Author Topic: Is it ok to be a rubbish cyclist !  (Read 2799 times)

Is it ok to be a rubbish cyclist !
« Reply #25 on: 29 January, 2013, 09:12:01 pm »
Being a rubbish cyclist is fine. I am one. The best I ever managed was 14.7 mph avg over about 30 miles in a group and 14 on my own. Since then my lungs have declined due to cystic fibrosis and I am now only able to cycle indoors. I would be happy to potter around, getting off to push up hill, and generally being rubbish. Except...

I've found the problem is that others won't let you be a rubbish cyclist. When out, puffing my way up hills with my 40% lung capacity, others pass me and offer me advice about trying to get fit, about working harder, trying harder, doing intervals. It actually isn't OK to be a rubbish cyclist at all. If you are, it is because you aren't trying hard enough, at least according to people who breeze past you.

So I would say if you can ignore everything that people throw at you, people laughing at you, people giving you advice about how to get fit, then it is OK.

As for fit. How many people can actually ride for hours with an oxygen saturation in the 70%s. I was always actually much fitter than all of them, riding closer to my maximum all the time than they could ever do. Now, I just cycle indoors. I can't get up the hill to my house any more.
Spinning, but not cycling...

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Is it ok to be a rubbish cyclist !
« Reply #26 on: 29 January, 2013, 09:20:57 pm »
I've found the problem is that others won't let you be a rubbish cyclist. When out, puffing my way up hills with my 40% lung capacity, others pass me and offer me advice about trying to get fit, about working harder, trying harder, doing intervals. It actually isn't OK to be a rubbish cyclist at all. If you are, it is because you aren't trying hard enough, at least according to people who breeze past you.

Interestingly that's never really happened to me.  Probably because I'm not properly rubbish these days (especially since changing my asthma medication), and when I was I did all my riding on my own.  People do seem more tolerant of an established cyclist having an unexpected bad body day - which tends to be my perspective on rubbishness.


I've done (and indeed organised) some rides specifically with extremely slow cyclists in mind (be they newbies, children, disabled or some combination thereof), and reckon that YACFers are, generally, pretty good about this sort of thing.  As long as everyone knows in advance that it's going to be a wrap-up-warm, no-pub-unvisited, getting-the-cake-out-at-the-top-of-the-hills sort of ride, it's fine.

CrinklyLion

  • The one with devious, cake-pushing ways....
Re: Is it ok to be a rubbish cyclist !
« Reply #27 on: 29 January, 2013, 09:27:51 pm »
So I would say if you can ignore everything that people throw at you, people laughing at you, people giving you advice about how to get fit, then it is OK.

Or get some good cycling mates who naturally ride at a similar pace to you or who don't give a monkeys if they have to wait for you at the top of the hill, or at the bottom of the hill, or if your average speed is somewhere between 5 and 10 mph below their preferred riding speed because they like going for bike rides with you anyway.  There's a surprisingly large number of people knocking around here who will fall into those categories.

I liked the summer that I accidentally got to be a slightly less rubbish cyclist, because it meant that I could do rides that I couldn't before and can't again now.  I could ride a hundred miles.  Or get up silly hills, albeit very slowly.  But it's OK with me that because of all sorts of stuff that isn't the case right now, and if anyone else has a problem with it they can go tiddle because I don't give a hoot!

clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Is it ok to be a rubbish cyclist !
« Reply #28 on: 29 January, 2013, 09:31:13 pm »
I was a very rubbish cyclist today (as opposed to an averagely rubbish one normally), struggling up the hill to the shop, and managing just 6kph up the last hill home with the shopping in my bags.

But at least I was out on the bike.  Unlike yesterday.
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