Originally Posted by
Maelochs
I would ask you not to draft because AI don't maintain a steady pace and (particularly when my heart protests) I will sit up without warning because my heart said, "Go ahead--I've stopped once, I'll do it again."
Last thing I need is to be finishing a speed run and get hammered from behind because I didn't want my heart to explode.
Good luck with that. I know there are a lot of Cat 1 riders who are complete dicks .... a guy on the Internet told me. Yeah ... super.
Why do you ride with this bunch of dangerous and inconsiderate egotists? You can say you are not like them .... but you are. You pass "way too closely," by your own admission, and freak out less experienced riders. Yo are part of that group and support what they do by doing it with them.
I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are only a total ignorant richard when you are with those guys ... but that is like saying, "I am only a Nazi at Party meetings."
A group of riders which deliberately and knowingly interferes with and deliberately scares other riders .... yeah, just super. That is what the sport needs.
They are poor ambassadors for the sport, but I don't think they do it deliberately. I think they just don't realize what they're doing. My observation is there are often 1 or 2 at the front, but the width of the pack swells considerably behind that so that by the time you're 5 or 6 bike lengths back the pack is the width of the traffic lane. Everyone is concentrating on the wheels and riders ahead of them and not getting dropped and so if the guys up front pass 6 feet or more away from a rider they're passing, the widest part of the pack is going to be practically rubbing shoulders with the poor person being passed.
Not excusing, because they are a-holes who ride like there's nobody else on the road, on the busiest cycling day and time of the week.