AEO

what a wuss, didn't even talk back to you

TeleJohn

Mods, please move this to the Road Racing forum.

ECDkeys

On TV I saw Lance Armstrong admit to being smoked by bike messengers on occasion. We can say for certain that he was taking it easy.

On my commute, I focus mostly on an efficient relaxed pedal stroke and keeping my heart rate as low as possible. I guess it's a zen thing. Folks on all sorts of bikes pass me on my fixie. I'm happy to give them something to boast about to their coworkers.

HenryL

Great job on holding 20-21 mph......you only smoke someone if both are willing to play. Either he was just finishing a workout or maybe you smoked a FRED.

Quickbeam

I was cruising home at my normal (16mph-18mph) speed one day (probably near the lower end of that range) and a guy in street cloths sitting bolt upright on a low-end MTB with his windbreaker flying behind him like Superman's cape blew by me like I wasn't even moving. I may have imagined it but in the split second that I glimsped his face, he seemed to be wearing a big ol' s*#t-eating grin. There are virtually no bike commuters where I am and that's the only time I can remember being passed by another cyclist on my commute. It was weird! I was like "Damn dude! Tip-o'-the-cap to you!" I figure he was juiced!

Longfemur

Aw grow up! What, you think just because a person is riding a road bike that he/she is actively going as fast as they possibly can all the time? Do you really think you're such a great bicycle rider that you can make a slow, heavy hybrid compete with a road bike over any significant distance? Maybe the "roadie" wasn't riding for speed. Maybe he was just warming up at the start of a long ride. Maybe he was recovering from a long ride the previous day. Maybe he was on the last leg home of a long ride. Maybe he was just more mature than you are.

I really don't expect to be seeing hybrids on the major Tours any time soon.

lil brown bat

How do you run into a weekender roadie while commuting to your M-F job?

CliftonGK1

Heh. Sounds like the guy who passed me one day. I was doing about 15mph or so, nothing too fast but not exactly creeping along, and I heard this guy before I saw him. Squeaky rusted chain, sounds like every bearing race was bone dry on his bike, panniers falling apart and fixed with duct tape and held shut with those gigantic punk-rocker safety pins. Dude flew past me in a blur of cutoff jeans and flapping flannel like I was trackstanding.

CCrew

Come ride in Northern VA. They think they're too good to be in the same county with you here...

I have to love it. We'll run *lots* of areas, but the closer to NoVa we get the more high falutin'/snobbish/stuck up/unfriendly the riders seem to get.


-R

adebrunner

Last week I pulled up next to this guy in a Bugatti Veyron. He was stopped at a traffic light and I SMOKED his *****. It was such a rush to know that I was riding faster than the fastest production car on the planet!!!! I swear, I must've been going like 14-16MPH!!!!11 You should've seen the look on that guy's face. It looked almost like he didn't care at all because he wasn't racing me, but I knew he was crying inside.

DataJunkie

Hmmm....
Commuter racing...

50-70 lbs worth of bike and gear going round a half mile course...with the rider of course.

Or commuter TT. lol

CliftonGK1

Check out the Little 100 track races after the Flying Wheel Summer Century: Velodrome racing on beach cruisers. Themed team costumes encouraged.

mihlbach

Your making a lot of assumptions here...

Who said I worked M-F?
When did I say I passed roadies while commuting?
When did I say I commuted on a SS MTB?

knucklesandwich

I kinda think that elation over winning the Tour de Nothing is something that should be celebrated internally.

mrbrown

Once, I was riding my foldie, and I smoked a salmon.

And every morning, I smoke cars stuck in rush hour gridlock. I was only doing 10mph. That is a very nice feeling indeed.

charles vail

I like to catch up to riders so that I can chat with them or I purposely let folks catch me so I can ride with someone for a while. Otherwise, I end up riding alone all the time and that sucks. I enjoy riding my bicycle alone o.k. but riding with others might lead to making a new friend and that can't be bad.

lil brown bat

Actually, I'm making a few reasonable ones. Also, there's this usage we have in English, where the word "you" is used not to refer to the second person, but to the impersonal, similar to "one", "people", "they", etc. In other words...it's not all about you.

I-Like-To-Bike

AKA Bragging about being a "Big Dog Wannabe" dropping the untercyclists when commuting.

Sixty Fiver

Sounds like a good idea... I have covered my 13 km urban commute in 22 minutes and on days like that the only things passing you are cars.

Mind you... this is the kind of commute best done naked..as in on a stripped down fixed gear road bike with some serious gearing.

My commutes usually tend to be much more leisurely and involve heavier bikes a lot more stuff.

bellweatherman

CONGRATS! You are a funny.

Next time, let the roadie know you are racing them. I have no doubt that he would've smoked YOU had he known you were treating your ride like the Tour de France.

TalkingHead

what is the max speed for say a trek fx? I hit near 30mph down hill the other day and got a bit scared so i slowly applied brakes and took it down to the teens once the slope was done

mihlbach

JeffB502

I've hit 34.5mph on a short but steep downhill with a bit of a tailwind on my Trek 7.2FX set up like this:


The speed limit was 35...there was a car next to me and the passenger was looking over at me like I was crazy, lol. It felt very solid/stable at that speed and I think I would have been comfortable going up to around 40, maybe more.

chipcom 

As if on cue, Rod Serling enters the forum...

ok_commuter