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Passing Tricia

03.07.2014 by Ray Niekamp // 3 Comments

A group of older cyclists can be found most Friday mornings at Austin’s Veloway, the three-mile track reserved for bikes and inline skaters. They are mostly in their 60s and 70s, but some are quite fast. They sometimes pedal easily around the track, and sometimes put the hammer down.

Starting a Veloway lap. (Not Tricia or the old guys.) (Click to enlarge.)
Starting a Veloway lap. (Not Tricia or the old guys.) (Click to enlarge.)

 

While some of these riders use Strava, others take a different approach to gauging their rides. You see, an acquaintance of mine — Tricia — likes to ride the Veloway on Friday mornings, too. She’s not in their league. In fact, she rides a mountain bike or a hybrid — not a road bike. But for her, the Veloway is a safe, nearby alternative to dodging traffic on the roads in our neighborhood.

 

So, as Tricia pedals around the Veloway, she’s likely to be passed by these faster, older riders. Not once, but several times. How do they keep track of segments and KOMs without Strava? By how many times they pass Tricia.

 

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Categories // Odds 'n ends Tags // Strava

Hold Your Line!

03.02.2014 by Ray Niekamp // 5 Comments

Recently, I was riding with a group I hadn’t ridden with before. We got along well, and seemed to have similar abilities. About halfway into the ride, we crossed a busy road and got onto a rough street in a rural town. The street made a 90-degree turn to the left to go into the town’s business district.

I was in the middle of the group, making the left turn, when suddenly, a rider to my left called out, “Watch it, there!”

I flicked my handlebars a little to the right to make room for him, concerned that I might bang into the rider on my right. The guy who had come in on the left realized that he had nearly caused a crash, and started apologizing profusely.

“Yeah, I was coming down that small hill and had more speed than the rest of you,” he said. “I was swinging a little wide there. Sorry ’bout that. I didn’t mean to crowd you.”

Well, maybe not — not intentionally. I had picked a line for the turn and stuck with it, mindful of the positions of the riders around me. He had been trailing the group a bit, so we weren’t aware of his presence nearby. His speed caused him to make a wider turn than I was, but since he was on the inside of me, he almost hit me.

The drawing is crude, but you get the idea.
The drawing is crude, but you get the idea.

What should he have done? Braked harder. That would have allowed him to control his turn and stay on a line to my inside. He had been riding behind the group most of the morning anyway, so falling back a little at this point would have made no difference. Besides, we had a rest stop coming up in just a few blocks, anyway. He’d have gotten there pretty much with the rest of us.

In a turn while riding with a group, be predictable. Stick with your line. I’m hearing about too many crashes lately, and many of them result in serious injury.

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Categories // Safety Tags // group rides, Safety

Biking Buddy

02.23.2014 by Ray Niekamp // 2 Comments

I posted a message on the club’s Yahoo group last night that, given our terrific forecast for the day, it was time for the B riders to start showing up for club rides.

It didn’t work. Besides me, only two others came out (Meanwhile, the A group had 25 riders!). But that didn’t dampen my spirits any, because one of them was Maggie, who has become my favorite riding buddy.

About two years ago, our club president told me a new rider had come out for a ride I had missed. He said she made a noble effort to keep up with the A’s, but she was really looking forward to riding with the B’s. Maggie showed up the next week, and we clicked instantly. We ride at about the same pace. We have a lot of the same interests.

Bike Noob and Maggie at a rest stop in Buda. (Click pix to embiggen.)
Bike Noob and Maggie at a rest stop in Buda. (Click pix to embiggen.)

She’s really good at spotting birds and other critters on our rides. Often, she’ll start waving an arm, and I worry that she might be in trouble. It turns out that she was trying to call my attention to a red-tailed hawk, or a scissor-tailed flycatcher, or some other interesting bit of fauna that I might have missed.

On Sunday’s ride, the A’s dropped us about 10 miles in. Maggie and I conferred with Jim, the other B rider, about distance. We decided to go beyond Buda, but not as far as Kyle. That would give us about 38 miles for the day.

Our average speed was already high, because of the peloton effect with the A’s on the way out. On the way back, a three-mile stretch of a slight downhill kept our speeds high. When we pulled into Buda, we were averaging 16 mph. Unheard of!

Buda is still pretty sleepy at 10 o'clock on a Sunday morning.
Buda is still pretty sleepy at 10 o’clock on a Sunday morning.
At the Buda rest stop, Maggie and Jim talk about their gym workouts .
At the Buda rest stop, Maggie and Jim talk about their gym workouts .

The return leg took us past a large church that’s always crowded. Black-suited ushers in white shirts and red ties direct cars to parking places. I recalled one ride, where Maggie told me that she wanted me to turn “to go by the Mexican church.”

“Why?” I asked, making the turn to comply with her wishes. We passed a couple of the ushers, and one waved at Maggie, and called out, “God bless you.”

“That’s why,” she said.

By this time, the temperature was in the low 70s (22C), and it seemed that the only wind we had to contend with was the one we caused as we cut the air with our front wheels. Jim peeled off to take an alternate route home. Maggie and I decided to skip fast and dangerous Slaughter Lane, and instead took a detour through a residential neighborhood to get back to the start, where we sat at an outdoor table at Starbucks, sipped cold drinks, and chatted.

I enjoy being part of group rides. I also like to ride alone. But a good buddy who shares many of your interests, rides at your pace, and can keep up an entertaining line of patter…well, that’s a riding buddy who beats groups and solo rides.

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Categories // People Tags // people

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