Going for Speed
By roadie, I primarily mean the road racer type. These are the ones that really suck. There are also "club riders" or "century riders" who would call themselves roadies, and that's ok. Some of them suck too, but most of them are sort of benevolent folk who are just unenlightened about off-road riding. Some of them are too dang uncoordinated to ride in dirt without killing themselves anyway. So what we're talking about is the serious guy who does all the roadie stuff, owns multiple wheelsets, goes to races, takes dietary supplements, etc... These guys suck.
What really irks me about roadies is they just don't realize they suck. Me, I'm different. I know full well that in the grand scheme of things, I pretty much suck. I win some mtb races in the expert class. I was even 8th the last 2 years in NORBA's regional rankings for Vet men in the West region. What is that worth? nothing.
Let's look at the Napa World Cup race. I slogged my way to 31st out of more than 100 in the masters 30+ race. This is a real World Cup event, and it included some semi-pro riders from all over, so if I were a roadie I might say to myself "Dude, I Rule!." Let's look at the facts though, the winner of my class, Larry Hibbard, beat me by 13 minutes. He also beat world championship medalist Roger Bartels by a couple minutes. Clearly I pretty much suck in comparison to Mountain Larry. Unfortunately, it gets worse. Once you get down to around 60th place in the pro race, you get to the guys that were turning the same lap times as larry, only they did it for twice as many laps!! You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that Larry Hibbard pretty much sucks too. Sorry larry, that's the way it is.
Roadies, unfortunately, are too freakin' stupid to see this. A cat IV roadie hangs with the pack in the local crit, gets 4th place, and he feels like a bad dude. Now he can go out on the bike path and easily pull away from the century rider types and commuters. He can come flying by families out for a summer spin and yell "on your left!, Watch it!." He can hassle his local bike shop for sponsorhip, because he's so fast and people are so impressed by his riding ability. What he apparently doesn't realize is that the Cat II pack would spit him out the back pretty much instantaneously. The cat II riders get to ride with pros often enough that they realize they're kinda outgunned, but that's by 2nd tier pros. Guys like Frank McCormack and Roberto Gaggioli are considered bad dudes in the US. Guess what! They suck too. Big-time racers like Museeuw, Jalabert or Frank Vandenbroucke are light years beyond the guys on the US crit circuit. This means the Cat IV guy with the attitude is about 4 orders of magnitude removed from not sucking. So why the attitude?
Does anyone actually ride a road bike on a real ride anymore? We used to always get people coming into the shop checking out the PSI ratings on tires. "Oh, these must be better, they'll go up to 150." Now I'm no physicist, but I have ridden occasionally on the road, on various sorts of tires. I used to use those wacky specialized turbo r's when I raced in Germany. I still don't get how people can ride around the block on 150 psi. It's just not comfy. Now you might say "oh, but it rolls better." Maybe on the track it does. Think about it Einstein, every time you hit a weensy little irregularity in the road, your bike has to bounce over it. If you use a reasonable tire (like 700 x 25 at 100 psi or so), you have enough resilience to absorb the bump and allow your forward momentum to continue unabated. Now i don't have any charts, figures or equations to support this (ask Jobst, this is a topic he probably knows something useful about), but I can sure feel a difference. Due to clearance considerations, my fixed gear bike is limited to skimpy tires, about a 20c or so and I can feel it slowing down on rough sections of road.
To make matters worse, you can't make me think that cornering traction doesn't suffer when you pump a tire up that high (refer toJobst again on this one). So these goobers are getting bounced around, certainly going slower over some roads (though probably faster over others), and giving up cornering traction for what? The illusion of going fast? Pretty much all MTB-ers learn this right away, and most of them use the least amount of pressure they can use and still avoid pinch flats. There are exceptions for smooth courses, where you might go 10 psi higher for reduced rolling resistance. The diff is, most MTB-ers are smart enough to not use 80 psi for all situations. They know the deal, smooth course, higher pressure, rough course, lower pressure (while avoiding pinch flats).
"There's no zealot like a convert." This describes me. I was once a roadie. I raced in Germany for 6 years on the road. I even liked it. I raced cat C, which is sorta like 3's and 4's mixed together (everyone in germany is better than a Cat V), and we usually raced 100-160 km, over hills and stuff. We paid 5 marks (3 bucks or so), and for that we got to ride hard with 100-200 other guys (big fields over there), on totally closed roads with rolling police escorts (no center line rules). Races went right through the middle of towns, and people would stand out and cheer us on. It was cool. When we did Criteriums, they were usually right smack downtown, not on the fringes of some industrial park. The guys I raced with were a friendly lot, and I had a good time.
Contrast this with road racing in america. First off, kick down 15-25 bucks. Then line up with a bunch of guys who think they don't suck to race 20 laps around an unfinished subdivision. If you don't get taken out in the field sprint by some idiot who thinks he's Abdu, you might get a decent placing. Afterwards you'll be treated to incessant whining and excuse making by a sorry bunch of losers, at least for the 15 minutes it takes for them to pack up and drive home. I thought that was pretty lame.
Now contrast that with MTB racing in America. For 20-40 bucks, you get 2 hrs (usually) of hard riding on a course so fun you'd happily drive there to ride it if there weren't a race going on. You might get a t-shirt, you often get snacks, or even a real lunch. If you get rocked and come in dead last, guys who suck slightly less will still talk to you. Everyone can hang out and enjoy the day and compare experiences. It's more of a man vs. course thing. MTB-ers do stuff like cheer each other on up steep climbs. If one guy is riding up something crazy steep, it's not unusual for others to reach out and give him a helping push, along with some words of encouragement. That's because we're mountain bikers, not tight-ass roadie dickheads!
Now i'm not gonna say there aren't some suck-filled losers out there riding mtb bikes, but i bet lots of them are really roadies, and anyway, they are in the minority still. When mtb racing is too filled with dicks, i'll probably quit that and just race cyclocross.
Sure, who wouldn't. If you're going to build an endurance base, riding on the road is way more efficient. I've been doing some 6-7 hr rides in the sierra foothills this winter and spring, trying to prepare my body for the Cream Puff 100 (to learn more about the cream puff check out the '97 results archive). That doesn't make me a roadie, it just makes me a guy who rides a road bike sometimes. If you ride a road bike, and you're a nice guy, even if you wear one of those lame rearview mirrors with the pink dog on it, you're probably also just a guy who rides a road bike.
I'm certainly not saying road bikes suck. I like my road bike alot (it's a bridgestone rb1 frame, with suntour non-indexed barcons). When I'm thrashed from pursuing a difficult and challenging sport (like mtb racing), i can still get on my road bike and go for a nice relaxing spin. My poor, tired arms and back can get a break while my poor, tired legs get some active recovery. I even like doing serious rides on the road. I like being able to climb and climb and just sort of zone out and enjoy the rhythm. I'd be sad without a road bike. I just wish that some people who owned road bikes would chill out.
I know this rant is a little silly. It's not reasonable to make sweeping generalizations like this. For every example I use, there are undoubtedly plenty of counterexamples. So what. write your own rant if you don't like it.
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