How to Ride the Correct Speed

03.13.2016 | 3:49 pm

A Take This Survey Note from Fatty: Late this week or early next week, I’ll be launching a crowdfunding project, to help me make ends meet while I work on the book I’ve been wanting to complete for several years: Fight Like Susan. (Check last Friday’s post for details.) 

Between now and then, do me a favor and (if you haven’t already): click here and take this survey to help me understand which of my incentive ideas are good, and which I should forget about. I’ll let you know the results soon. 

How to Ride the Correct Speed

From time to time, I get email from my readers. I treasure each and every one of these letters, and take care to read each message, consider it carefully, then to answer fully and thoughtfully. In the order received.

Unfortunately, I receive email at a rate that exceeds my ability to respond, which means I am desperately behind in my email responses; I am currently answering email I received in May of 2005 (i.e., the month after I started this blog).

As you may expect, some people are quite perplexed to be receiving responses to questions they no longer even remember asking.

This, however, does not mean the questions are not worth answering. It just means that, frequently, my responses are returned because — more often than not — the person I’m writing to no longer has their AOL or Compuserve email address. 

Which means I need to reply to the question in this public forum, in the hope that my response will reach its intended audience.

Such is the case in the letter I am replying to today.

Dear Mr. Cyclist,

I like riding with other cyclists, but I worry that I’m holding my faster friends up. How can I let them know that it’s OK with me for them to ride on ahead, that I don’t mind if they drop me and then rendezvous later?

Thanks,

Rick Sunderlage 
(not my real name)

Dear Rick,

Your heart is in the right place, but you have weak mind. If you were capable of thinking clearly, you would realize that you are not asking the right question. In which case instead of wondering how to properly communicate that you are OK with other people going faster than you are, you would be asking this much more important question:

What is the correct speed to ride my bicycle?

This is the question I choose to answer, with the intention of ignoring the question you actually asked.

You’re welcome.

The Wrong Speeds

When it comes down to it, there are really only three speeds a cyclist can ride: too slow, too fast, and just right. As you may have just realized, the correct speed to ride your bicycle is at the just right speed. 

But how can you tell if you’re riding at just the right speed? Well, that’s not as difficult to figure out as you might think.

All you have to do is go on a ride with me.

If, as we ride together, I start half-wheeling you, that’s a pretty good indicator that you are riding too slowly.

If I push the pace up by a mile per hour each time I start my pull, that means you are probably going too slow.

If I say, “Hey, how come you’re going so slow?” you are almost certainly going too slow. 

The remedy for this problem is for you to go faster. 

But be careful when you do this. Because if you start half-wheeling me, you are obviously going too fast. And that’s not cool. Not cool at all. 

Or suppose, as we ride together, you start slowly pulling away, and I jump to catch your wheel, but then find I can’t quite do it and you build a gap I just can’t bridge, and you drop me.

When that happens, you’re going too fast, and that’s a character flaw you may want to address, because it means you’re being selfish and not taking my needs into account. As if this ride is all about you, when in fact I think we can both agree it is actually about me. 

Try to remember that in the future. You think you can do that? Thanks.

The Correct Speed

Allow me, then, to make a recommendation. Instead of riding faster than I do, or slower than I do, ride at precisely the same speed I’m riding at the moment. By doing this, you’ll avoid the twin problems of making me wait for you, and of making me go faster than I want to (or am capable of, I suppose).

For example, I have noticed many times that practically everyone goes too fast on technical mountain bike descents. I am so disappointed in these people; they should have the courtesy and common sense to go the correct speed (mine).

Then these same people will go an entirely other wrong kind of speed during climbs, forcing me to drop them. It’s not that I’m trying to put the hurt on them or anything; I’m just going the correct speed for the climb. 

Please bear in mind that this, the correct speed, is subject to change without notice, and may in fact change multiple times during a given ride. For example, if I’m feeling good that day, the right speed for the ride can be surprisingly rapid.

If, on the other hand, it turns out a little later in that ride that maybe I’m not feeling as great as I originally thought, the correct speed may drop precipitously.

How is it possible that no matter the speed I am going, it is the right speed for the occasion? I’m as mystified by this as you no doubt are.

And yet, it’s manifestly true. No matter what speed I ride, it always feels like I’m going the right speed, and that any other speed would be either recklessly aggressive, or dilly-dallying.

All you need to do, then, is just imagine we’re riding together, and just go the speed I would go if I were really there with you. 

Just don’t half-wheel the imaginary me you’re riding with. Even my imaginary self thinks that is not cool.