So I am not a seasoned rider with lots of road experience but I had an interesting encounter this last weekend and was wondering how you would handle it. I was solo riding on a fairly active MUT. I had just passed a small group of cyclists and was holding a quicker pace to put sufficient distance on them before returning to my normal pace. In my periphery I noticed a shadow and glanced back to see another cyclist had followed with me. I waved him past but his reply was “Thanks, but I am just going to draft you a while”. I did not know the rider and thought he was kidding at first, but he tucked in behind me. I figured maybe he was winded from the extra effort needed to overtake the other group of riders so I figured it was no big deal if he stuck to me for a minute to catch his breath. However, I pulled him for more than 3 miles to which I finally told him I was breaking off. He laughed and said “Thanks for the ride” and then rode on with no offer to reciprocate the draft.

I thought this encounter was kind of strange but maybe it is normal in the cycling world. So to my question: Is this normal behavior and if it happened to you how would you handle it?

Maybe this question belongs in a different forum but I fit the demographics and this was definitely a "get off my lawn" scenario.

'bob