BikeSnobNYC calls it "category 6 racing", category 5 being the lowest rank of amateur racing, category 1 being the highest.

Running lights and stop signs is a sure sign of insecurity of cycling prowess.

believe it or not, I try to race the subway (as it runs on the surface once it's out of city center).

it gets up to 40-45 km/h but has to stop to let people on/off.

commute time = 30 mins
subway time = 22 min + wait on both ends

when the subway is on the surface, i get passed between stations but if I can average roughly 30 km/h, I can keep pace with it long-term (over a 5km distance)

so, that counts as racing around 1000 people at once right?

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=273728

There are many bike commuters where I live, but it is an urban area and everyone is going in a different direction. I will only pass someone if they are going REALLY slow, otherwise I will just slow down a bit as they are likely to go a different direction at the next intersection anyhow. We also have road traffic and lots of road hazards (potholes, cactus thorns, gravel, etc.), so I'd prefer to just slow down a bit rather than get in someone's way so they can't navigate the road properly. :thumb:

I seem to get passed by most people.

I have only caught up to a couple people.

I don't know how everyone goes so fast.

I try not to play the game and I should just keep going at my regular speed.

I pinned on a number 20 times this season, plus countless group rides and solo training sessions, so I don't feel the need to "race" anyone on the ride to the office.

I compete with nitro burning,rubber melting,ground pounders......I ride bicycles to forget about the first part.....

If you keep commuting regularly your regular speed will start creeping up. I was passed by everyone when I first started, and then about a month and a half ago with no effort on my part I suddenly started catching people. Sure, they're usually people on knobby-tired mountain bikes or fully-loaded tourers, but I was left in their dust when I first started commuting.

I usually stay at my own pace on the commute, which is usually a bit higher than those around me.. but sometimes people I pass go all out to run me down. Three days ago, during the morning commute, a guy lost his chain in a turn trying to stay with me.

In Montreal it seems a competitive cyclist is 60 year old Quebecer, with no helmet and no shirt on an 80's Peugeot. :beer:

Can't. No other commuters anywhere near me.

I surprised my self as I am not normally a competitive person. One morning this attractive woman passed me and she was really fit. I am not and decided that I did not want to be the big slow guy. Passed her on an up hill just to prove to myself that I was not a bump on a log. Felt victorious for a bit then kinda silly for making a deal out of it.

I do try to catch fellow cyclists when I see them ahead of me, but more as an excuse/goal to push myself than any sense of competition with them. I often get passed going up some of the steeper sections of my commute, usually when I've had to stop at the light and get rolling right at the beginning of my commute. I have to resist the urge to push too hard before I'm warmed up (and they usually have the advantage of a rolling start). My recumbent is a bit heavier and the motor *cough cough* still needs some work.... I can slowly gain ground on the flats and slight down hill sections, but most of my 4 mile commute in is a gradual up hill ride to the airport.

I wouldn't know. I rarely ever see other cyclists on my commute and when I do, they are usually going in another direction.

I've never seen another cyclist going the same way. But I ride slowly anyway. I'm trying to take longer routes on the way home to build up my endurance. I'm hoping to pull off a half century (not metric) Friday next week. The trouble with doing that is I don't feel like riding for several days after a long ride. I should just get up and do it.

That's a lesson I'm learning. I don't see too many other riders on my route. However, I do tend to race the clock.
I feel better when I pace myself and forget about the race.

I was getting passed by a lot of people on the way in today, mostly while stopped at lights, and again while going slightly downhill because there was a lot of traffic and I was being cautious. But I also knew I was getting to the part of the ride out of the traffic and away from the lights, and then the uphill of the Manhattan Bridge, where I know I can crank it up. I was 3-4 blocks behind but those guys saw my back and then never saw me again. On the bridge itself, I want past a bunch of people, but then let up a little behind a guy that was keeping a good steady pace. One person passed me on a classic steel Colnago, and I wanted to catch him just to check it out but I didn't try.

In Manhattan I had the same guy repeatedly pull in front of me while I'm stopped at the light, only to have to go around him once we get going again. Once I got to a clear part of the road I just put a burst on and never saw him again either.

Mostly I just get ticked off that nobody stops for the lights even when there is cross traffic and pedestrians. I'm standing there letting people go and some jerk just blows right through.

It helps that I'm commuting on a carbon fiber road bike at the moment.

I would not say I compete with people but I certainly use the as "carrots" to encourage me to push harder. I also tend to watch traffic, especially jerks that drive as such, to see if their evasive driving really mattered and I found that for the most part I tend to catch them at the next light a bunch of the time. There is one spot on the commute home where I have more drama with cars than I would like and we all get stuck at the same light a 1/4 mile away. They act as if I am destroying their day only to find that I catch them at the next light. I enjoy "racing" them just to rub it in their faces.

No, I'm not in a rush to get to work so racing fellow commuters is not a consideration. Throw asthma and heart issues into the mix and I'm fine if I'm just puttering along. Also, unlike a lot of NYC commuters, I stop at lights when there are pedestrians in the crosswalk or at the corner so the overall commute is not that fast. It takes me close to 35 minutes to travel the 7 miles each morning on a 16" wheel folding bike.

I would love to use my touring bike for the commute, but unfortunately I have to take the kid to school via mass transit before heading into the office. At least it stretched my commute from what use to be (1) mile to (7) miles in the morning.:)

I do a 10km commute through my city and it's very unusual to see another cyclist on the road. I will sometimes see them on the footpath (legal here).

I think I have been overtaken about twice and it's not because I am fast :)

i commute with literally hundreds of other bikers, enough to cause traffic jams even on the widest of bike lanes sometimes. i try to resist the urge to race but every so often so a guy with a nicer bike will come along desperate to leave me behind so i just keep right along side them matching their speed until they give up. it really is a lot of fun.

i will however race the electric bikes because they think they own the road. i love to do it tour de france style, get on their back wheel out of the wind and then fly past them when the road is clear.

I don't try to burn past commuters... But sometimes I try to pass a bus and complete his/her route to my destination before he/she (bus driver) arrives.

Man I'm soooo like that (first post) that Its unbelievable I get to work all excited because I've overtaken X amount of motorbikes (in the netherlands they ride the bicycle paths with us and they are very low powered 35Km/h top speed). I also make a point of going faster than the tram or preety much every thing that could get there before me! :D
nice post

Being that I'm in the same country, this is pretty much how my commute is too.

I love the looks I get from guys on E-bikes and scooters when I zip past them - and sometimes I get thumbs up and 'Jia You' calls from them as well. :D

I'm not enough of a speed demon yet to get too involved in this... probably need to upgrade to a road bike before I do. Right now I'm on a relatively inexpensive hybrid with fully loaded panniers, and there's plenty of roadies out there on racing bikes I'm not going to compete with. Still, I get involved at times. If I see someone coming up behind me I usually speed up. If they are still bearing down fast I let it go without a wounded ego. The people I pass are obviously not too concerned with speed so it'd be downright silly to get competitive about it. Sometimes there are cyclists riding at a slightly slower pace and I might speed up to pass them, but it's not about being competitive so much as just getting the pass out of the way and making sure I can choose a safe moment to do it.

On my ride in to work, I need to force myself to stick to a fairly slow pace so I don't sweat too much, as I wear my work clothes (except on summery days I might wear civilian shorts on the bike and change to long pants at the office). On the way home I sometimes try to catch other riders, but I don't try hard, and if they are beating me by blowing stop signs I let them go.

There is one hill on the way home popular with runners (Poplar Plains Rd) and I make damn sure no runners beat me up that hill! Sometimes they do seem to target me, and I pick up the pace while pretending I don't notice them.

In the charity Ride for Heart, I always treat the last 6 km as a race, and pick people far ahead that I try to overtake. Of course, they don't realize they are in a race!

do you find it odd that in a country where everyone has a bike no-one can ride one. im usually the quickest on the road by far and im not quick. i see people on expensive bikes with the seats too low, riding in the wrong gear burning up all there energy trying to pass anyone who is wearing a helmet.

I am but mostly I am riding against my own previous times. I like to try to make it to work within 35 mins and home within 40 mins (door-to-door), assuming I'm riding at low traffic times. If I leave closer to peak hour there's a lot of traffic on the roads and people on the trails so I don't push it.

Yep, but I'm going twice as fast as the average recreational rider, so I try to be careful to give them lots of space and not come across as "that ******* in lycra."

On my way in today I passed a car that had passed me 4 miles earlier. That made the ride in a lot more pleasurable!

I don't like the SCR rules. Because when I pulled away from the girl with panniers and sandals, I didn't get points? She looked very fit, after all. Nor when I got the girl in a skirt and cowboy boots. Or the guy on an Xtracycle with kid seat, chatting idly with cowboy boot girl. No points for that double pass? Maybe it was shooting fish in a barrel but just try to get two fish with one bullet, it is not easy. How about the bare-legged tattooed guy with a messenger backpack on his single speed with bullhorn bars? Just 'cause I'm on a road bike I get no point? And the roadie in Lycra who shamelessly pipped me at the light when I was still inserting my cleat. Just because he had Raceblades on his go-fast bike, that makes him a "touring" cyclist and the pocketpick counts against me? WAAAH!

I race anything with legs or wheels. There is a big mall I bike past and have to safely slalom through the 50 or so people a day with their heads down, phone tapping, swaying back and forth along the middle of the mup. I call that the technical section. Before that is the uphill grind, the looks flat but I'll bet you it's still uphill section, and then there is the downhill car racing 7 stoplights in a km tedious section.

Not many commies where I ride. When I see one, I try to catch up to ride with. Safety in numbers, you know. I mostly try to keep my eye on inattentive psychos that drive overweight, overpowered weapons (cars).