When the Ride Doesn't Represent the Riders

For the past few years I have heard about how good the Tuesday night race ride is for preparing for races.  I have also heard a lot of rumors about how the group can be too aggressive and can cause a lot of traffic problems.  I heard it is to the point that police will occasionally patrol the route and pull cyclist over. Still, despite my trepidations, I have been curious to try it out for myself to find out how I measure up to the other strong cyclists and see if the rumors are true.

Tonight I rode down to Bicycles Plus in Old Folsom and joined the gathering of folks waiting to start the ride. Everyone seemed like good, friendly folk as we are sitting around our bikes talking. That impression didn’t change as we got off to an easy warm up start.  I continued to chat with various riders and most of them are people that I look forward to talking to again at future races or rides.

From the time when the ride started it didn’t take long before we were winding our way through some residential neighborhoods and things started getting dicey with some of the traffic.  Drivers weren’t sure what to do with a group our size -I never counted but I imagine our group was about 20-30 riders snaking through the neighborhoods- and it left the motorists waiting for opportunities to pass but were unable to do so safely with a group our size.  This left drivers either waiting behind us or aggressively passing us, I have to admit I could understand why some motorists would become frustrated.

At one point a group of riders ended up way off the front and the rest of us had to chase them down.  This caused more mayhem as we were zipping though some intersections.  In one case, a rider took a right hand turn too wide and veered into oncoming traffic (that had the right-of-way).  This caused a vehicle to have to suddenly slow to avoid hitting the rider.  After that turn we are on a straight away, out of the neighborhoods, so I got in front of the group and chased down the lead pack. Even though we are on less traveled country roads, the riders are still taking up too much of the roadway given the amount of traffic and this is still during commute hours. 

We ended up in a construction area around Taylor and Sierra College.  Around this point the group starts accelerating rapidly.  This spreads out the riders and caught me off guard so I am about half a bike length off the back.  Initially I wasn’t sure what was going on but I quickly figured out that the group is trying to sprint through a traffic light before it changes.  The first part of the group makes it through okay, but we are really spread out and the light starts to change.  I can see that I probably will not be in the intersection before it turns red so I am left with a decision to make.  Initially I am thinking to go for it -this group doesn’t wait for people to make it through the intersection so if you lose the group at an intersection, you have to catch up or you are riding on your own for the rest of the ride. For some folks this can mean being stranded in unknown territory (at one point later in the ride I had to pull up the GPS on my iphone to figure out where I was) so I can understand why folks want to keep up as best as they can- but then I start thinking of all the close calls this group has had with traffic and what a bad example we are setting for cycling.  There were so many irate drivers left in our wake that at that point I decided to hit the brakes and come to a stop.

 

I concluded that riding with that group isn’t in alignment with my beliefs.  That isn’t to say that I am perfect all the time or that I don’t make some bone-head moves. Most of us are grown-up enough to admit that whether you are a cyclist, motorist, runner, etc…, we have all made some bad moves at one time or another.  However I like to make sure that overall I leave people with a good impression of cyclists and cycling. The example left by this particular group ride wasn’t one I was proud to be associated with.  While it may be good training, I would rather find other ways to train: maybe those other ways aren’t as effective, but at least I am not making enemies every time I go out. Maybe this sounds sappy, but with each ride, I want to leave the world with a better impression of cyclist and racers than it started with.

I do not understand the violent reaction some folks have to cyclists. It seems there is a large amount of Folsom citizens that see two wheels and see “The Enemy”. I have witnessed outrageous and unwarranted behavior towards cyclists. To me it is just another form of prejudice. (When you look at deaths and serious injuries caused by motorists -or even dog attacks- and compare it to those caused by cyclists you would think that maybe folks would be a little less pissed off at cyclists and redirect it towards the more dangerous factors that are out there.) With all of that said, the way that this ride went tonight I can’t imagine that many folks watching the group’s overall behavior was left with a warm and fuzzy attitude towards anyone in spandex.

On the way back on my own I met up with another rider from the Bicycles Plus race team. Earlier he had gone a little bit of a different route to make sure that a cyclist that wasn’t feeling well was able to get back okay. It just illustrated my earlier impression, so many of the people in this group ride are good, caring, friendly people. It just seems like during the excitement and competition of the ride a mob mentality takes over and judgment can take a far back seat (on a one-seat bicycle).

The BP race team rider and I ended up taking 30-45 second pulls most of the way back so I still ended up with an excellent workout. We had some good conversation and a great ride but, more importantly, we did it without being a menace to society.  It was good to meet new people but I think that this group ride will not make it into my regular rotation of training rides. Be safe out there, folks.