Top speed everrrr

[D.A.L.E.]

Is there a tool/program/website/whatever that would allow me to load all my Strava rides into and see what my top speed ever was? A bit like this but for top speed.

[Chris N]

http://veloviewer.com/ - you'll need to pay for the pro version (£10/year) to get it though.

[Ningishzidda]

I can easily look up my 'Top speed ever.' Its written in my 2008 diary.

[marcusjb]

http://veloviewer.com/ - you'll need to pay for the pro version (£10/year) to get it though.

Yep - in veloviewer activities, you can sort by top speed.

Doing so made me realise that the top speed shown on many rides of mine is likely to be erroneous!  I got quite a number of 90kph+ ones on flatter rides - highly unlikely to be true!

[Andrew]

And catching a train after having forgotten to turn the GPS off doesn't count as a top speed either!

[rogerzilla]

I know mine.  There are so few hills in the UK that are good for 50mph+ that you're usually watching for it 

The two fastest ones I know are Snap Hill into Ogbourne St George (Wilts) and Pork Hill* into Tavistock from Merrivale (Devon).  Mere steepness isn't enough - you need a good surface, clear sightlines, few side roads and gentle curves.  It helps if there is a run-out at the bottom too; you could probably touch 50mph off Uffington White Horse, but the dead stop for the crossroads at the bottom would require you to brake very hard well before you reached it.  Unless you felt lucky, then you could just bomb across and hope nothing was coming.  I don't recommend this unless you perpetually win at roulette.

A hill that could have 70mph potential is the pass from Langdon Beck into St John's Chapel (Co. Durham) but the headwind was so strong when I rode it that I never got above 48mph.

*I heard someone from St Budeaux CC managed 72mph down there; I got to 56mph on tri-bars and was still accelerating, but caught up with motor traffic.

[fuaran]

Probably more useful to find your top speed for 10 seconds, or for 100m etc. That would smooth out most GPS spikes, and other inaccuracies.

[Clare]

My top speed evah (according to my Cateye bike computer) was 293.6 mph. This was all the more impressive as I was sat at my desk at the time with my bike locked to a Sheffield stand three floors and a front door away.

My real top speed ever is 50mph which was achieved in the Rockies.

[Ashaman42]

A smidge over 46mph down alp d'huez just before I locked both wheels up entering a hairpin. That bumped the heart rate up rather.

[Dibdib]

The two fastest ones I know are Snap Hill into Ogbourne St George (Wilts) and Pork Hill* into Tavistock from Merrivale (Devon).  Mere steepness isn't enough - you need a good surface, clear sightlines, few side roads and gentle curves.  It helps if there is a run-out at the bottom too; you could probably touch 50mph off Uffington White Horse, but the dead stop for the crossroads at the bottom would require you to brake very hard well before you reached it.  Unless you felt lucky, then you could just bomb across and hope nothing was coming.  I don't recommend this unless you perpetually win at roulette.

Snap Hill's a fun one. On the way up, I think someone told me once that it used to be used for the National Hillclimb Championships or something... I've only tried it the easy way. According to Strava, my top speed down there is just over 47mph.

As Rog says, it's not just about being hellishly steep - it's also fairly flat (although I don't think I've got down without bottling it and braking yet) and has a very long run-off.

[rogerzilla]

I did -ahem- 57mph down there about ten years ago, on a Thorn Nomad.  The computer was very accurately calibrated over a known 10 miles.

Back to the OP, GPS won't give you an accurate maximum speed down a steep hill; you need a bike computer measuring wheel revolutions for that.  GPS measures your distance across the surface of the earth in a horizontal plane, unless you have a genius GPS unit that corrects for change in altitude and applies Mr Pythagoras' theorem.  The error is only 1% on a 1 in 10 hill but is approaching 3% on a 1 in 6.  Most 1 in 4 hills aren't suitable for letting the bike rip because they have hairpins, sheep, ramblers, etc but the error there is 4%, over 2mph at the sort of speeds we're talking about.

As an aside, cattle grids are quite amusing at 40mph+.  There's just a sort of "brrrrrrrrp" and you don't feel the individual bars.

[ElyDave]

I did -ahem- 57mph down there about ten years ago, on a Thorn Nomad.  The computer was very accurately calibrated over a known 10 miles.

Back to the OP, GPS won't give you an accurate maximum speed down a steep hill; you need a bike computer measuring wheel revolutions for that.  GPS measures your distance across the surface of the earth in a horizontal plane, unless you have a genius GPS unit that corrects for change in altitude and applies Mr Pythagoras' theorem.  The error is only 1% on a 1 in 10 hill but is approaching 3% on a 1 in 6.  Most 1 in 4 hills aren't suitable for letting the bike rip because they have hairpins, sheep, ramblers, etc but the error there is 4%, over 2mph at the sort of speeds we're talking about.

As an aside, cattle grids are quite amusing at 40mph+.  There's just a sort of "brrrrrrrrp" and you don't feel the individual bars.

Garmin Fenix will do that, I think.  Built in altimeter and designed for stuff like skiing as well as run/bike etc

[D.A.L.E.]

As an aside, cattle grids are quite amusing at 40mph+.  There's just a sort of "brrrrrrrrp" and you don't feel the individual bars.

Usually hop them.

Reason I ask, I was looking at likely descents on Strava - Hartside, Ryals, Killhope Cross, the descent into Rothbury. And from what I can find, I've hit 59.8 miles per hour or, in other words, 96.2km/h.

Was wondering if I've ever exceeded 100... 

[pcolbeck]

I know mine.  There are so few hills in the UK that are good for 50mph+ that you're usually watching for it 

I've always fancied the drop down from the Pennines to Brighouse (junction 25) on the M62. Mind you you would have to get them to close the motorway for a bit.

[T42]

For a long time my max was 75 kph down from the Weißseegletscher in Austria.  All-time max was 78 down a local hill with a following wind and no buses.

[Oaky]

My highest is 47.3 mph down Black Dike descent, riding my flat bar heavy-ish commuter, spinning like crazy in 48x11 with my arse hovering just above the saddle.

What I thought from memory was my second highest ever was 46.0 mph descending the A689 down Weardale, on a road bike (Felt Z70) with a gale force wind to my rear.  I didn't realise how fast I was going since I'd set my computer to kilometres fro the Audax I was riding and hadn't twigged how close to my record I was so I was dragging the rear brake.  A shame because I know that road very well, and it's a good surface with decent sight lines and with that tailwind I could've really flown down there.

Checking my records, it would appear I actually exceeded that on a yacf September 600 in 2011 (46.6mph, no idea where).  This feels unlikely, but not, I guess, impossible.

All of those measured with a very accurately calibrated wired computer.

All of these pre-date my GPS/Strava usage.  Strava claims I've exceeded these since, but those are all spurious GPS glitches -- there's no way in hell I spun my 70" fixed at 54.6mph anywhere in Essex, and as for 46.7mph on the flat (this being Holland!) on a 67.5" gear - if I'd really done that in 2012, I would have been expecting a call from Dave Brailsford and a first class ticket to London.

[mrcharly-YHT]

I never had a computer to measure it, but the descent from saddleworth moor to greenfield on the A635 would have to be a good road for setting records. Many a time (it was my commute) I overtook cars on this. Nice easy run out at the bottom, no tight bends.

[Pingu]

A93 descent into Glenshee 

[SoreTween]

49 point bleeding 9 mph down the A233 towards Westerham   Not a prayer of pedalling fast enough to get the extra 0.1.  Nor could I get it slipstreaming my rather more gravitationally gifted buddy, pulling out from behind him resulted in considerable retrograde progress even when I risked dropping back for a half bike length run up.

Cateye something or the other non-GPS 'puter very carefully calibrated by a pair of pedants.

[Edited to add the rather important unit of measure.]

[L CC]

A69 Greenhead to the Haltwhistle Bypass. Only 100m descent but 200kg of tandem can really get some speed up.

[TigaSefi]

Ventoux Bedouin descent = fast! About 57mph fast!! Jesus!

[D.A.L.E.]

A69 Greenhead to the Haltwhistle Bypass. Only 100m descent but 200kg of tandem can really get some speed up.

I'd forgot about that descent, but just checked and I haven't even hit 60km/h on it 

[phantasmagoriana]

I think my fastest ever was down the String road on Arran - a bit over 45mph. Anything over 40mph is really a bit scary, and I have no great desire to go faster.

[Si S]

Dropping off Marchlyn Mawr, 56mph, I made the stop for the gate using a full endo at the end with masses of space, at least six foot 

I'd like to hit 100kph, the last attempt off the top of Flash on the A53 was spoilt by a MGIF at 50mph 

[Legs]

58mph on Fleet Moss with a loose headset.