+2
I have my best success racing racers who are doing their zone 2 ride.

I don't equate riding speed to superiority.

But yea - there are a pile of race classes that are supposed to be so because of the general speed differences. Of course there is also a lot of overlap. I like the idea of not having classes based on anything but ability, but they didn't ask me. Still, for speed/competitiveness in the USA this seems to be true.
M Cat 3 ~ M Junior 15-16 ~ WP12 ~ M60

And the same can be done for many other categories.

Also average for the category relative to other categories is not the same as the top few in each. I expect the top 14 year old boy to be faster than the top woman. I expect the average 14 year old girl to be closer in speed to women pros than 14 year old boys are to male pros, being girls peak earlier. The training time (average) between the genders is quite different, as are the length of the races.

Groups also race differently. It is pretty easy to get these numbers looking at Strava. For example in a crit pro women, very capable of racing 24mph, will often race laps in the teens, or you can find races where lap speed varies 4 mph or more. Pro men have lap speeds that vary less and junior boys go full gas and every lap is as fast as they can go.
So while a woman Pro may be as fast as the 15 year old boys - the P1 crit average speed will be slower.

If that were true, then Strava wouldn't have a separate QOM category and the TDF would be a mixed field.

50 is not the problem. Training is the problem. Don't believe me? Browse the 45-55 category on your favorite Strava segments, or the 50+ results from your favorite Gran Fondo.

Thing is, in any one case we are dealing with a single data point ... and because of that gender-related generalities are irrelevant. In general men tend to be larger than women and have a higher percentage of muscle per unit of body weight ... but when any Individual man is passed (or passes) and Individual woman, it is in no way representative of any general condition.

The OP seems (to me, and this is possibly my misperception) to be more concerned because a woman passed him, instead of a man. I don't see that. I see a rider who was going faster on that day at that time, passed a rider going slower at that time and place. For some reason, the OP seems more upset because it was a woman .... which strikes me as indicative of the slight gender-bias most males in the U.S. have been taught (I am sure in other countries and cultures as well, but I think I understand U.S. people better due to longer exposure.)

Again, this is all just my extrapolation.

That said, in Saudi Arabia women aren't allowed on bikes. Could be a solution involving relocation.

Sounds like you are trolling, but as I have met some that think as you post, I'll respond.
It is millions (likely billions) of data points - unless everyone is falsifying information :-)

You can look at any Strava segment with 500 or so attempts on the KOM and you will always find the men's is faster. You can look at races top 50%, and race results in TTs and will always see the men's is faster.
If you really question this, I can help with links.

Of course get single person entry races, or compare the slowest and you may have one data point and that will throw things off.

A women's '96 USA Olympian used to come on our group ride. Every time she did that the speeds would go up 2-3 mph. "In general" is was not acceptable for her to be at the pointy end of the pack. She was cute too, and I think that played a part.

So, I think your perception is likely correct, but also very predictable, err - normal.

Gas?

What does it mean it was not acceptable to be at the pointy end of the pack? Do you have Vikings in your club?
Never heard such a term...or a rider restricted to only ride in a given place...lol.

I did a 60 mile group ride last week. Rolling terrain, in east TN. It was a mixed bunch. I rode behind a pack of 5 women for most of the ride. Did not give one chit about them being in front of me. At the rest stop we all chatted, refueled, had some laughs as one of them almost wiped out walking in her cleats to use the restroom. There were 2 other guys with me as well and we all let the women take the lead. It wasn't a race, it was a leisure ride and we did whatever pace the women out front wanted. After mile 60 there were fist bumps, handshakes, a few hugs and a few see you next week exchanges.

Can you share a bit more?

Nobody would let her. Each time she went to the front, some male would come around and get in front.
Edit Add: Different than the post above this was the Tue/Thur night World Championship - so everyone was very serious cyclist.
https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...te+Market+ride

This may not be due to being a female. I've seen this with super star celebs too, and they just tool along mid/back and don't get near the front. If they do, someone is trying to beat them. I remember my son riding with Sagan and I asked him if he could beat him up the hill (Swami's ride, San Diego ~ 2012) and he said, sure, he hangs at the back and talks to the girls.

It;s interesting, I don't know about there, but here, the Amish cannot ride bikes. They are allowed to ride scooters though.

cc limit?

Sounds like a real wackjob group of riders. Pretty outrageous they wouldn't let her pull at the front of the line without some sort of reaction.

Certainly so. But also well established group of nuts. I think they exist in more places than SoCal.

I get somewhat the same thing. I'm a late 50s overweight guy that can lay down big W for longer than expected (and 45 years of riding road bikes). I catch a lot of guys (on flats) that really don't like the fat guy passing them, and don't understand W/kg vs W/CdA.

Yeah...but they don't have much choice. So...you're 'that guy' huh?
What kind of speed can you sustain on the flat for say 5 miles?

This thread:

A) breaking news, some girls are fast, I know...super hard to believe, but trust me I've seen it!

B) (insert creepy guy sexist comment).

Why the self indictment? Coming clean?

On flat road...
Solo - 25. Group - 30. If I couldn't do that on my bike, I could use (my) kid's bike :-)
I don't measure me so much anymore, nor do I care so much, but I think those are pretty real numbers.

As cyclists know there is something beyond fitness, leanness and age to going more fast, although the age and fit things help a lot.

I don't like when someone does that. I now have to be aware of someone riding inches from me when I'm already riding at over 30 km/h.

There might be some confusion about the term “data point,” so I simply will not use it.

I repeat: In General, men are larger and stronger than women. One doesn’t need to view charts and graphs unless one is literally blind. Men In General (as in, taken as a group) tend to be larger and stronger.

Even saying this is like .... “Duh.” Come on, folks.

Equally blazingly obvious, though, is that taking any two individuals, “In General” has no meaning.

The average paycheck of the people living in your area does Not affect the size of your paycheck. Your check affects the average. The average square footage of houses in your neighborhood does not determine the size of your home.

I worked in a factory where white males were about ten percent of the work force. yet, somehow, I remained a white male. And the other folks remained Iranian, Thai, Cuban, Ghanaian, Colombian, Kenyan, Mexican, Puerto Rican, whatever ... Even after they left the plant and returned to the General population where Caucasians are 70 percent of the population and white men, 35 percent. And no one’s gender ever changed (at least while I was watching.)

This is the difference between the General and the Individual.

If I take any one man and any one woman from any crowd, odds are (mathematics assures us) that the man will be larger and stronger. However, since there are large, strong women and small weak men (and even large, old, fat, weak men like me) it is certain that at least some of the time, the woman will be larger and/or stronger.

That’s why the House always wins in Vegas and people still beat the House. The general versus the specific. Really, do you think any of us would ever have heard of Las Vegas if no one ever won anything? Or equally, if the House did not have an advantage in General? Nope.

When further selecting for cyclists, given that more men ride than women, it is even more likely (one would think) that the male rider would be faster,. However .... since it is not a Random selection, but a self-selection of people who choose to engage in an athletic endeavor, the chances go up (as the barrier to entry is perceived to be higher) that the woman will in fact be more athletic ... the nature of the sport (in the U.S. at least, where cycling is perceived as an athletic endeavor) ensures that there are fewer casual women cyclists.

Further, women cyclists are much more likely to be training and riding with men, because except at the competitive levels there simply aren’t enough women involved to have a separate category (I have yet to hear of a bike shop Sunday morning ride with a women’s category ... it is done by speed.)

This means that women who want to keep up but do not want to race are probably used to working harder than their male counterparts .... at least until they reach the front third of the group.

Similarly, based on my observation, a lot fewer women get into competitive amateur cycling, but a lot of the ones that do, rise to the level of Cat 3 and race with the boys there ... but go to women’s 1-2 instead of Pro 1-2.

Since (again, speaking generally) most riders tend the be in the back two-thirds of the group ... People like the OP are probably not any faster than the faster non-competitive female cyclists in his area ... since there are fewer, he sees them less, but since there are only so many hours in a day and roads in the region ... sometimes he gets smoked.

What is upset here is a certain sense of entitlement that (in particular) American males (and I know this is Much stronger in other cultures, but again, going with what we all know from personal experience) have learned throughout their lives, that they are the superior physical specimens compared with women.

This is why men hate getting passed by women. it (mentally, not in reality obviously) threatens our manhood. Men are Supposed to be stronger, faster, physically better .... we live our whole lives thinking that.

Therefore, some guys, even the most enlightened, can still feel that our masculinity, our self-image and (because men are by nature competitive) place in the male hierarchy is threatened by physically superior women.

That is what I see here. This rider is thinking in the General, that he is faster than women, and is not ready to accept the Individual and the Specific, where he is clearly shown that Some women are faster than he is.

I did some martial arts as a youth, and anyone who does will soon meet some woman who is half his size but who also can very surely kick his butt. Some lady who has been practicing for years and has Earned a very high rank, who has been knocked around and ground down and come through it ... and is trained, focused, toughened, fast and strong and efficient and so totally motivated that the beginner, just in off the street, who thinks “Hey, I do push-ups and work out with dumb bells” will be flat on his backside before he is aware of exactly what his opponent is doing.

Kind of brings home the “General versus the Individual” argument in a an unavoidable way.

It's 45-54, not 45-55. I'm making that precisions because I'll be 55 next year. Assuming I'm not dropping in performance much, many of my segment times as a 45-54 would make me first of that 55-64 group age

Being as I'm a slow rider, I get passed by people of all different variety. Old, young, men, women, fat, thin. My favorite is a guy I call Santa. He's got the long white hair and beard, huge belly, and looks like he's probably in his 60s and has to be going about 18-20mph on avg when he passes me (we ride the same route quite frequently). I was also passed quite easily recently by a young woman who had a prosthetic leg. And as they pass, all I remember is to ride my own ride.