GovernorSilver

I've only been riding for 3 months - about 2-3 times a week, but my reality check wasn't being passed by a bunch of cyclists (me and women alike) - it was trying to follow coworkers used to riding at a pace of 15 mph or faster. I can hit 15 or even 20 once a while but sustaining 15 mph for more than 5 min. is still beyond my ability. In one of our local cycling meetups, you have to be able to ride 15 mph continuously to participate in one of their medium level group rides.

Kudos to you for taking up cycling and enjoying it. I'm sure you'll eventually pass somebody on a climb after you keep on riding and riding for a while.

70sSanO

Here is something to make you feel better, not go any faster, but the passing won't seem as bad.

Get a nice older road bike and set it up how you want, but downtube shifters and non-aero hoods are good. Italian is a plus. Run whatever gears; even a triple crankset and mountain cassette. An old guy on a nice old road bike will give you more cred, regardless of how slow you are going, than anyone on a hybrid. Heck, I'd hurry to pass a hybrid just to make me feel better. It doesn't work the same for an old guy on a new high end CF road bike barely making it up the hills.

John

InOmaha

They were probably all doped up. Why would you want to be like that?

I run my own race and really don't care about other people's pace. Some roadie blowing by me on his first mile when I'm heading home after 25 miles on my mountain bike doesn't affect me. Unless we started out from the same spot, I have no clue how long they've been going. If it makes them feel better to pass me then go ahead.

I don't have all day to train, so I find it better to break out the heavy old bikes sometimes and go shorter distances with more weight.

TCR Rider

Sounds like a recipe for heartache and despair. I want to be Superman but I'm never going to fly, reality check time. You've got at least two things working against you those guys train way more than you and have a higher level of fitness and they are on superior equipment. Good luck with your quest.

phillycodehound

To be honest, if you're out for a ride and having a good time, don't let the speed demons get you down. Keep going and get stronger. You might never be that fast or be able to get up that hill that quickly, but don't get discouraged!

caloso

This. The only way to get up a hill faster is to put out more power or lose weight or, ideally, both.

If you're interested in seeing how a lot of roadies train, there's a sticky at the top of the Racing forum ("the 33') called the BF Workout Cookbook that describes time-tested cycling workouts. Most are described in terms of power, for those who have power meters, but they can be done by heart rate with an inexpensive HRM, or even a stopwatch and perceived exertion to get truly old school. But all of them require a healthy dose of Vitamin HTFU.

Drew Eckhardt 

Provided you don't run out of gears, power gained riding intervals on flat ground or a trainer works going up-hill too. Riding on flat terrain is better for hill climbing than going up mountains when flat weekday rides start at your front door without driving to hills cutting into your riding or sleeping time.

Some people have motivation issues riding hard on flat ground, although that's a psychological problem not a physiological one.

Some people loose power with moderately low cadences, like the racer in Training and Racing with a Power Meter who got dropped every time he spent more than five minutes at his one hour power but with a cadence below 70 RPM. Gears can fix that.

puddinlegs

In my experience while racing and training a lot way back when, it never made me or anyone I knew feel one way or the other about passing a non-racer. A quick 'hello!' was pretty much the norm, though that seems to have fallen by the wayside with more bikes on the road (and folks who seem to worry about what others are thinking/doing) these days. Folks on interesting bikes always got a couple of questions. Saw a guy on a 7/11 Huffy one time and asked the rider about it... it was Jeff Pierce's dad on the bike that Jeff had won the 1987 TdF Champs final stage on. Pretty cool bit of bike history all for the price of some social interaction. Sort of sad, but time marches on, with civility or not. The OP's riding in a very lovely part of the country. If any of you have the chance to cycle in Grand Traverse and Leelanau Co. in the pinky of Michigan's LP, do so. The experience is way more important than the type of riders we are.

Wilfred Laurier

I used to be 'fast' although was never a great climber. I am 6'4" and I hit 200 lbs when I was 17 years old. I dropped to around 190 for a brief time when I was 19 or 20 and you could see the ribs sticking out of my back. Three years ago I was slower than most of the people I see riding. Two years ago I picked up my road bike again and started piling on the kms. Now I feel fast until an actual fast person catches up, takes a breath in my ample draft, then blows by me like I was stopped. And I am ok with that. In two years I have moved from among the slowest to about mid pack... I keep up with the medium group when big rides happen.
I figure I could get closer to keeping up with the fast people if I had the ambition to actually train, but I don't. I will continue riding for fun and adventure and if people want to be faster than me, I will help them by being slower than them.

FBinNY 

+1
Passing has nothing to do with feelings of superiority or anything else besides the simple fact of two riders riding the same stretch of road at different speeds.

caloso

My experience too. Unless it's a race or race ride, I don't take any notice to passing or being passed by a random rider. If I'm out doing intervals, then I'm trying to hit wattage goals. If I'm on a recovery ride, then I'm recovering. If I'm on a commute ride, I'm just trying to get home in one piece.

Jim from Boston

I prefer to ride hard on hills rather than flat ground. It’s more satisfying, and makes the hills more enjoyable than otherwise. To quote the title of a recent thread by @Ray9, ”Long, steep hills are an investment that shouldn't be wasted.”

I call it my “Time-restricted, Personally Ambitious, but Non-competitive Cyclist Training Routine.”

DBrown9383

For clarification; when I said I wanted to be one of those guys that passes roadies on a hybrid and then comes here and posts about it. I WAS JOKING! I'm 58 years old and don't have half the ego I had 20 years ago and yes, northern Michigan has some awesome bike paths and the state keeps expanding and improving them. Some are rails to trails but many are dedicated bike paths that traverse some very beautiful areas along the shores of the great lakes. Biking here is far more popular than in other states I've lived in and there's no need to slug it out with car traffic due to the vast network of trails most of which are paved.

Raigoki

when i started cycling... i envy those riders faster than me... either on hills or flats.
then it became my motivation, to at least keep up with them...
then my motivation changed, to beat my time/speed/distance.
then i don't care anymore if someone is faster than me... if i'm faster than my previous ride, then i win.

bakes1

No offense but I am calling bs on that. Not personally but as a cycling mentality in general.
Road cycling is a very competitive endeavor. Most people are not paying huge sums of cash for carbon fiber and all the other speed/weight related accessories just because they want to better the times they jot down in their personal notebooks. They are on Strava for a reason lol.
If you come across another rider on the road you are naturally going to gauge your performance against theirs.
Nobody wants to be the one getting passed every time.
If you encountered the same rider in the same spot on your route everyday you most certainly would take notice of the first time you were faster than him.

Jim from Boston

Nice statement about motivation and attitude.

FBinNY 

No doubt that there's a subset of folks obsessed with Strava and similar, but they are not representative of cyclists as a class. Even among folks riding top end stuff, large number do so because they are shopping performance for it's own sake, or maybe wanting to be "cooler" than their friends.

But all of that is still a minority subset, and many of those do it as a game, but don't really care. Even during my very short racing career, I never cared about speed except those I was competing against at the moment.

Of course, we all make a game of it, and even though I don't care, I know I have a bit of the greyhound gene, and will often work hard to chase down a rabbit I see up ahead, and when I liven in NYC I routinely "raced" cabs, and the light timing down Manhattan's avenues. But it's about the joy of the chase, not being faster than anyone.

These days I pass and get passed all the time, and it's the same either way, just a reflection of different speeds on the same stretch of road.

GovernorSilver

Not me. If I come up on another rider from behind, I'm thinking more "Is he/she resting? Will he/she speed up if I try to pass?". There's this one guy I see regularly who often passes me, but then I pass him later after he's all gassed out, and I worry if he's about to have a heart attack or a stroke, from pushing himself so hard, due to his weight and age. I've also passed him when he's climbed - he always struggles to climb even when the elevation gain is like 7 feet. I've learned not to pass him in the flat because then he gets excited and starts sprinting. I don't want to be responsible for his heart attack/stroke.

If another rider comes up from behind, I usually coast and let him/her go.

andr0id

Get good quality slick tires and make sure your wheel bearings are super well adjusted. That will go a long way in being almost as fast as a roadie.

caloso

In my experience, riders who actually race don't spend a lot of time and energy worrying about passing or being passed by any random Tom, Dick, or Fred.

DBrown9383

I KNEW it was my tires and cone bearings!

andr0id

There's nothing wrong with cone bearings. They just need to be smooth and adjusted correctly.

My front hubs are all still Dura Ace. My rears are either Dura Ace which are cones or PowerTap which uses sealed.

WizardOfBoz

Well, keep riding. If you REALLY want to get faster, read, perhaps get a coach, increase your riding to 20, then 30, then 50 miles/day. At some point, you obtain perfect fitness for you, with your body. At that point, will there be 11 year old girls that can strip your gears? You bet. That's not the issue. You get fit to 1) enjoy the rest of life, and 2) to challenge yourself to be your best.

I was once skiing down a run at Mammoth Mountain, on a black diamond run called Cornice Bowl. I'm not that great a skiier, but I was proud of myself. It was driving snow, about 30mph winds, and I was crossing the run face, turning (very inelegantly, but I was turning), and then crossing the face the other way. Stopped about half-way down and was standing there thinking how studly I was. Then I hear two voices. They were speaking Russian, I think. A Dad and his little (8 year old?) girl. They're going straight down. She's doing a snowplow, but is probably going faster than I had been. I let them get out of sight, then criss-crossed down to the bottom. Fortunately, the the cafeteria served beer. I figured I should stick with something I KNOW I was better at than the 8 year old. Although, being Russian, maybe not so....

Point is, work hard, improve, get gratification from YOUR improvement relative to YOUR ability due to YOUR hard work and discipline. If you can get to the top of the hill in half the time it took you three months ago, that's astounding improvement. Go for it!

echale3

I may be getting in a bit late on this one, but here goes...

If you want to improve your fitness level then work on three things.

First, interval training--either HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training), or Tabata-style work. Both are very effective at improving your VO2max because if you do it right, interval training forces your body to repeatedly go anaerobic and then recover.

Second, you need to work on muscular endurance--that entails a lot of seated watts output over time. You can make it more interesting by varying the intensity and duration of the work to simulate going up hills of varying grades and lengths.

Third, is high resistance standing climbs, preferably over a long period of time where the work keeps you at a high percentage of your HRmax.

You can do all this on your bike on the road but it's easier to do it on an indoor trainer and then reap the benefits on the road.

I would strongly recommend getting a hear rate monitor and using it to track your cardio progress and tailor your workout. There are a number that are Bluetooth LE and will work with tracking/recording apps on your smartphone, or you can go with the ANT+ versions that transmit data to a wearable recorder, like a wristwatch-type device.

Lord_Stark

Very good advice!

What I've found out for me: I used to do HIT (High Intensity Training) during the 3 summers for my season preparations in another sport. I thought I could to the same with my road bike outdoor. The problem was, that I couldn't push my heart rate enough before the the legs got very tired. It's very important in HIT training that you push as hard as you can to absolut maximum! So some forms of interval can work pretty good, but for HIT I would try it on a indoor trainer or running!