Rants ahoy!

[ornoth_cycling]

Got some rants that have been building up…

Don’t wear team kit.

The pros wear advertising because they’re paid to. Unless you’re being paid to wear it, wearing team kit is tacky and arrogant. There’s nothing I enjoy more than dropping someone riding a team issue bike in full pro kit. Cycling isn’t about hero worship; it’s about being a hero, and you can only become a hero through what you do, not what you wear.

Don’t wear jerseys for rides you didn’t do.

Same thing. You have no business wearing a RAAM jersey if you didn’t race across the country, and no business wearing a RAGBRAI jersey if you bought it secondhand from someone who actually did the ride. And this rule also applies to wearing jerseys for a ride you did only in prior or subsequent years. I wouldn’t dare wear a 1998 PMC jersey when I only rode my first one in 2001.

Stop whining and ride.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told “I’d like to go on a bike ride with you sometime, but you’d be bored because I can’t keep up with you.” This is what is commonly known as horseshit. If you were given a chance to go jogging with Joan Benoit, would you tell her “I can’t run with you because I can’t do a whole marathon”? Do you really think athletes only have two speeds: off and 100 percent? Get over it. The only thing you’re doing is proving your own self-consciousness and insecurity.

Comments

[ornoth.livejournal.com]

Yeah. And most people don't understand being on the road for more than say four hours at a time, and 100 miles at a 13 mph pace is eight hours, with almost no stopping.

Like your "friend", I would never begrudge someone a one-time leisurely ride. But if I'm focused on training, then I too need to hammer more, unless it's early season and I'm only starting to do base miles. But I can totally understand that everyone has different gears, which is what makes the Quad rides so good; they fragment into about five different groups, based on speed, and you're never too far from the end of the Minuteman, so people can bail at whatever distance they want.