The need for speed

A dull post: me measuring walking and biking speeds.  I went up and down Sheridan drive by Bryant Park, the stretch with the wide boulevard and pedestrian/bike lanes and little traffic, on bike and on foot, and later measured my map carefully.  Seems to be 0.23 miles.  Walking is 230 seconds, or 3.6 mph, which is similar to Pasadena speed-of-motion[1] estimates of 3.8 mph; biking with some effort was 70 seconds up the slope, 65 down, or about 12 mph; biking hard in a high gear was 55 seconds each way (with some standing pedaling upslope), for 15 mph.  Real bicyclists tend to go faster, don't they?  Or they can.  Then again, my bike is a $250 mountain bike or hybrid, built for stability and indestructibility, not speed.  I wonder sometimes what a road bike would be like.

[1] How fast my body is actually moving.  As opposed to speed-of-travel over longer distances, which got cut down to 3 mph thanks to stoplights and such.