How Long Does It Take to Bike 10 Miles?

Cycling is a great sport and one that every day gets more and more popular. When you first start riding, it’s fun to watch yourself improve and get stronger and more efficient. One of your first milestones when cycling is your first ten miles. Ten miles is a great distance for a workout and perfect for a commute that will keep you fit. Many cyclists ask how long it takes to cycle ten miles. Well, that depends on many different factors, and in this article, we’re going to discuss it.

The Different Factors That Affect Speed

There are many outside factors that will change how quickly you will be able to ride 10 miles. It’s not as simple as you might think before we speak about how fast you’re going to be able to cycle ten miles, we need to think about;

• Fitness
• Bike
• Terrain
• Elevation
• Weather

Looking at all these factors, we can tell you roughly what it will take to cycle ten miles.

Fitness

Fitness is vital when it comes to cycling ten miles. The difference between a beginner on the bike and an expert is huge. A professional time trial cyclist will roughly take 18 minutes to cycle ten miles on a TT bike. A beginner would find it challenging to finish in under 35 minutes, twice the time.

You will find that the body adapts to the workload when you get better at cycling. It can conserve and release energy much more efficiently, and your leg muscles, such as the quadriceps, glutes, and hamstrings, become much more powerful, helping you push the bike forward quicker. One can better track his fitness goals with the help of fitness trackers for cycling.

Bike

There are a lot of different types of bikes on the market. You have mountain bikes, gravel bikes, road bikes, time trial bikes, fat bikes, hybrid bikes, and even cruisers. We have different bikes because they are designed for different jobs, off-road riding, road riding, and even commuting.

A time trial bike would be an excellent machine for cycling ten miles fast on a flat course, and most average cyclists would get it done in roughly 30 minutes on this kind of bike. A fat bike with suspension would take much longer. The wide tires, extra weight, and bounce would mean it could take up to an hour to cover ten miles.

Terrain

Riding on the road or on cycle paths is fairly fast, especially on the right bike. There’s little resistance from the tarmac, and you can easily pick up speed with skinny tires. On terrain like this covering ten miles takes minimal effort and can be done in a very quick time.

 If you plan on riding on gravel or a trail, you can expect it to take much more effort and to take a lot longer. The heavy bike with suspension, wide knobby tires, and constant rebound from the bumpy road make it much more challenging to cover ten miles than you might think.

Elevation

Cyclists often speak about elevation. The elevation of a route is how much climbing you need to do to complete it. You will see this logged on applications Strava in either ft or meters climbed. Climbing takes a lot of effort, and no matter how well geared or how light the bike is, it takes much longer than riding on a flat course. You can drastically slow down your ten mile time by riding a hilly route.

Weather

When we talk about whether we speak about the multiple effects, it has on you riding a bike. The first being headwinds. The difference between a headwind and a tailwind could be as much as 10mph on a flat course, so instead of riding at 15mph, you could be at 25mph. Aerodynamics are vital. When a cyclist rides behind another in a peloton then can save up to 30% of the effort to hold the speed due to not being in the wind.

Then you have the temperature. If it is very warm, the body actually has to use a lot of energy to cool itself down and regulate its temperature. The same goes for when you are too cold, and your body has to warm itself up. You also have rain, snow, and other byproducts of weather that can have an effect on speed too.

How Long Does It Take to Bike 10 Miles?

It isn’t easy to estimate but here’s how long we would expect the average cyclist to take to ride 10 miles, depending on a few different factors taken into account. This is based on an average cyclist.

Conclusion

Ten miles is a great way to challenge yourself at riding fast and is one of the most popular distances for time trialing. Training hard and using the correct bike can really help improve your time.