What's your average distance, pace, etc?

[Crankin]

I know all about over training...
My problem is that I never know how and when my symptoms will appear. I sort of can tell if I am on the edge of a regular illness or allergy thing that I need to back off and at times, I don't, which is bad. Most of the fibro. symptoms start during an illness, when my body is under stress. I went through years of continual illnesses (nothing life threatening) in my thirties when I was teaching aerobics. Now that was over training; I gave myself heart palpitations from getting up and teaching at 5 AM and living on coffee all day at work. Plus the fact that I weighed 92 pounds didn't help, either. Well, I am over that!
I have a HR monitor that I haven't used in a couple of years. I was too obsessed with it. I learned that my HR is always higher than it *should* be, even when I am riding flats and feel really good. I always start out at a high HR, and then it settles down. My resting HR first thing in the morning is between 55 and 62 and I check it every morning. That is a good indication of my health.
I just came back from a really good ride. It's probably the flattest ride I can do around here, except for the climb to my house. I actually felt good the whole time and my average was 15. I am forgetting about speed for awhile!

[Eden]

I don't think its too unusual for hr to start high and then settle in - its what I expect doing a TT, even with a good warm up there's an initial spike then things settle in. It's good you do your resting hr - it is one of the first indicators and its quantitative.

Good for you for letting go of speed. My training is all by time and effort (can't afford power.... so its hr for now). I don't pay much attention to speed or distance until its race time. I certainly do compare my TT times on the same course from year to year too see if I've improved- and I generally look at other peoples as well to take into account course conditions too - even if you are slower, if everyone else was slower too and by a greater percentage, you can still have had a good year.

IMHO average speed on a training ride is pretty useless... unless you are on a closed course doing a TT there's just too many variables to make it a useful measurement. Someone on a straight flat 10 mile road with no stop signs or stop lights can "average" the exact same speed as someone who is on a hilly, twisty 10 mile road with 5 lights and a 2 stop signs. The person who had to slow down and stop a whole bunch of times had to have gone considerably faster (and on a harder route) in between all the stops to make up that same average. Of course, I do live in a city so access to routes without a lot of stop-go on them are rare. Some people might be near roads like this more than I am and might find it a measure that they can use - but still only to compare them self to them self...

Even most clubs when they classify their rides specify that the average speeds they list are for flat roads in optimal conditions - so they aren't (or at least should not be) talking about average at the end of the ride, but average level cruising...