I was chatting with my boss (a competition-grade triathlete with several bikes who is much more hardcore than I am) about my average commute speed now that I’ve got a speedometer to measure it with. And on a flat segment of pavement, I can usually maintain 19-22 mph, which is allegedly impressive for a non-athlete on a mountain-ish bike. We decided it’s largely the tires, since that’s the main difference between my bike and a mountain bike. The way he said it was “I bet you are getting a couple of extra miles per hour because of the tires,” which then required me to follow that with “Yeah, and I think I can get a few more with an exhaust tip”.
I think having bar-ends and moving myself forward on them while on the straightaways also helps reduce the drag that starts to actually make a difference above 10 mph because I’m lower in my bike. I checked this against the speedometer and I do coast longer if I lean forwards. So that’s a win.
The dirty secret is that for many recreational bike rides that, in theory, require a mountain bike, you can get away with a hybrid bike or even a road bike with the high-pressure tires removed and replaced with wider tires. With knob-free wheels — either slick or with a small amount of tread — you can still handle everything a recreational rider would encounter both on or off road, but still get some speed on pavement. Sure, if I wanted to bike a really hard (they call them “technical”) trail, it might be different.
I had The Bike Doctor while he was visiting take off the toe-clips on the bike and I don’t feel like it made much of a difference in my ride abilities, so I don’t think I’m going to bother trying to get powerstraps or clipless shoes. Although I do notice that I tend to move my feet around the pedals, but I’m not sure if that’s causing problems.
I think I figured out where the “too high” point is with my saddle. I kept getting shocked repeatedly about how high I was raising the saddle but discovering that it was still feeling better again and again… and then finally it started to feel too high.