Enjoying a road ride myself (avec baggies, hairy legs, Camelbak, fully finger gloves, peaked helmet and muddy spuds) i’ve read a number of roadie magazines and fora that give advice for newbies apprehensive about going out on a club ride. Without fail, the advice is that you won’t be expected to take a turn on the front if it is your first time because it can be daunting, and it is not the easiest thing to do: there is the route to consider, one has to be able to maintain the correct pace save you go too fast or slow for the rest of the group, and there are all the little hand signals to remember that often take a while to not only learn, but to be able to do when setting a fast pace. Personally i think that is reasonable.
Now, the this newbie was asked if they’d consider taking a turn on the front, “We even spoke to him about it, calmly suggesting that it might be worth doing a turn”. As we know the newbie didn’t feel confident enough with the route to do this. That is fair enough in my mind. Imagine the hullaballoo if they’d got the group lost (they’d be a whole lot of team knickers in a twist then!), not something you’d want when out with a group of people you don’t know.
As it turns out then, even though someone in the group had asked the new rider to take a turn on the front and he didn’t, so the group upped the pace in the last few miles to drop him anyway.
Sounds like a) there was a bit of a communication problem, b) the group are a bunch of asses for deciding to drop him (tantamount to bullying i’d say), c) DavidB should drop the patronising tone, we’re mountain bikers, not idiot and understand basic aerodynamics!
