a retard wrote:
You should try riding in central wisconsin. No lights, no cars, few if any other bikers, roads mostly in great shape (no truck traffic) and some hills to keep things interesting. All of which makes riding up there much less stressful than what it seems you have to endure.
I'm gonna go out a limb here and guess your bike is exponentially better than mine, yet there I can average 13 MPH no problem.
A couple things happened to me over the past year. One, I tore my quad tendon and two, my bike broke down and due to COVID policy supply chain issues I couldn't get the necessary replacement parts from Trek. I had to improvise, so I ended up with a gear set in front where the larger gear is only six inches in circumference. It's very difficult to make speed with that set-up.
Even on my relatively heavy hybrid I was able to average 18-19 mph for long stretches. I'm not sure that is possible the way my bike currently is, but we'll see. As I said, I haven't come close to going all out yet.
I don't really mind the company of other riders. All I would ask is the same courtesy that I regularly extend.
Here's an example. If I come to a red light and a guy pulls up on a $10,000 Colnago dressed like he is in a Tour and with 1% body fat, when the light turns green I let him lead the way out of there. I don't rush out in front of him and make him pass me. Now sometimes, even a guy like that isn't as strong as I am and I end up passing him, but I make the logical assumption to begin with and defer to the guy who appears to be the faster rider. Yet, there are times when I'm obviously faster than a guy and he only catches me at the stop lights, yet every time he ignorantly comes out of there in front of me forcing me to pass him again and again.
Here's another example. Inevitably, the guy dressed like he is in a road race is going to ride hyper-aggressively. Like, "FUCK YOU, GET OUT OF MY WAY!" (We've been over the "ON YOUR LEFT!" thing which really just means "Get the fuck out of my way because I refuse to slow down or stop.") Not long ago I was heading north on Sherman and a Tour rider was heading east on Noyes. I got to the intersection first and he was on my left anyway. It was obviously my right-of-way. (I want to point out for Frank that not coming to a complete stop may be technically illegal, but it's an accepted custom just like getting angry at a guy driving the speed
LIMIT in the far left lane.) I could see the motherfucker wasn't going to stop or slow down so I hard rode right through in front of him and we came very close to colliding. Kind of dumb on my part but fuck that guy. Why should I defer to him? I was ready to crash. I'm not sure if he was.
Anyway, I can ride the Green Bay Trail or the North Branch Trail and it's pretty relaxing and there isn't much traffic. Before I got hurt I was rarely passed from behind and when that occurred it was usually on Sheridan Road on a weekend where there is a completely different class of rider and more significantly, a different class of bikes.