for me, cycling in general is like a pacman game. I vanquish those in front of me and elude those behind me. ... I don't always win ...

Have same feeling when i am commuting or jogging.

If there is another cyclist or runner in front some instinct gets activated. I follow it partly, just getting a bit closer (still plenty of distance inbetween) and maintain the same pace. Once i see that i can do it easily i stop "the race" and get back to enjoying the ride. If the rider in front notices me and starts racing, well, then let the race begin. Does not happen too often.

If i am getting passed and see there is no way to keep up then i cool down and somehow feel sympathy for that person in front.

Neither. I ride my own pace.

One route I take home has a couple miles of flats and then a 5 mile long uphill (Capital Cresent Trail rail trail). I usually let another rider or riders pull on the flat section and pull for a few minutes on the uphill section before attacking. Helps make the uphill grind a little more interesting and overall speed higher than riding alone. Sometimes the train stays together, sometimes I'm dropped, and sometimes I "win." Pretty safe given the lower speeds involved.

I very rarely see another biker heading in my direction, but I have tried to catch up to see who it is. Not that I would even know them. Though there is a biker who rides the same stretch of the city I do just at a later time of day. I have ridden behind him once because I was going home and we were both headed in the same direction. He is actually my inspiration. He rides all weather, winter, spring, summer and fall. One time just after I started commuting by bike I saw him riding and it was raining out, so I stopped the car ahead of him just to watch him ride by and see what he used that maybe I could get to help with riding in the rain.

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?

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.

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.

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.