Road Cycling - Bike messengers

I've always wondered... how would some of the strongest club riders/racers compare to bike messengers from a hilly town like S.F. ? I mean in a short 2 miles flat/hilly burst, or a 40-70-100 miles ride.... or whatever...

They wouldnt

I dunno, I mean strong racers usually train on hills and are willing to push themselves 110%.
Bike messengers will never ride up at 110% knowing they have to still work 5 more hours to finish up their day.
You also have to imagine that a racer might train 2 hours a day at 110%.
Seasoned racers also stick by a strict diet and have a lot more supplemental support.
In that case, I'm guessing the messengers stand no chance.

That's not to say messengers can't hold their own, it's just like comparing apples to oranges. You can take any sports car out there, plop it onto the tracks and it will never outdrive even a formula 3000 car, let alone a formula one car.

Traffic handling skills are another matter.

yeah...guys who ride on the weekends and/or for two hours or so after work could not possibly compare to guys who ride FOR their work...it's, an insane job. a friend of mine messengered for a few months last year and she said that after the first week her body completely changed. she stopped doing it at the beginning of december, but has been riding around berkeley since then between classes. this weekend we went for a short ride through the hills and she was on her new-to-her peugeot 5 or 6 speed road bike and i was on my 9-speed pinarello and although it was her first time doing this route, i was very impressed. i stayed behind her most of the time, because i wanted to go at her pace, but i spent the whole time admiring her legs. mmm...so tan and so very....powerful.

but yeah, anyway...messengers might be a little rough around the edges, but they've got it where it counts for the most part.

although slvoid makes a good point about the hills bit. but i think messengers have a lot of conditioning under their belts (or bags) that would definitely give them a fair shake. true that they don't often push 110% on the job, but that's not to say that they can't...and i don't care who you are, if you're riding your bike 5 days a week for 8 hours a day, you better be eating right or you won't last long.

Well my point isn't comparing them with the weekend rider, it's comparing them with a seasoned racer. I seriously doubt you can find one messenger who can compete in a race where speeds average 30mph over 100-200 miles and won't finish dead last.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing messengers but this is like the conversation I was having with a friend of mine about whether you can sup up any sports car and have it finish decent in a F1 race and I said, you've gotta be kidding me.

Most messengers aren't crazy fanatics about biking that they'll work out 12 hours a day on it. Most of them just want to finish their jobs and move on with their lives.
Yes they can ride 100 miles a day at a good 15mph average. You bet a strong racer can push 100 miles with a 15mph average with their eyes closed working at 10% of their max while the messenger might be pushing 40-50% of their max doing that.

Apples and oranges.

If a road racer had to deliver messages around the crowded city for a month, s/he'd either finish dirt poor with a tiny paycheck or die trying.

yeah. a bit of a silly comparison. like that guy who's ridden 1 million miles. he'll kill anyone on a RAAM-style trip at a constant rate. but he's not built for racing. and a racer isn't built for the RAAM-style trip.

it's like comparing a 50m sprinter with a marathon runner. totally different bodies, different muscles, etc.

in the case of both, they can do an admirable job trying to do the other's job, but that's got not here or there.

sd

hey buddy hate to bust your bubble but i can bet especally messengers from san fran can hang with ya any day.me i live in florida in a town called beverly hills,imagine why the name, well i ride a fixed everyday to work on hills and on the weekends i'll ride with a club and do a 50 k in the morniing and a 40 k at night and the speed is 25 to 30 avg and i keep up.i only ride bike about and hour a day besides weekends, work standing all day, i love junk food, smoke ciggarettes and still hang with the boys any day.just to part these people i ride with are health freaks, they don't cheat themselves, don't smoke, and are in perfect health, but if they found out that i'm really this way they will probably never ride again.

Well, after having watched a few messengers do quite well in long road races AND seeing what rec riders do in our alleycat races, speed is speed and fitness is fitness. You get both only one of two ways, your lucky enough to be born with it, or you work your butt off and ride a boatload of miles..........either way works. Some of us messengers get plenty of riding. 15mph?........Thats a joke, try a cruising speed of 22-23 and in a hurry in TT mode of about 27-28 with a bag on my back and riding a fixed gear or singlespeed, and by standards set by other guys here.......Im freakin slow.

Yes a short circuit favors messengers, its what we do all day, and if youve ever seen some veteran messnegers in a crit race you will often see them mop up the field in the cat 4's and 5's.

Fastest guys here are cat2's and 3's, and the cat 3 not only holds his own with club riders in road races but took 2nd place in the Seattle world's messenger race, the dude is just plain fast period.

Comparing speeds in a road race is meaningless........thats group riding with drafting, aint hard to suck wheel, thats an easy skill to pick up. Want a decent comparison, compare solo speeds, I think you will find they are damn close. Nate here in Columbus avg'd a little over 23mph solo in the TT in the tour of Ohio last season, put him about mid pack with the cat 2's and 3's.

Another factor is just mileage in general, most of the messengers that race too also show up on saturday for these events with 300 miles in their legs that week, no such thing as tapering if your working.

Also, sandbagging, you might get away with that crap in road races, you wont in an alleycat. For a fair comparison here, youd need a group of messengers to enter some road events, then bring the roadies to a few alleycats. What will come out of that are riders that are just plain good at riding period.

Seasoned racers?As in what?Like elite roadies riding grand tours, well of course messengers wont hang with them, who the hell does? I work for a living, I build and fix my own bikes, cook my own meals, pay all my own expenses, and dont have a coach or a staff to take care of me. I cant afford the $1100 a month it costs for EPO and HGH injections either.

But against domestic pro's making messenger wages to live like crap and race part time, I dont think you'd have too hard of a time finding some messengers that would fit right in and do quite well.........riding a bike aint rocket science.

pedex
5 year veteran messenger and 39yrs old

I work as a courier for a full-time job.

You can't directly compare the two in speed, because most couriers DON'T use proper lightweight road bike equipment for work, as it wears out too quickly, expensive stuff is too tempting for thieves, etc. A lot of guys here use cheap mountain bikes with 26x2.0" tires, or old 10-speeds, or even 24" singlespeed BMX. You won't find many people doing courier work on a sub-18 pound bike with 105 parts or better. Most people here DON'T use drop bars either, there's no need when you'd just get to the next red light faster.

Assuming you put an average courier on a race-worthy road bike (off the top of my head, at least a R800, Allez Elite, Trek 1500 or better), with time to practice on that bike, we're at least as fast as your average cat4. Some guys prefer to ride at a more relaxed pace all day long and make a little bit less money in exchange for not being totally tired at the end of the day. Others hammer all day long and eat a lot more food during the day.

I cant afford the $1100 a month it costs for EPO and HGH injections either.


Re: Money...

In the spring of 2005, a few months before out city's series of summer cat5/4/3 criterium races, I asked a couple of guys who work for the same company if they had any plans to compete. These guys are very strong riders and I have no doubt they'd place highly (or win in a sprint) in the cat5/4 race, but the responses I got were mostly (paraphrased):

1) "You need a $125 CCA licence to race "pro" races? No way, I'm going to spend that $125 on food and rent instead".

CCA = Canadian Cycling Association, equal to USCF

2) "I'd do it but I don't have the right type of bike" - from a guy using a flatbar mountain bike XC frame with 26x1.25 tires.

3) (assorted amusing comments about no inclination towards leg shaving and spandex)

Speaking of messengers, I found this amazing video today - a messenger race in situ out of NY: http://www.digave.com/videos/red-web.mpg

Amazing footage, and those guys are truckin'. Another, from San Francisco:
http://www.digave.com/videos/sfx-web.mpg

i live in florida in a town called beverly hills

There are no hills of note in Florida.

I would definitely race alot more often IF the races were local, same with club rides. Strikes me as funny, all the cycling advocates here locally are always spouting off about advocacy yet the very first thing they do is schedule ALL club rides 20 miles form the city out in the rural areas where there arent any cars :) They had one race here in town, and it happend to be a block away from where I live, unfortunately I didnt even find out about it until it had been going on for like 4 hours, tried to get in, no luck, cat 5's had already been run. Saw a few people I knew, the cat 5's standing around watching looked whipped. Flat course, about 1.5 miles, 4 90 degree wide corners, street closed to traffic........Id have killed people in that race. Its supposed to be back in grandview next year, I will be in that one.

Most of the road races here are like 75 miles away on rural roads in ohio, typically 50-65 miles tops, $5-$15 entree fee just like alleycats........someone wants to give me a ride, im there.

There are no hills of note in Florida.

they're called freeway overpasses...

:D

but seriously, if I lived in Florida, I would buy a 11-21 cassette.

yep and remove all but one chainring.....a 52t

It's like asking who'd win in a race, Nelson Vail or Lance Armstrong? Nelson Vail would destroy Lance in a velodrome and Lance would clobber Nelson on the TdF. That's why you don't see 100m dash runners winning marathons and vice versa.

we do okay on long distance rides too - in the summer on weekends I will go out for a metric century...

it feels nice to ride around on off-days WITHOUT a lock and bag. in hot weather wearing a courier bag on the lower back is really bad for sweat evaporation. thankfully most of the places I serve are air conditioned!

I keep a separate bike which is never used for work, it's too nice to lock outdoors in this city and I don't want to wear out the rims with constant braking. yes it's a triple but the price was right :D

pedex, check this out:

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a109/walrus0/allez_hallway_800.jpg

Am I reading this right? This thread was dug up after a year and a half?

For those who don't know, Nelson Vails was a messenger in NYC who went on to win silver medal on the track in the '84 olympics.