Originally Posted by
berner
This past Sunday I rode 44 miles in high heat but I was feeling fine. As I approached within 75 yards of an intersection I noticed, for several seconds, a woman cross in front of me riding bolt upright on some sort of comfort/commuter bike. As I made the turn onto the same road she was on, I thought to myself, "I'll soon catch her". As this point I was 100 yards behind and she was pedaling at high cadence. I never did catch her. At each slight bend in the road, as she came back in sight on the straight section, she was further and further ahead and eventually disappeared. Sometimes you are the windshield and sometimes you are the bug.
When I came back after a decade layoff I had about 500 miles behind me and I got passed by a cross-bike looking straight bar with a big bag on the back of his luggage rack. The guy was wearing sandals. Well I said, "This won't do" and passed him back. I was about half way through about a 50 mile ride and after a couple of miles at that pace I realized that I wasn't going to keep it up much longer and still get home alive so I dropped one gear down. The guy immediately passed me back with a big satisfied grin on his face and eventually disappeared into the distance. I bonked on the hill soon after that and had to stop at the top to "check my map" before limping home.