[Closed] Commuting fun!

boasting?

My commute is always fun.

Good on you son!

You showed them

Probably.

[img] http://www.unicyclist.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=24069&d=1198577373 [/img]

maybe...

boasting?

Maybe a little - however much we like to splash our cash on £240 cassettes though, just proving it's not all about the tech and there's just as much fun to be had on 10+ year old mtb's with 1 gear!

Fair dos i reckon.

Sounds fun

I'm hoping i'll soon be wearing body armour and full face on my commute, heard rumors of our office moving to the bottom of the big hill that i live at the top of, there's some cracking bike trails between my place and the potential new office, there are also buses that go up the hill with bike racks on, DH all the way into work every morning, bus back up the hill in th evening 😀 please let the move happen.

There is simply no way they were pushing hard if you "smoked them" on a 44-16. Your knees would have exploded at the incredible cadence you would have needed.

I would say they were either warming up or cooling down after doing a proper long ride.

Either that or you left out the part where they were 20st with their bellies resting on the top tube or they were 80 years old.

But still, yes, you da man.

Coming back from the gym last night After about two miles of a draggy-wierd feel I looked over my shoulder to see a large lad with big panniers etc etc- the cheeky bugger had been tucked up behind me! Oh well, its all training 8)

unless he was hanging on to your seatpost I'm not sure he'd have made your ride any more difficult...

My commute isn't that far but I do love keeping up the roadies while Im on a singlespeed!

It probably was down to all his sticky sweat falling on your rear tyre that was dragging, that or his tongue 😉

oxym0r0n you forgot:

7miles--->120miles

😉

wwaswas oh 🙁

Legend

Oh dear. This is the kind of thing that gives singlespeeders a bad name.

They've probably posted on a roadie forum today about a ss in baggies who huffed and puffed for 7 miles yesterday before they put the poor guy of of his misery.

they were roadies, therefore were riding as fast as they could

I always overtake other cyclists on my commute... I even overtake the cars.

Kev

LOL at the commuter-racer-wannabee-legend-in-his-lunchtime.

Any roadie who is properly fit won't bother trying to drop some idiot on a mtb whos caught him.

How do you know they were all running 52-12? You're amazing though, although maybe they weren't really trying that hard. I'd love to meet you on my commute.

This was all done to the soundtrack " Holding out for a Hero" running through his head.

Going through red lights--->not going through red lights 😛

Roadie commuter here. It's always amusing seeing people on mountain bikes bust a gut to overtake when I'm trying not to break into a sweat on the way in to work.

Sometimes temptation gets the better of me and I can't resist going up a gear or two to drop them but it always feels rather childish.

Amazing.

I stopped 'competeing' on my commute years ago.

Maybe that isn't strictly true, it does amaze me sometimes how I manage to 'keep up' or pass guys hawking up a lung with effort, running reds and what have you just by reading the traffic a bit better, filtering through and keeping the bike ticking over with the minimum effort.

Same here dazh, quite often get someone really working up a sweat to get past. What they fail to realise is that they ain't even on the radar in terms of competition. Nothing worse than hunting someone down on the commute, I have a 20 mile commute so need some way of passing the time, only to find out they're on a mountain bike. No offence of course to mountain bikers but they are just not fair game.

It seems some people take this sort of thing quite seriously....

http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12575770

Perhaps the most childish (but amusing nonetheless) thing when you get a non-roadie wheel hugger, is to gradually crank up the speed so that the wheel hugger puts more and more effort in, and then just before they reach breaking point, shift up a couple of gears and sprint away.

To be fair, I did once get dropped like a stone by a man riding a 1980's rigid hardtail who was wearing a donkey jacket. A very sobering experience. I suspect he was a Cat 1 racer in disguise.

It just seems rather pathetic that folk base their ride on other people, thinking that they are trying hard too. Why not ride at your own pace?

I want to get a rear-mounted remote air-horn for the twunts that sit on my wheel.

I dont see that many people on my commute, just the odd few. Oxymoron, where do you ride on the A38?

I borrowed a mates Cube Fritz to head down to the local post office to pick up a parcel last year (didnt have a commuter bike at the time) and came across a roadie pottering along. Had all the gear, and probably enough of an idea but was taking it easy. Anyway, off we go from the lights, and hes doddling along at 15mph. Whether intentional or not im not sure. I decided that as I needed the other lane of the dual carriageway Id speed up and match most of the cars speed. By the time Id over taken him and got along about a quarter of a mile cranking along happily in the not so hard 44-12 he comes hairing past at a rate of knots overtaking cars and all sorts until we get to the next lights. This time he did not want to be overtaken, and I couldnt help feeling smug that maybe I dented his pride enough to get his competition hat on and proove he could out-do me.

Dazh, I do the same. Its fun on a single speed against the regular commuters on the their full sussers bouncing around but then thats probably too easy!

There was this one day, me and a mate were on the SS at the top of Inners and these two guys on Meta 5.5s came along...... 😉

dazh - Member
Roadie commuter here. It's always amusing seeing people on mountain bikes bust a gut to overtake when I'm trying not to break into a sweat on the way in to work.
Sometimes temptation gets the better of me and I can't resist going up a gear or two to drop them but it always feels rather childish.

Agreed but on the way home I like to sit just behind them (panting loudly so they know I am there ) and slowly grind faster up to the point of them cracking. Equally childish but if they want to overtake me I just cant help myself. It rarely happens these days as there are **** all commuters on my new route.

It just seems rather pathetic that folk base their ride on other people, thinking that they are trying hard too. Why not ride at your own pace?

Because competition is an inbuilt human response to being behind in a situation.

There was this one day, me and a mate were on the SS at the top of Inners and these two guys on Meta 5.5s came along......

Let me guess - you made them eat your dust on a SS tandem? 😆

Because competition is an inbuilt human response to being behind in a situation.

For the insecure, maybe 😛

SS tandem, rigid forks, brakeless and with a 650 front wheel on skinny tyres. No Meta 5.5 can better that. 😉

I saw few pages of that topic on BM and guys there are taking it really seriously. 536 pages and everyone is writing about who and how he overtook on his commute plus You get some points depending what You ride and who You overtook.

True thing is that You need to make it look like You're not putting any extra effort in that overtake 🙂

So if the OP had a bit of sweat on his forehead than that doesn't count 😉

Hmph. I wish people would try to race me on my commute. I love commuter racing, but the only people I see on the road round here seem to be flat barred, knobbly tired slow coaches.

Joe

there are couple of old ladies that i see most mornings on my commute, i make sure i fly past them but pop it in top gear just as i go past so it looks like im hardly peddling. it must destroy them each and every time i do it!!!

8)

For that extra twist of the knife you need to pretend to be on the mobile as you cruise past them too....

Maybe they were all doing Zone 1 recovery work?

If you'd have kept up with them on foot I might have been slightly impressed.

...eating a sandwich and writing an email on PDA too eh Breatheeasy? 😉

It is human nature, and its another way of prooving yourself as a man. Physical exertion through peer competition is normal.

and its another way of prooving yourself as a man.

[img] [/img]

Physical exertion through peer competition is normal.

... except these are not your peers ... and they are not competing with you ...

Is this why most people drive like morons as well? They see it all as a competition?

I wish I had other cyclists to even look at, let alone tag. I spend more time looking out for buses or lorries that seem to think because they've got the cab past you they can pull back in, and tough sh!t if you're in the way.

Gave a thumbs up to another mtb'er who was coming the other way once and he looked at me as if I was asking to borrow his wife for the night.

Congratulations on your willy waving thread.

How do you feel?

from http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2007/06/its-all-in-details.html

This may come as a shock to the newer riders out there, but there is absolutely nothing cool about trying to race somebody on your commute or on a recovery ride in the park. I know you’re very excited to be on your new Pista or Madone or whatever, and I know you feel like you need to prove yourself when you see someone else on a track bike or on a road bike in a team kit or whatever the case may be. But you need to learn something very important—it’s not always cool to attack, and it’s never OK to sit on a stranger’s wheel.

That guy on the track bike you’re killing yourself to pass may simply be on his way home from the velodrome, or from a day’s work as a messenger. The guy on the carbon wonder-bike in full lycra regalia may be returning from a 90-mile training ride, or a race, or may be cooling down from an interval. He sees you pick up the pace when you approach him, he hears you panting, he sees you look over your shoulder, and he knows what you’re up to. That’s why he lets you get a lead and then passes you on the next hill, often making a point of making a cell-phone call or eating some food, so he can pass you no-handed.

from http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2007/06/its-all-in-details.html

This may come as a shock to the newer riders out there, but there is absolutely nothing cool about trying to race somebody on your commute...

I never knew there were so many rules of commuting etiquette.