In mid '80s when cycling was getting popular I had just a few years behind me and was riding over a couple hundred miles a week. Some of my riding partners and I used to pick on newbies with nicer bikes and gear that we saw on the road. If we saw them we went out of our way to catch them and pass them. Everything changed dramatically when we caught the rides out of the local LBS parking lot where the guys who competed rode out of.
Only had two of my riding partners hang with those guys when they tried to drop them. One was an ex-Special Forces guy (no combat time but uniform hanging in closet) who showed me newspaper clippings where he ran a 4:26 mile in HS and a 4:16 mile in college. He was riding at the front of those guys in much less than one season. Most of the rest of my partners and I couldn't hang unless they let us. I was about an hour behind those guys in centuries.
Picking on relative newbies.
Last edited by Zinger; 01-10-14 at 04:07 PM.