How Long Does It Take to Bike 10 Miles?

At 12 mph, 10 miles takes 50 minutes. At 14 mph it takes 43, and at 8 mph it takes 1 hour 15. That is the whole answer, and the reason this page exists is that the question is usually asked as “how long will it take me”. We cannot know that, and the “average beginner speed” figures quoted all over the internet are not published by anyone we would cite — so instead of inventing one, here is the arithmetic for every speed you might ride, and the four things that change your time more than fitness does.

The table, and the arithmetic behind it

time = distance ÷ speed. Ten miles at 12 mph is 10/12 of an hour, which is 50 minutes. Every row below is that calculation, rounded to the nearest minute — ours, not a figure from any listing or study, and shown so you can check it.

Those are moving times. If your ride has traffic lights in it, add the time you spend standing still — which on an urban 10 miles is routinely 10 minutes and is the single biggest reason a ride takes longer than the table says.

Why we will not publish an “average beginner speed”

You will find confident numbers for this everywhere, usually between 10 and 14 mph. None of them trace to a source that measured anything, and the figure does real harm: it is the number a new rider compares themselves against on their second ride, on a windy day, on a bike with soft tires.

What we are willing to say is which variables matter, because those are observable. On the same bike with the same rider, the four things below will move a 10-mile time by more than a winter of training would.

The four things that actually change your time

1. Stops. Covered above and consistently underestimated. A route choice that avoids four junctions is worth more minutes than any component.
2. Wind. The variable nobody logs. An out-and-back into a headwind on the way home is a slower ride than the same loop on a calm day, and it is why a single ride tells you very little about your speed.
3. Surface and tire pressure.A soft tire on rough tarmac is slow in a way you can feel. Silca’s published work on pressure is clear that there is an optimum and that going above it stops helping on real road surfaces — and soft-and-slow is far more common on a new bike than over-inflated. Finding your number is free and takes one ride.
4. Hills. Ten flat miles and ten hilly miles are different rides, and climbing costs more time than descending gives back. If your loop has a hill you dread, your gearing may be the problem rather than your legs.

What usually stops a beginner at 10 miles

Not fitness. On a first proper ride the limiting factors are almost always the three contact points — hands, backside and feet — and all three have cheap fixes:

• Backside: padded shorts, and the right saddle for your sit-bone width. A saddle that hurts at 10 miles will end rides long before your legs do. What to change first.
• Hands: numbness is a duration problem. Half-finger gloves and a slightly softer bar tape are the usual answer, and so is moving your hands between positions on a drop bar rather than gripping one spot for an hour.
• Feet: stiff soles spread the pedal pressure. This is the entire argument for cycling shoes, and at 10 miles it is a comfort improvement rather than a performance one.

Going further than 10

The table above doubles cleanly, and so does the experience up to a point: 20 miles at 12 mph is 1 hour 40 of moving time, which is where food, a second bottle and a saddle bag with a spare tube start to matter rather than being optional. What to bring on a bike ride is the checklist, and somewhere to put it is the other half.

Beyond about two hours the limiting factor shifts from comfort to fuelling and pacing, which is genuinely individual and not something we are going to prescribe. What we will say is that riders who go from 10 to 30 miles usually do it by riding more often rather than by riding harder — and that the bike that makes that pleasant is a bike that fits, which is a measurement you can check today.