Or perhaps signalling. Club riders are notoriously bad at this. I'm sure some of the actually cleat their hands to their bars.

25mph descent? Come on, I'm doing 25mph on a straight. I'll race you #@$*!!!!! 600 WATTTS!!!

I ride a small-wheeled folder in London on my daily commute and often find that a small, but not insignificant proportion of other London cyclists seem to want to race me after I overtake them. I guess it is a macho thing...!

My R&M Birdy folder:

Rice rings, baby!

At 6-something on winter mornings on the "non bike route" road I favor, I almost never get that close to another bike commuter, so if I do, I usually hammer it and catch up. But I don't suck wheel, I pull up alongside and introduce m'self.

I only compete with myself and this drives me to go faster and faster. I've never been passed on my commute and do end up having to pass others quite a bit. (only by chance of my route and who else rides it at those times, there are obviously faster commuters out there) Often I need to sit behind a cyclist until there is a break in traffic to let me pass and as soon as it is there I take it. Most annoying is getting a red light shortly after the pass and having the slower cyclist re-pass me my inching forward to my right at the light. Its quite common and I am sometimes much less courteous on the 2nd pass (i.e. don't call it out, use a smaller gap in traffic to get by) I did have great fun one time when I passed a cyclist going quite a bit slower, he grabed on my wheel and a few miles later a third cyclist did and we had a very fast paceline going for a few more miles. But compete with others? Never possible as we are going different places and for different distances and never even agreed that there was a race going on.

Al

When I went to UC-Davis (a major bike commute area), I always tried to go faster than everyone else on the road and if anybody passed me, I would run them down. But I had a 3 mile commute at most, so the race never lasted too long.

Now, I'm the only biker I see in the morning and other than the occasional wrong way cyclist in the afternoon, I don't see anyone, so I just try to race the cars and myself. Of course, most of the roads I ride are 40-55 mph speed limits, so I don't keep up very well.

Competitive commuting? Never heard of it. Here we're all just trying to get to work on time.

i ride solo and prefer it. it's my relaxing alone time. i pass a few folks along the way and occasionally the same way with a some regulars, but we give each other our space.


but i've offered some co-workers near my hours to ride in with them sometime if they ever want and show them my route. no takers yet.

With everything I am only competitive with myself. This includes commuting.
Plus, being competitive in winter is pointless. For one, I am weighted down with my extra clothing. Secondly, I am virtually alone.

I guess I do not understand the point of being competitive and am completely uninterested in it.

I'll sometimes become a bit "competitive" if someone passes me on a hill at a reasonable clip while I'm going at a relaxed tempo. Why not? The 6% grade on the way to work is fun to try to go up maintaining double digit speeds. I definitely keep my distance (either behind, to the side, or in front) and keep things safe. Just purely friendly pushing of each other to try a bit harder. If I can't pass with a reasonable speed differential (to minimize the time side by side), though, I'll stick back and let the other person go, perhaps trying to catch up at the top. If someone wants to suck my wheel, that's cool, as long as that person maintains a safe distance. It doesn't bother me the least bit. Overlapping wheels, on the other hand, is not cool.

That's one of the pleasures of everyday commuting, sometimes you build an informal paceline that just rocks!

Aside from all the stop and start politics and jockeying (which merits a whole different thread!),
running tight as a group of commuters makes sense to me for a couple of reasons. One is there's strength in numbers.

Second, you present a larger group to other motorists. There is a certain synergy acheived here on the streets of Seattle when two riders take the lane on a downtown street and hold it for 10 or more city blocks. Also, right hooks are tougher for drivers to consider.

It can also be a little less competitive if everyone is dancing around the same obstacles. A certain flow develops with the riders all meshing as a group. You certainly see this in pacelines, but also happens during commutes with a lot of other cyclists.

I've seen this out on the ski slopes as well, as a ski instructor. You run a drill where everyone skis en masse, back and forth in a tight little swarming school of skiers, like a school of fish, with no single skier in the lead or in the rear all the time, and it works amazingly well. Humans have incredible spatial ablities in movement.

a third reason to ride en masse is you get to check out all the other riders if they're cute and try to chat them up.

I like riding in a commuting paceline, or like a school of fish, instead of the commuter race, but it is rare to have it happen here.

I remember a "bike bus" in Australia that consisted of completely of cyclists that would run on a time table.

I don't run into this problem commuting but I see it on organized rides where you would expect it anyway. I don't like having people locked on my rear wheel unless I know how they ride AND I feel like working together since drafting takes a lot of head space. Here's my take:

1) If someone caught you, you should let them pass at the pace they used to catch you. You already blew your chance to stay ahead.

2) If they rode too hard to catch you and actually aren't that fast, drop them and resume your normal pace after they can't draft

3) If they are strong enough to keep up but will neither pass nor give you a reasonable amount of space, just slow down by 2mph so they'll get bored and pass. If they insist on staying locked on your wheel, clear your nostrils. You don't have to aim because of the way a draft works.

I agree, it can be a conundrum. I dislike when someone hammers to catch up to me, passes, then slows down. I don't draft, but I'll hang back 10 feet and wait for a chance to pass. I, unlike many of you evidently, could care less if someone drafts me. Even if they half-wheel it, the guy who hits his front wheel's going down, and it ain't me. I've had some good situations where I allow someone to draft, then they take a pull and we work together for a few miles.

My only other issue is when I catch someone, because it's natural to try to catch someone when they're ahead, but we're riding about the same pace afterwords. I usually don't pass, or draft, but I've had people take issue that I'm hanging out 10 or 15 feet back there. I know not why...

My commute is totally flat and I ride a steady hard pace from begining to end that is fairly consisent day to day (+/-0.5mph average). There is no pushing it harder or letting up. I ride hard the whole way and end up cruising at the same speed within +/-1mph (except of course for slow/down accelerate for stops) for pretty much the whole 8.5mi commute. I actually don't like to go slower as it messes up this consistency which is why I always pass slower riders and ride the same speed after the pass.

Al

They aren't doing any sort of pace I don't think. They leave from the same place every morning and ride into the city, mainly as a safety in numbers thing for new commuters.

Some people are plain stupid, on bikes, in cars and on foot. All you can do is ride at the pace you are comfortable and be safe, that includes trying to avoid the people who are behaving dangerously.

Speaking of people "sucking your wheel", I had that happen last week on the way home. I got onto springwater corridor, the section that follows the river, and I covered about a mile when this guy starts overtaking me (he didn't say "on your left", he just snuck up beside me luckily I caught sight of his headlight so I knew what was coming). I let him go in front of me, thinking "eh, he's going faster, whatevs", but then he starts slowing down in front of me... and I ended up following this guy for the rest of the trail. Even coasted a few times to make sure I didn't overtake him. I was just going at my normal pace, anyway... not looking to drop people or whatever, I'M JUST TRYING TO GET HOME!!

I wonder what his reaction would've been if I decided to put more umph on my pedals and dropped him. Prolly would've hurt his ego and his izumi gear Besides, when you're clad for "racing", you can't let some girl on an old 10 speed with a rack drop you!! :B

You should've dropped him if you sensed he was "competing" with you and he looked like he should be physically stronger. I'm not a chick, but it's fun to drop a 20 something on a racing bike when you're riding with fenders and panniers.

My guess is that they just feel crowded or that you're "pushing" them into riding faster than they want. If you really intend to keep the pace, kick it up a notch and resume your normal pace when they're back about 50 yards. Alternatively, drop back to about 40 feet. Either method results in minimal effort and impact on commute time.

He was sniffing yer butt ... and the he went ahead and tried to make you sniff his.

I had a chap draft me last Friday after passing him in a high head wind; When I saw his shadow, I stood up off the saddle and blasted him with the biggest fart I could muster (my knicks ballooned there for a moment). When I looked back he was gone; I don't know if he passed out, fell off his bike laughing or hit a pot hole.

Say, about as rude as sucking someone's wheel and not taking a turn on the front? And how is this less rude than the brake-n-clear technique? It's not that I can't ride with someone on my wheel, I do that every april to september with road racing. My point is, if you want to be competitive on a bicycle, grow some nards (or ovaries whichever is the case), join a club and start racing. Doing it on the MUP eventually ends up with some butthead running over an old lady which here in Calgary, brings out the bike cops to enforce the insanely low 20km/h speed limit.

Interesting idea... "bike pooling." There is safety in numbers, so it makes sense.

If your farts are like mine, you probably just dropped him due to the acceleration from your gas-powered turbo-boost! YEEE HAAWWWW!!