@esselgruntfuttock That’s because there’s nowhere to hide on the road, your ‘skill’ is your fitness. I have this argument with @Weeksy all the time and it’s why the ‘it’s all cycling’ camp are slightly wrong. You need to ‘use’ other roadies to enhance your fitness- at least if you blow-up, your time doesn’t get plastered on a website ;):D

I get where your’e coming from but I really couldn’t care less about ‘fitness’ & ‘blowing up’. As long as I’m happy with my fitness & ability…great. (just my opinion!)
My mate on the other hand, is a different matter, so competitive he puts me to shame but we’ve had some fantastic days out! (on the bikes, before the divvies on here read it the wrong way!) 😛

I had a lad overtake me on Saturday. Me on road bike, him on mtb with fag hanging out of his mouth! Red rag to a bull, I took him near the top of the next hill and promptly skidded, both wheels locked, into the back of a car that had stopped to let oncoming traffic pass a row of parked cars (luckily stopping as I made contact, driver didn’t even notice). He meanwhile dropped off laughing along a pedestrianised street to re-appear well in front of me a few minutes later 8)

I (ahem) rode slightly more swiftly than I might have otherwise on my commute home Friday evening after I spotted a roadie on a MTB with slicks and aerobars. Well I hunted him down caught him, took a tow then did some work on the front. He laughed and said I was making him look bad. I was on my fixed wheel, wearing jeans, a shirt and trainers rather than the usual attire. And the bike is geared for 20-25 mph, not the usual 16. 😈

Personally, I don’t mind people on my wheel. And I will always do a turn.

Guess i just don’t get it i would never drop on some ones wheel ether keep back or over take if my pace is better, if i don’t know them.

Guess i just don’t get it i would never drop on some ones wheel ether keep back or over take if my pace is better, if i don’t know them.

Why? I don’t really get it. If I’m in a group ride or a race and it’s a chain gang thing then fine. If I’m out on my own it’s usually a training session and I don’t really want to be following anyone else anyway. Don’t really care if anyone wants to tag along. It’d be nice if they exchanged pleasantries but appreciate that’s not always possible!

tl; dr but whats all this talk of towing etc? 😆

I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone hold my wheel for more than a hundred yards or so – and that includes pro riders

perhaps I’ll start teaching “dropping other riders like a stone” on some of my more advanced courses

/scaredymtbguru

Where do I sign up 🙂

Greg Lemond had a surefire way of dropping slipstreamers.

He had gastric flu in one of the TDF’s but followed rule 5 and raced anyway.

The rest of peleton wouldn’t ride behind him.
“his sickness seeped out through his shorts and onto the back wheel, and sprayed a portion of the peleton”

Bit grim but would work 🙂

A good portion of bean feast the day before a ride would do the job 🙂

Be nicer than gastric flu 🙂

I put a thread on that about BeanFeast!
Ohh yes, fartystinkypants!

What’s the policy on passing roadies when you’re on your mtb? I’ve had that before and decided to hang backrrather than pass the old chap on his road bike. If it happened in reverse it’d take the wind right out of mysails

Dunno, I think its fair game, and they’ll either let you go, or try to hang on, some people are simply faster, eventually you get passed by someone, just be polite and give a nod and a smile when you do.

I had a fella come past me on my commute the other day, me on my fixed road bike, 10 miles into my 14 mile commute, him on shiny MTB (unstickered scandal 29er I think), and pretty fresh As he’d just pulled on to the road in the village I’d just gone through, Anyway he drafts me for a couple of miles, then passes me, I give him a cheery smile and a “morning” and he just blanks me, I’m expecting him to now just obliterate me, as being so rude must be accompanied by total awesomeness surely.

I think He thought he was going to stamp me out as well, but instead he just sits there at about the same pace I was already doing, flicking his rear mech up and down one sprocket every 15 seconds for no apparent reason so I pull his trick and draft him for the next mile and a half, have to hang back when he decided to just ignore the cars and blast through a roundabout, but I catch him back up pretty quickly after that, then a quarter of a mile from work, I pull past him, and wring it out a bit till I turn off, I hear some muttering as I pull off, but bollocks to him, didn’t have the manners to just give a nod, and clearly hadn’t quite figured out that sitting in front (especially on an MTB) is more work than sitting on my wheel.

I don’t normally get drawn into commuter racing, especially on the fixie as neither it nor I am built for such things, but this fella just annoyed me with his lack of manners I’m sure I,ll encounter him again…

Reminds me of 2 incidents:

1) A colleague was going to ride with me on our commutes on the way home, both set off from work at the same time, I shot off down one of the hills and waited for him to catch up, unfortunately he’d taken the shared use, and then mistook someone else for me. Got a response text messaged to “Where are you?” that read “Mistook someone else for you, caught his wheel and he put the power down, never gone so fast before, was at the bridge before I realised he wasn’t you”

2) Passed someone “taking it easy” through Tayport on an extended ride home, I was surprised to suddenly feel the push you get when someone’s on your wheel. I sped up, still there, faster, still there, Kirkton Barns rise, he takes the front, OHSHAF**** Fixie, he’s hammering it up the hill, now it’s me hanging on. Get to the top and I take over, haul him along the first of the flat bits, he takes the wee rise before the last straight, I start hoping he’s going down the Tentsmuir road, sadly he isn’t and I drop off into the junction.

I wish all the locals rode like that.

As for overtaking on different bikes, it’s the man not the machine, you just get extra food chain number points if you’re playing the game.