I'm pretty sure most everyone knows a sandbagger. Someone who says things like, "I'm coming off the couch", or IDK, 40 miles seems like a really long way", only to proceed to kick your butt on the ride. I ride from time to time with a guy that is always coming "off the couch" Even when I was training, with a coach, in the best shape of my life, he would hammer me into the ground often while saying the ride was the longest he had ridden in a year, yada, yada, yada. Last time we rode, it was a classic 60 mile loop over the mountains behind my house. It was an early season push for me, my main goal to just get through the distance and climbing. My friend said he hadn't been on the bike all winter.

Well on the long climb up the ridge, as I tried to hold his wheel, he starts telling me about a recent ride he did with a local Cat 1, a 80 mile mtb epic that took 15 hours and finished with headlamps. So much for not riding all winter. Later on in the ride he let slip about a climb up Mt Mitchell and back. Anyway, I got the idea he had more miles in his legs than first told. I suffered through our ride, he barely broke a sweat. I guess I don't understand why some people feel the need to sandbag but I'm often happy for the company and take my lumps. Any else know riders like this one? (no, it's not NealH, I know he rides)

Living near the Mississippi which is currently going to crest around 10 feet above flood stage, the phrase "sandbagger" has an entirely different meaning to me!

I mostly just ride alone, so I've not run into this, but I think I've met the type of personality that would do something like that, a few times.

Certainly not the type of sandbagger I had in mind though my heart goes out to anyone affected by the floods. It seems to me the flooding has become an annual unwelcome event.

Its not always sandbagging. Depending upon where one comes from, it can be a learned self preservation technique.

I know, and ride with, a few guys who would take any comments on fitness other than putting ones-self down as a proclaimation of strenght and open invitation to competition. If you desire a reasonable training or group ride with these individuals, instead of a race, you will start with every excuse in the book and proceed to allow them to half wheel you for a good portion of the ride.

If he told you he had been riding, and then commenced to kick your butt would you have felt better? What difference did it make?

I have found through experience that I can tell when some people are lying..................their lips are moving.

Does that mean you miss the ones who's fingers are typing?

It looks like the flood will be less of a problem than the area feared. My only personal beef with the water is that it's covering my favorite MUP. So far the only major problem caused by the flood have been a record number of barge breakaways; over 100 yesterday (or the day before?)

*****

Over the years I have learned that when someone is telling me how off they are, that they are slow, are not in shape, etc., I immediately have to think I am being "sandbagged" at whatever I am doing with them. Like a poker player that acts as if their hand is the worst thing they have ever held, watch out for that royal flush or 4 aces.

Bill

I'm a "Sandbagger" and I admit. However I also have a moral streak running through me and If I tell them I am slow uphills- Will struggle to do 60 miles or any other sandbagging excuse--I stick to that excuse.

Wow BikeWNC, I honestly had no idea that this was such a problem. The folks I ride with, if they say they've been off the bike . . . ride like they've been off the bike, it's pretty obvious!

Other riders, the ones I ride with often, I pretty much know what they've ridden. Plus, they probably know that I'm not competitve enough to worry about trying to fool me. I'm just kind of "whatever."

Maybe just don't ride with this guy and instead ride with Neal H.!

Rick / OCRR

You're taking it too personally, but you knew that already. Sandbagging has a grand and glorious tradition. I would sandbag in a heartbeat in the event that I ever met someone who was actually slower than me. "I just had a heart valve replacement/finished chemotherapy/ressurection event caused by the zombie virus, so I know I'll suck at this ride", while passing everyone out there. Who knows, it could happen some day.

Now half-wheeling, that really ticks me off.

I've done both kinds of sandbagging in my time and felt proud of myself afterward. I'm not up to doing either one anymore.

this happened to me the other day, so every time the guy said his legs weren't feeling that good I would try to drop him. Worked exactly once, but then he caught up when I stopped

Hey northern Mississippi headwaters are at flood stage, sandbags are better

than flooded houses without the sandbag barrier to keep it out.

my cycling ego is not fragile, I know, by now, I'm just a Aging Cycle-Tourist.

Lol. What's half-wheeling?

I think it's kind of like drafting with overlapping his front with your rear wheel... dangerous if you move from your line much. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't have much experience with sandbaggers of the cycling kind (or golfing) but I would find it annoying if I did. I pretty much know that nearly all the people I ride with can go faster than me.... but I ride alone a lot of the time.

billydonn,
No you have it right. The practice is dangerous if either rider weaves much or has to take evasive action.

As to sandbaggers, I allow a new riding partner to do that once and after that I begin to discount them as a blowhard. Once they know your abilities as a rider they should not have to resort to those kinds of B.S.

Half-wheeling gets used in two different ways. While following, you are correct that overlapping with the rider in front of you would be consiered half wheeling.

In the context of riding two abreast with a friend or at the front of a group, it is when one of the two riders consistantly picks his pace up just enough to be a half wheel ahead of the rider alongside him. It requires the second rider to increase his pace slightly to pull back even and in doing so begins the quickening of the overall pace. Generally considered poor form as it place riders behind in a position of having their own wheels overlapping those alongside them, not being able to carry on a civil conversation with the rider alongside or someone loosing the benefit of the draft in order to return the group to a side by side formation.

Exactly. If you're riding with a friend, either go two abreast , or in single file.

People that add nothing to your life should not be in your life.

If they are then that's your fault!!

Drama, LOL

I'm not saying I wouldn't ever be a sandbagger, but I would point out that you're only susceptible when you don't know the person very well. If I start complaining about my golf game just before the round, --it's immediately taken as "trying to get extra strokes for the money game" by the people who know me well. Strangers are always going to be "unknowns".

Take it as a compliment. If they weren't concerned that you may have been out training and capable of hurting them, they wouldn't be protecting their ego by assembling a list of excuses before the ride even begins.

Back in my attorney days, sandbagging and bluffing were great fun. Perhaps a little twisted, but great fun. bk