10 Irritating Types of Cyclists

Recently, I wrote an article - 10 types of irritating office workers and it gave me the idea to have light hearted look at irritating types of cyclists. At the moment, I have 10, but, I’m sure we could add more.

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:

• Things people say about Cycling