As noted previously, I tend to ride alone.  Not like my daily rides are anything to share anyway – a short commute to work and home again along some fairly innocuous bike paths.  The stuff of legend I know.  One result of riding alone all the time is developing your own habits that may not be compatible with those I will respectfully refer to as my fellow commuters.  I say respectfully as I’ve been dropped hard by more than one of them in the past and I’m sure I will again.

Yesterday as I approached Edmonton Trail, preparing mentally for the climb up to Centre, there was a rider already stopped at the light.  Things, for me, got strange immediately as his stopped position was too far away from the intersection though he was clearly intending to cross it.  I do it one of two ways – in heavy traffic I wait at the crosswalk as it puts me ahead of most of the traffic so I have a clearer view of the intersection and nobody is trying to run me down making their right turn.  Or – if traffic is lighter I’ll ride up to the front of the empty right lane, but on the inside of it.  This rider was back a few feet from anywhere I’d normally stop, so without really thinking about it, I passed him and stopped in front.  I realized too late how it must look and it was admittedly rude but I don’t run into other riders at this light when it’s red.  Ever.  I didn’t really know how to approach it.  I commented on the wind and as the light went green he continued to chat about the state of the bike path.  This is all together new to me – stranger / cyclist chatting.  This too presents a conflict with my established habits.

As a new rider, a new, aging rider watching “the big four-oh” coming at him full speed, a new, aging, 40-ish rider with asthma and a not-that-long-ago tobacco habit, any departure from level ground to a positive angle – meaning uphill – is noted immediately and tends to be a challenge.  My normal course of action had until recently been to simply stand up and mash away while trying not to slow too badly.  As an experiment I’ve been staying in the saddle and dropping into the middle ring (the bottom of the middle ring if I’m honest) and pedaling furiously and while the results have been not all together bad, there are times when standing just seems to be the right thing to do.  Like this section of my ride.

So here we are stranger-chatting as we approach the first bit of incline, him on my right and me wondering if I’m capable of making this little hump while I’m still in the saddle without getting run over by the cyclist that suddenly appeared behind us.  I’m not sure if I earned it with all this headwind riding or if he opted to play nice but by the time we’d made it to the first false flat, he’d stopped chatting and slowly dropped behind.  Before we made it to the next intersection, he was far enough behind me that my habits were no longer his concern.  I rolled through the stop sign and continued to pedal up the gentle slope past the Handi-bus barn to 1^st street.  He gained ground behind me and I figured here was where he was going to drop me.  Heading south onto 1^st, it turns into a short, steep climb of perhaps 10 meters over 70.  Having ridden the previous 25 minutes home in a headwind, it was nice to have the wind at my back but I was a bit knackered so I stood up and mashed away pushing myself up the hill without so much as a Fred-mirror glance.  Again I was conscious of how it might have looked – me trying to drop my new chatting friend but I didn’t stop.

The truth is though, I wasn’t looking for him, no longer paying him any attention and I hadn’t noticed the 3^rd rider since we hit the first slope.  I don’t know if he followed me south on his own route or headed north instead.  I was tired, near the end of my ride and wanted to finish it my way.  I rounded the bend onto 34^th and made the climb up to Centre with everything I had and found Centre empty, so I crossed it and went home a sweaty, mushy, happy rider.

9 times or more out of 10, I ride my commute like a man possessed, pushing my mental limits, pushing my legs and lungs.  I like to ride like that, I enjoy that suffering, pushing the boundaries for more growth.

While I am absolutely helpless against chasing down a rabbit, or trying to run away as one myself, it’s  only me I’m competing against.  If I manage to chase down a rabbit, I’ve earned that pass.  I know I’ve been travelling faster for however long it’s taken me to catch them and I can continue that pace (probably).  Passing the rabbit is not a conehead move.  Likewise, being passed while I’m riding hard means they earned it – nothing coneheaded about that.  Pulling in front of another rider at a stoplight and then racing away on the green – it might look like I’m trying to drop them but –honest – they’ve just wandered onto my private track.