Many cyclists across the globe ride five or more miles each day, so it’s only natural to ask, “how long does it take to bike 5 miles?”.
In this short guide, I’ll teach you how long you can expect your 5-mile bike journey to take and provide helpful tips on how you can increase your average cycling speed.
Providing an exact time for your five-mile bike journey is difficult as I’m not aware of what bike you’re riding, how physically fit you are, or the terrain you’ll be riding.
So to further assist you and answer your question, below, you’ll also find a guide comparing how long it takes to cycle 5 miles on different bike types.
How Long Does It Take to Bike 5 Miles?
With the average cycling speed ranging from 10 – 14 mph (16-22.5 km/h), you can expect a 5-mile bike journey to take 21 minutes to 30 minutes.
Whilst riding five miles by bike, there are many factors that will affect your speed.
Developing a better understanding of these factors will allow you to limit their impact on you and increase your average cycling speed.
Cyclists who train regularly will have faster average speeds, meaning they’ll take less time to cycle 5 miles.
So, to make it easier for you to predict your total ride duration, I’ve broken the time it takes to bike 5 miles down into different rider ability categories.
| Average Time Taken To Bike 5 Miles | ||
|---|---|---|
| Beginner Cyclists | 30 minutes | |
| Intermediate Cyclists | 18 minutes 45 seconds | |
| Advanced Cyclists | 15 minutes | |
| Professional Cyclists | 12 minutes 30 seconds | |
What Is the Average Bike Speed?
So now that you know how long it’ll take you to bike 5 miles, you might want to estimate times for rides of different distances.
I crawled the internet in search of valuable data that would allow you to estimate ride times for journeys of different distances. And fortunately for you, after several hours, I stumbled across Strava’s yearly stats from 2018.
Strava is a cycling and running exercise tracking app that allows users to track their fitness progression and compete with others in their area.
The data Strava released in 2018 was extremely interesting and amounted to 5.2B miles of cycling collection from over 239 million rides.
The average distance travelled per ride was 20.19 miles, which suggests that Strava users take their cycling more seriously than your average cyclist. So bear this in mind.
From this total of 5.2B miles of ride data, the average speed was 13.5 mph or 21.72 km/h.
Strava also released the different average cycling speeds for male and female riders during 2018, which revealed some fascinating differencesences.
Read more about that here.
Average Speed Over 5 Miles For Different Bike Types
The graph above displays the average speeds you can expect when riding the specified bike type on a road with a flat elevation profile.
The red bars show how long it will take to cycle 5 miles on each bike, whilst the blue displays the average speed.
How Long to Bike 5 Miles on a Road Bike
When riding a road bike on a paved surface with a flat elevation profile, you can expect an average speed of 16 mph (25.7 km/h).
This means that it’ll take 18 minutes 45 seconds to bike 5 miles on average when riding a road bike.
How Long to Bike 5 Miles on a Mountain Bike
Cyclists riding a mountain bike on paved surfaces with a flat elevation profile can expect an average speed of 12 mph (19.3 km/h).
Maintaining a speed of 12 mph, you’ll cycle 5 miles in 25 minutes.
How Long to Cycle 5 Miles on a Hybrid Bike
Cyclists riding a hybrid bike on a paved surface with a flat elevation profile can expect an average speed of 14 mph (22.5 km/h)
If you were to maintain this speed during a 5-mile ride, you’d finish your 5-mile bike ride in 21 minutes 25 seconds.
How Long to Bike 5 Miles on a E-Bike
By law, in most US states, e-bike assistance is capped at 20 mph (32.1 km/h).
So, if you were to cycle with maximum assistance for 5 miles, you can expect this to take 15 minutes.
On the other hand, the UK’s legal limit for e-bike assistance is 15.5 mph (25 km/h).
So if you were to maintain the maximum assistance speed, you can expect to travel 5 miles in 19 minutes and 21 seconds.
Average Bike Speed FAQs
Is Biking 5 Miles in 30 Minutes Good?
Riding 5 miles in 30 minutes gives you an average cycling speed of 10 mph or 16 km/h.
For a 5 mile ride, averaging 10 mph is slower than average. However, it’s essential to consider the factors affecting your time.
If you were travelling on a technical off-road trail averaging 10 mph over 5 miles would be considered fast. Whereas if you were riding on a paved road with a road bike, 10 mph would be slower than average.
What Burns More Calories Cycling or Walking?
If you walked and cycled at the same intensity for the same period, you’d burn more calories when cycling.
For example, when comparing calories burned during an hour of exercise, cycling burns more than double the calories of walking.
Your calorific burn during an hour of cycling will be 400 – 700 calories, whereas if you walked for an hour, you’d be looking at burning between 210 – 360 calories.
Quite a considerable difference.
How Many Calories Do Your Burn Cycling 5 Miles?
On average, you can expect to burn between 250 – 300 calories when biking 5 miles.
However, other factors will affect your total calories burnt, such as ride intensity and route elevation profile.
Conclusion - How Long to Bike 5 Miles?
After reading through this short guide, you will now understand, on average, how long it takes to bike 5 miles.
If you skipped to the end looking for the answer and missed it: it’ll take you between 21 and 30 minutes to bike five miles.
If you’re interested in decreasing your rides times and increasing your cycling efficiency, learn about the factors limiting your cycling speed in this short guide.
Alternatively, if you’d like to find out the average time taken for different distance bike rides, check out these guides:
To finish, my bikes are some of my most valuable possessions, and until I learnt how to lock them properly, I would always be worried to leave them locked up unattended.
If you worry about the safety of your bikes, learn how to lock your bike properly and get yourself at least one good quality bike lock.
I understand bike locks are expensive, and most people can’t afford top-of-the-range bike locks, so I’ve reviewed the best cheap bike locks (that actually work!).
Alternatively, if your bike means more to you than its monetary value, you might want to invest in locks that offer the highest level of security.
If this is the case, read my review of the best bike locks or learn about the uncuttable bike locks here.
As always, lock it or lose it.
Ciao for now!
And to finish, I’m not sure if you’ve felt the same as me, but with the high levels of bike theft in cities and even rural areas, I used to be constantly worried about leaving my bike locked up, unattended.
I love my bikes and hated the thought of losing another to theft, which is the main reason why I began studying bicycle security and subsequently created BikeLockWiki.
I now use some of the best bike locks and uncuttable bike locks to secure my bike whilst I’m away from it.
If you’re interested in increasing your bicycle security, check out the two guides above.
Or, say you’re on a tighter budget, read my review of the best cheap bike locks for locks that won’t break the bank but will send thieves home empty-handed!
As always, lock it or lose it.
Ciao for now!
