Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 52 total)
  • Commuting fun!
  • oxym0r0n
    Full Member

    Quick run-down:

    1 person –> 3 people (drafting ability)
    Steel ’96 P7 –> Carbon Giant jobbies
    Flat bars –> Drop bars
    1 gear –> 20 gears
    44-16 –> 52-12 highest gear
    26″ –> 700c
    full mudguards –> no mudguards
    courier bag –> saddle bag
    Baggies –> Lycra

    Managed to “keep up” with 3 roadies on the A38 on the way home for about 7 miles ~ smoked them for another 2 before they caught up again – so much fun! sorry boys 😉

    How much fun was your commute today?

    aw
    Free Member

    boasting?

    miketually
    Free Member

    My commute is always fun.

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    iamsporticus
    Free Member

    Good on you son!

    You showed them

    Probably.

    aw
    Free Member

    maybe…

    oxym0r0n
    Full Member

    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!

    zbonty
    Full Member

    Fair dos i reckon.

    Sounds fun

    rs
    Free Member

    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.

    barrykellett
    Free Member

    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.

    hora
    Free Member

    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)

    wwaswas
    Full Member

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

    mema
    Free Member

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

    ski
    Free Member

    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

    😉

    hora
    Free Member

    wwaswas oh 🙁

    Ed2001
    Free Member

    Legend

    grumm
    Free Member

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

    enfht
    Free Member

    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.

    jimmy
    Full Member

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

    Keva
    Free Member

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

    Kev

    cynic-al
    Free Member

    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.

    Gary_M
    Free Member

    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.

    Ed2001
    Free Member

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

    Haze
    Full Member

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

    dazh
    Full 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.

    anotherdeadhero
    Free Member

    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.

    Gary_M
    Free Member

    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.

    dazh
    Full Member

    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.

    cynic-al
    Free Member

    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.

    dooge
    Free Member

    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!

    Smee
    Free Member

    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…… 😉

    Junkyard
    Free Member

    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.

    coffeeking
    Free Member

    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.

    Stu
    Full Member

    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? 😆

    cynic-al
    Free Member

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

    For the insecure, maybe 😛

    mieszko
    Free Member

    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 😉

    joemarshall
    Free Member

    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

    mrchrispy
    Full Member

    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)

    breatheeasy
    Free Member

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

    vdubber67
    Free Member

    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.

    dooge
    Free Member

    …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.

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 52 total)

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