my ass kicked by a lot of other locals in my area.

Check out one of your local fast guys, Brian Scarborough:

https://www.strava.com/athletes/1769045



Harold said:


> I was browsing some of the local segment-leaders on Strava just for giggles. One guy has a power meter on his road bike, but not his mtb. Saw a 70mi road ride in abt 4hrs with 4500-ish ft of climbing (point-to-point, mostly downhill) with a weighted avg power of 219W.


To give you an idea of how fast fast is, I am not fast. I did a road event (I have power on my roadie) where I did 70 miles, 5000' climbing, in four hours (overall 125 mile, 10k event). A friend of mine finished that event an HOUR ahead of me, he finished second to Phil Gaiman.

I going to pick up power for my MTB soon. I am curious to compare the "Strava estimates" to real numbers. I just dug around a little and found two road climbs where I was on the same bike, one before and one after I got a PM, and both attempts at the climb were similar time (6:56 vs 6:58). There was a 50 watt difference between them! I imagine the numbers for MTB would be worse, but who knows. My weight and bike weights are close to accurate, a couple pounds difference didn't likely create a massive 50 watt difference though.



slapheadmofo said:


> That's about average in my area.


That is on the lower end of average in my area (though, to be honest, about what most of mine is).


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## JDHutch (Sep 29, 2017)

I've improved my riding to where I'm faster than the average guy and its not uncommon for me to have the fastest time for the day on Strava for a trail. I'll generally pass a few riders while on a trail...and then every once in a while a dude blows by me like I'm standing still and I realize how good the really good riders are.


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## exodus1500 (Jun 5, 2010)

Doesn't seem especially crazy. Look up nue races like Mohican, Lumberjack, and Marji on strava.


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## notso (Jan 22, 2015)

exodus1500 said:


> Doesn't seem especially crazy. Look up nue races like Mohican, Lumberjack, and Marji on strava.


Agreed. Same for the SM100 top 5 are almost always sub-8 hrs (12.5 mph) in a race with 12,000 ish ft of climbing. Granted, there are quite a few road/gravel sections. This year, conditions were quite tough, and the winner averaged almost 14 mph.


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## coke (Jun 7, 2008)

I did my first marathon race in early 2018. I was primarily concerned with just finishing and for the most part was just enjoying the ride. I'm sure I could have gone faster, but my goal was to maintain a good pace and not cramp, which was somewhat challenging since I picked a little too tough of a gear on my SS.

In the XC series I race in, I'm around CAT 2 speed. Just sharing this to show that these speeds and distances are probably achievable by most Cat 2 and faster racers.









Now here is an example of someone who is truly fast (different race than I posted above, but avg speed should be similar). I'm not sure I could keep up with an E bike :crazy:


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## scatterbrained (Mar 11, 2008)

Harold said:


> Lol. Not hard to build mtb rides around here with 200 or 300ft/mile. 100ft/mi is at the low end. You can get a little less, but that's really hard to find. avg is probably 150-200ft/mi.
> 
> ..........


All this talk of feet per mile made me curious. I averaged my last dozen rides and found that I'm averaging 170ft per mile of climbing. Man, I don't think I'd want to increase that number, I feel like I'm doing too much climbing as it is, but I sure do enjoy coming back down.

On the subject of truly fast guys, there is one decent near my house where the KOM is a full 20 seconds faster than me and he makes all that time on the 1/8th mile climb out. There is another climb (1.7miles, 953ft) where the KOM is 15 minutes faster than me, and he's only averaging 7.3mph. The crazy thing is, while his power output on the climb was 100watts more than mine, I know it was less than what i'd expect from a top level pro road racer by a fair margin.


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## Sidewalk (May 18, 2015)

coke said:


> View attachment 1232435


I know the third place guy, Nic. He's...fast.

Similar note, Larissa won for women's. She is faster than me. She beat me by 15 minutes in a 5.5 hour 100k!



scatterbrained said:


> . The crazy thing is, while his power output on the climb was 100watts more than mine, I know it was less than what i'd expect from a top level pro road racer by a fair margin.


Have to consider weight. A fast guy I know weighs about 130 pounds and probably produces a good 50w more than me. So his numbers aren't ultra impressive until you consider power to weight, the it's amazing (domestic pro level).


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## scatterbrained (Mar 11, 2008)

Sidewalk said:


> I know the third place guy, Nic. He's...fast.
> 
> Similar note, Larissa won for women's. She is faster than me. She beat me by 15 minutes in a 5.5 hour 100k!
> 
> Have to consider weight. A fast guy I know weighs about 130 pounds and probably produces a good 50w more than me. So his numbers aren't ultra impressive until you consider power to weight, the it's amazing (domestic pro level).


Yeah, I know. But I still expect to see closer to 300w or more from a pro roadie. The guy I was referencing averaged about 280w on the climb, where I average 175w. I know that if I were at my old "racing weight" and was putting out about 5w/kg that would see me right around 300w.


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## sgltrak (Feb 19, 2005)

I'm just an old guy who is nowhere near the top of the lists around here, but the numbers in the OP don't seem out of line. I've never ridden with a power meter, so I have only the STRAVA estimates to go by. According to STRAVA, during longer race events I average around 170-175W for 5-7 hour mountain bike events with an average speed in the 10 mph range and 100-135 feet climbed per mile and a 50-70 mile loop with the same starting and ending point. STRAVA did show one of my weekend loop rides near home a while back as having an average power of 207W for a 2 hour mountain bike trail ride at about 10 mph with 140ft climbed per mile, with the same starting and ending point.


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## *OneSpeed* (Oct 18, 2013)

Very terrain dependent. 

I surprised the hell out of myself last spring when I did a race series (4 races) notorious for the amount of climbing and managed to average over 10 MPH. SS bike, Cat 1, 2,700ft of vert in 1.4 ish hours. (includes warmup lap) Obviously a lot of climbing but not technical, though all singletrack. 

So yeah it's possible, but only with the right rider and the right terrain. 

(never used a power meter, or any other device that gives accurate data for this type of conversation.)


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## J.B. Weld (Aug 13, 2012)

scatterbrained said:


> Yeah, I know. But I still expect to see closer to 300w or more from a pro roadie. The guy I was referencing averaged about 280w on the climb, where I average 175w. I know that if I were at my old "racing weight" and was putting out about 5w/kg that would see me right around 300w.


It does depend on your weight but 290w for 3 hours is a lot of power no matter how you slice it, obviously enough to win a pro race and take a bunch of kom's while doing it.

I think a lot of people overestimate how much power they think they can produce.


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