Originally Posted by
Scarbo
...I mean, if you live in southern California (just as an example!) it is no challenge at all to rack those coveted "KOMs."
It seems there are two camps:
-Being serious is performance related
-Being serious is emotionally related
The term itself is an emotional one. So I can only tell if others are serious cyclists by the clues they give off as to their emotions.
As a kid I knew those in Africa that spent hours a day on the bike taking stuff to/from Market. I expect they had never heard of Campy or Shimano. They just road. They would have dropped the bike in a second if someone offered them another means to do their job. So cycling was not a 1st choice, rather a tool.
Asking how to tell if someone is a serious cyclist is like asking how you know if someone is in love. There are signs, clues, actions, but I can't tell.
BTW - The SoCal KOMs are seriously hard to get.