I was riding on another platform (I won’t mention Fulgaz) and the road changed from paved to brick. I am not talking about 100 year old cobbles, but modern tight fitting flat smooth bricks. At the identical gradient, cadence, and power output in watts, the speed was 3-4+ mph slower. Now I don’t ride on that here in Utah (or when I was in California) so I have no first hand experience. But there are a lot of rides in Europe that have this terrain. Is this actually the speed cost based solely on moving from paved road to brick?
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I agree with you. The difference between smooth asphalt to smooth brick in real life is only a couple of km/h, about half of what you wrote.
Smooth asphalt to cobbles, on the other hand, is a whole different story. There are vast differences in quality of cobbles which can make it hard to generalize, but you can expect a difference of 10 kph / 6 mph or more.
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