[hot_gril]

The idea makes sense for work, but I don't buy that biking leisurely makes you move the same speed. What made the biggest difference for me was training, and the author maybe got faster from all the hard riding before testing the easy riding.

I also used to ride that Santa Monica path all the time, and there are some tight turns with sand on the path. Maybe biking hard then wasting energy braking on those turns negatively impacted the time, but idk, there aren't enough of those turns to make a big difference.

[sdeframond]

He most likely got exhausted very quickly and couldn't recover because he kept pushing. So he was actually riding pretty slow for the rest of the ride.

Endurance athletes know well that one has to start slow, warm up and get to cruising speed in order to achieve good times. Sprinting does not work.

Edit: actually, starting running was enlightening for me. I realized that, as for running, one has to work at 70% of their capacity most of the time and get ample recovery time to really improve. Then one can be effortlessly good and nice to work with.

Scrum talks a lot about "sprint" but, somehow, recovery time was lost in the analogy. Sprinters actually rest far longer than they run.

[jeffparsons]

When I used to do the occasional "fun run", the sheer number of people at the start meant that unless I wanted to duck and weave through the crowd, I _had_ to start slowly and then gradually speed up as everyone spread out.

Even when I did a run without much training leading up to it, that forced slow start meant I'd ease into a sensible cruising speed and be fine for hours, as opposed to being wrecked inside of 20 minutes of running alone.

[hot_gril]

If he meant that he sprint-biked from the start, that will surely give a worse time. Nobody can keep that up for 21mi.

[Delk]

It's quite possible that the main reason he's taking nearly the same time is because he's now more fit. It's also quite possible that the improvements in conditioning only really became visible once he stopped doing it as intensively, as sufficient rest is also important.

I have kind of noticed that trying to ride faster can bring diminishing results in terms of time, though. This is mostly from commutes -- I rarely go on pure exercise rides nowadays and I never really time or measure them if I do -- but going from a semi-leisurely pace to one of actual exertion seems to cut my travel times by less than 20 percent.

I used to commute ~45 to 50 minutes to a previous job by bike, and increasing the intensity from moderate (getting a bit sweaty but not feeling real strain) to some significant exertion might have won me five minutes. Going all out might have theoretically won me a bit more but probably still in the teens in terms of percentage. Granted there were intersections, traffic signals etc. along the commute, so I couldn't really just keep a steady pace and that might also have an effect on how much you can gain, but there were also stretches of several kilometres where I didn't have to stop.

I don't necessarily buy the two-minute difference but I can buy the diminishing returns of increasing intensity.

[hot_gril]

Diminishing returns for sure. I usually bike leisurely to work cause I don't want to show up sweaty, and it's not a whole lot slower. I only bike fast if I want to get fit.

[__jambo]

Yeah, it's possible that all the pushing he did before made him fit enough he could pull it off.

It's just more dumb mark-manson like marketing stuff. There's no knowledge here.

[Schroedingersat]

When biking having leftover reserves for the hill or the traffic lights saves a lot more time than using it up on the flat.

The actual output between a moderate effort and going as hard as you can is a 20-30% in terms of wattage, but that only translates to 5%-10% speed increase because the power required to overcome wind resistance scales with the third power of velocity. If that comes at a cost of a 5% power decrease (where power is proportional to velocity and you spend a greater amount of time per unit distance) on the hill because you're exhausted then the gains can wind up being minimal.

[ak39]

Twice the effort wasn't implied as twice the speed. He just meant that going from 50% to 100% effort wasn't translating into double the speed.

[baby]

I calculated it and he basically would have need to have a speed of 1km/h less than his top speed to achieve that result (true in the range 10 to 20km). So indeed it is weird :) perhaps it has to do with hills. Or the taste if shit in his mouth made him want to go home faster to mouth wash