Originally Posted by
noimagination
The cyclist applies force over time to counteract the acceleration (negative value) due to the forces of air resistance and friction in order to maintain a constant velocity, but the cyclist is not accelerating.
That is a very odd way to put it. An actual physicist or (in my case) engineer would talk about resistive forces, not resistive accelerations. Acceleration is only relevant when the mass you are considering is actually accelerating ie the applied force and the resistive forces are not in equilibrium. So first you work out the net force acting on the mass and then you calculate the resultant acceleration from F=ma. At constant speed, net force and acceleration are zero.