The peloton didn't smell like a laundromat

Only rarely do I encounter another rider on my commute, especially in the evening. It's an awkward time of day and an unattractive route for riders who can put together any loop they want for their day's training objective. When I do encounter someone from the racing crowd, it's usually cordial but brief.

"How's it goin?'

"Good."

Racer zooms away.

Once in a while, a friendlier one will pull his pace back and hang for a while, until they realize how late they'll get home or how far below their target heart rate they will fall if they plod along with me for too long. I'm on a linear run, while they're on a loop. So off they trot. But one thing has stood out: they all smell like fresh, chemically-perfumed laundry products.

I did most of my racing in the wool era. Lycra shorts and "skin suits" were just coming in, but in mass start races and on training rides you saw mostly riders wearing knitted fabrics that had to be hand washed and hung to dry. If the peloton smelled like anything other than sweat, it was Woolite, and whatever people had smeared on the vicious shark skin of a newly-dried chamois to turn it back into something you might want in contact with your testicles for a few hours.

I haven't been on a group road ride in well over a decade. I did do a charity ride a couple of years in that time, but the group was small and very dispersed, and there was a sea breeze for much of the time. I also don't use scented laundry products, so my own garb has very little odor until I apply a fresh batch of sweat and road grime.

On Friday, I was trudging along, entertaining myself with a stream of consciousness soliloquy, when I heard the smooth grind of a bike drive train behind me, and a voice announcing politely, "on your left." It was a rider I know.

"How you doin'?" he asked

"Just ploddin' along," I said. I'm careful with racers and performance roadies to avoid throwing down any gauntlets. Not that they're necessarily super sensitive to a challenge, but I don't want to look like that sad old bastard on a touring bike who thinks he can show the racers a thing or two. I want to establish right away what they can expect riding near me: a steady pace, probably considerably slower than they will enjoy, and no illusions.

We were on the very last little rise to the height of land on Route 28 northbound. The lead rider, and the younger man drafting him, passed me as quickly as I expected they would. They didn't whoosh past, opening a huge gap and buffeting me with turbulence, but they didn't linger, either. That was fine with me. Really. I settled back into my thoughts as I reached the crest.

Down the slope, I saw them, still riding a nice tight formation. The gap was more than a hundred yards. It was probably well over a hundred yards. I shifted to my usual gear for the descent and accelerated as I usually do. It's basically two miles down hill from there, and essentially down hill all the rest of the way to my house. I'm headed for the barn, so I don't waste time, even on my heavy bike, and carrying the weight of years.

The gap diminished. This was interesting, I thought to myself. I knew that in previous years the lead rider had been going out with one local ride group famous for killing the wounded and eating the dead. I really didn't expect him to be idling. The two riders seemed to be in pretty tall gears, and were pedaling at a respectably high cadence. They were on fancy road bikes.

Whatever the shortcomings of a fully-loaded Surly Cross Check as a climbing bike, it plummets nicely under the influence of gravity. I utilize all that the forces of nature offer me to make my trip faster and easier. On that long descent, there are places I pedal and places I tuck, little grade variations I seek, and rough, speed-robbing strips that I avoid. If there's a tailwind, I'm surfing it. I've ridden the route hundreds of times. I'd left work late that day, and was eager to get home. At a high but maintainable cruising speed, I was up with them in a couple of minutes. Awkward.

"I tried to get left in the dust," I said to the young rider. He grinned. I stayed in the back, but that's where I really started to notice the smell of laundry products. It's not really pleasant, regardless of what the advertising tells you. All I had to look forward to was more of the same, or possibly a fart or two from one or both of them.

They weren't coasting, but I was actually holding back from my usual pace to avoid making a move around them. I didn't want to look like an old geezer beating myself up to pass the racers, but they were -- surprisingly -- costing me time.

One feature I aim for on one of the steeper bits is a weird hump in the pavement, that always reappears not long after any road work. It never forms a sharp peak. When I ride over it, it always launches me into a higher speed bracket. It's worth a gear, at least. And the speed carries well down into the next section, where the grade levels out a bit. I call it The Speed Bump. They didn't use it, and I coudn't get to it. Even without it, I had to make an effort to avoid making a move on the outside.

The lead rider was doing all the pulling, which is silly. The two of them should have been trading leads, and with three of us we could have had a little pace line. Instead, the lead rider yawed somewhat, but never made a definitive move to pull off, and I wasn't going to blow myself up to get to the front. Where the shoulder widened, I winged out a bit to the left, both to use the wind to check my speed and to get out of the cloud of fabric softener swirling in the slipstream.

On the last drop before the road levels out approaching Route 171, I always tuck tight until I get to the bottom and resume pedaling in top gear. Depending on how fresh I feel, I'll start shifting to lower gears right way, or within a few seconds. In any case, bombing down in a tuck is faster than pedaling.

The racers pedaled. They pedaled and pedaled. I had to use the brakes to keep from running up on them. What the heck, I figured. I'll pull left and tuck, and see what happens.

In a tuck, coasting, I accelerated past the pedaling pair, toiling manfully.

"Guys, I'm not even pedaling," I said. "Tuck! Tuuck!"

I pulled clear ahead. Where the road leveled, I followed my usual shifting pattern. I expected them to come ripping through any second.

They never did. I passed through the intersection with 171, grunted up the little rise to the next level bit, and glanced back. They were gone.

Most of the performance riders in town have no use for my technical advice. Most of them don't even shop at our store anymore. These guys don't, although they used to, back before the turn of the  century. It's all friendly enough. If I didn't work in a bike shop I would probably seldom go into one.

Funny thing about modern technology: when I was telling another local rider about the encounter as a funny story, he told me that those guys posted a 20 mile per hour average for the ride on Strava.

I always forget about Strava. Even having just been reminded, I'll forget again soon. I'm not sure what sort of technology you need to own to get your stats uploaded and verified by satellites, but it's not important enough to me to find out. I do know that a 20 mph average would probably kill me. If the climb had been longer, those guys would have opened a gap I couldn't cross, and that would have been totally fine. But maybe they would have averaged 22 mph if they'd worked the descent a little better. Never underestimate the power of an experienced commuter on his way home for a shower and some food.

Are group rides bad for cycling?

A lot of cyclists seem to enjoy riding in large groups for fun and to support good causes. It seems only benign. If one cyclists is a step in the right direction, a large number should be a huge leap that way, right?

Critical Mass took the concept much farther to demonstrate the numbers of cyclists and their power to take over the streets. CM is overtly political, so controversy arising from it is not surprising. But every large gathering of cyclists spawns complaints and conflicts.

I'm sure this has been exhaustively discussed by the Experts in Cycling. I was simply inspired by  a piece I read this morning about a petition in England to shut down a ride due to the objections of residents and businesses along the route. It reminded me of what a Gilford, NH, resident told me about how the residents along a certain stretch of road feel when they're penned up in their neighborhoods during the weekend of an annual triathlon. He actually found this picture amusing.

 He  said it's what he felt like doing during the time he lived in the area affected by the race.

Motorists might agree in theory that bicyclists have a right to use the roads, but they would all prefer if we could do it without actually seeming to be there at all. An individual cyclist can maneuver freely to try to manage the traffic flow as necessary, whereas a group of riders may have trouble getting drivers to pass in a timely fashion when it's safe. And those places of safety need to be longer and clearer to get motorists past a string of riders on a constricted road. Most of the time, riders and drivers take their chances and hope they get away with it.

When motorists gather in large numbers they create congestion as well. But "group drives" seem a lot less common than group rides. If it's an event like New Hampshire's Motorcycle Week, the sheer excess does lead to friction, frayed tempers and many accidents. But the motorized cycles can travel at traffic speed (when they're not blatantly exceeding it), so they increase volume and may cause decreased speeds, but only in places where any large number of vehicles would slow things down. The upper limit of the speed range requires no accommodation from other motorists. Bicyclists can't claim that. Our cruising speed only fits with motorist speeds where the motorists are held back by imposed limitations.

I like to imagine what popular perception of other sports would be like if they were conducted on the roadway. "Oh no! Another goddam football game! I won't get out of here until half time!" "Augh! I hate basketball! All those idiots dribbling frantically down the street, chasing a hoop hung off the back of a truck!" "Oh for ---! Not Centerline Tennis again!"

I know. It's absurd. But what other sport besides competitive cycling holds its official events out in the road? What began before the dawn of the motoring era as crazy challenges to human strength and endurance have evolved to the modern sport on roadways vastly more crowded with other people living their routine lives. Cycling fans love the spectacle. People who are not cycling fans have to wonder how the road to work, school and the grocery store became a sports arena.

Non-competitive rides can generate more congestion than races. They can also generate a lot of business along the route. What seems to happen a lot of the time is that the complainers complain, the defenders defend and the event goes on. So what's the harm?

Institutionally the harm might settle in the minds of decision makers who individually don't care for cyclists on the road. If enough of them collect in one place they may start to change the rules. In the general population, drivers who dislike cyclists will collect their grudges generated by frustrating encounters with groups and take it out on lone cyclists they see as targets of opportunity on unwitnessed stretches of highway.

Technically we have as much right to hold a group ride as the motorists do to hold a poker run, a rally, a scavenger hunt or just take out their favorite machines on a group joyride. Only the difference in horsepower calls our right into question. But it's a critical question. Not only must we continually explain ourselves to the lawmakers and regulators, we have to deal with the emotional issues of throttle-pushers who won't give us a fraction of a second to explain anything when they finally decide they've had enough.

If humans were truly a violent species there would be a lot fewer of us and I doubt anyone would travel on a two-wheeled vehicle of any kind. We would probably all drive real tanks on the rare occasions we left our fortress homes. I guess in some parts of the world it's more than a bit like that. But I like to think that the momentum is on the side of peaceful pedalers.