Irritating types of cyclists, could include:
- Any cyclist with a better bike than you.
- Any cyclist who overtakes you on a hill and says ‘jolly nice day’ pretending not to be even out of breath.
- Any cyclist who is faster than you.
- Any cyclist who pretends to never do any training, but still manages to do a 200Km sportive in sub 6 hours.
- Anyone who starts an unofficial commuting race when I don’t want to get involved in such a petty unimportant thing.
- Anyone who beats me in an unofficial commuting race.
1. The Winter Racer
It’s the middle of winter and most of your clubmates are happy to settle for some steady winter miles with the odd teashop. However, the winter racer will turn up on his £3,000 carbon fibre mike (sans mudguards of course) and insist on sprinting for every road sign. The winter racer then tries to drop everyone from an imaginary road race. The funny thing about the winter racer is that when the real racing starts in the middle of summer, they tend to evaporate or fail to race very quickly.
2. The Tester with encyclopaedic memory of his pb’s.
(Tester = time triallist). Time trialling tends to encourage a sort of obsessive behaviour. In particular, some testers will take any opportunity to regale you with their long history of their personal bests.
“…I set a 52:03 on the H25/8. Of course, if I’d had a 54 * 11 sprocket I’m sure I would have got a 51….”
If the tester ever manages to get off his personal bests, he will probably delve into the great fixed vs gears debate which has been ongoing since the second world war. The fact that pros hardly ever used fixed for individual time trials doesn’t change the fact that riding fixed must be much quicker than gears.
3. The Urban Warrior.
Maybe it is not fair to call these class of people cyclists. They treat the road as an obstacle course. Red lights and one way signs are only part of the street furniture – something to be admired for their aesthetic beauty rather than being signals of when to stop. The urban warrior will charge along pavements and shout at anyone with the audacity to suggest he might have been in the wrong to knock down that old lady.
4. Mr Excuses.
It was the headwind, sidewind, wrong bike, wrong choice of gears, too hilly, too early in the season, too late in the season, too hot, too cold, old war wound…. No matter what happens, Mr Excuses will always come up with a long list of excuses for why he didn’t do better / ride further. After listening to Mr Excuses, you really feel he could win the Tour de France, if only he wasn’t so cursed with bad luck and unfortunate mishaps.
5. The Stereotype Triathlete.
The ‘super cool roadies’ (see below) love to make fun of triathletes. The ‘stereotyped triathlete’ will turn up on a ride of road racers only to make several mortal sins.
- - Turning up with tri bars. Tri bars are the quickest way to lose any self respect you may have with a roadie crowd. I mean real cyclists don’t make life easy for themselves….
- - Not holding your line on a descent. (Unfortunately, the triathlete will not what is meant when everyone shouts ‘hold your line’)
- - Not riding in a straight line.
- - Falling off.
- - Turning up with trainers not cycling shoes.
- - Turning up in kit which exposes 85% flesh. Road cyclists just don’t wear those G string shorts and vests.
- - Inability to move through properly on a chain gang.
6. The Super Cool Roadie
Road racing is the ultimate pinnacle of cycling sport, so any other discipline is to be looked down on. The super cool roadie particularly enjoys sneering at testers / triathletes / audax riders. The super cool roadie is usually a 3rd or 2nd Cat who can’t quite make it in road racing but at least knows his branch of cycling is the most prestigious. The super cool roadie may well have retro cycling tops from the 60s and 70s.
7. The Talker and Buyer
The talker never actually rides his bike. He spends hours reading through cycling magazines finding ways to reduce the weight on his bike worth £3,000. He knows more about cycling than anyone else; his bike is immaculate and the envy of many. But, the problem is he spends so long improving his bike and talking about cycling, he never actually gets round to riding. If he ever does ride, he will come to the conclusion that to go faster he just needs to buy the latest campagnolo 11 speed groupset, and this is where he has been going wrong.
8. The Helmet Advocate.
The helmet advocate is either passionately for or against. Whatever you talk about related to cycling, they will somehow bring it back to the helmet issue.
- The pro helmet advocate will always tell you, on every ride, the 4 times their life has been saved because they were wearing a helmet.
- The anti helmet lobby will try to tell you that wearing a helmet is actually very dangerous and if people didn’t wear helmets there would be a lot less fatalities in cycling.
9. The Old Timer
“Ay, lad, things were better in my day.”
The old timer will never fail to mention how much better things were in the ‘old days’. No matter that bikes weighed 15 kilos and punctured twice as often. Things were much better in the old days, not least because everything was in black and white. (old photos)
10. My Wife Is on an Intensive EPO course
We know that some pro cyclists take dope, but, what really gets me is the most pathetic excuses they come out with when caught. The classic was Rumsas who claimed the boxes of pills “were for my wife” - Rumsas let his wife spend several weeks in prison when she was caught with a car full of performance enhancing drugs.
What about this excuse from Adri van der Poel the Dutch world cyclocross champion and Tour de France stage winner who tested positive for Strychnine. – He said that his father-in-law, had served a pigeon pie for Sunday lunch, and only when he tested positive did he realise that the pigeons had been doped with strychnine.
I don’t know which was worse the – industrial quantities of drugs Richard Virenque took or his tearful protestations that he never took dope and was a clean rider.
Any types of cyclists you would like to add to the list?
Related:
thanks to comments, post originally published Aug 6, 2008.
The half wheeler has got to be up there. When you are riding along nicely beside someone hoping for an innocent chat but they always keep their front wheel a bit in front of yours. In this way you always have to raise your pace to match them. This can quickly turn into all-out war and the pleasant conversation you were hoping for has no chance.
Also I find the ‘Right-on-Politically-Correct-Militant-Fanatic-Cyclist’ pretty sad. The kind that sees cars as the ‘Devil’s Chariots’ and would make you feel bad about using anything other than 2 wheels for any journey. Even if it was picking up a bunch of oldies from Bingo. Nothing against Bingo mind you
As a utility cyclist, the only cyclists that annoy me are the ones that:
Ride without lights or reflectors or with dying lights wearing stealth clothing after lighting-up time; morons riding on the wrong side of the road; wearing iPods and blithely unaware of anything outside their little world; ride on the pavement; ride on & off the pavement without looking; cycling through red lights [RLJ]; riding at excessive speed on shared paths and passing too close from behind at speed without any audible warning; ride defective bikes – I often see bikes with brakes that clearly cannot function, many defects wouldn’t be apparent.
And anything else that isn’t allowed in the Highway Code.
These give motorists cause to hate cyclists, and I am sometimes on the receiving end of an idiot driver who decides to take out his frustrations of his pathetic life on the nearest cyclist.
The ones who now drive cars and should remember how it feels to be a cyclist surrounded by tons of flying metal.
Or the ones who dont have very much riding experience but have matching everything. Or the ones who cant match to save their lives like mountain bikers on the road with camelbaks and mtb shorts, and not to mention the full finger gloves… and the best is the visor on the helment.
Anyone who has a better bike than me!
You forgot to mention the ones that never say hello or wave back when you’re out training.