'Competitive' training rides

[Boris Bajic]

My middle child (16) frequently rides with me and we are now very close in terms of performance.

I am faster downhill (weight and experience) and he is faster on ascents (weight and vigour).

As a result we pass one another during 'competitive' training rides.

When I was a motorcycle courier, the great fear was to be stopped for 'racing on the highway'.

So... Despite being canny about our passing and not getting all Abdudzaperov with our elbows, are we in danger of eliciting a response from Plod with our exuberant on-road behaviour?

Can two people have a good old ding-dong race on bicycles on an NSL single-carriageway A-Road?

And if it's allowed, is it prudent, sensible and proper?

I'm genuinely interested in the responses. I think it's OK, but I don't ant to be guilty of teaching my son behaviours that are bad, naughty and wrong.

Thoughts, please.

 

[4F]

Sounds just like silly commuter racing. I do it every day.

 

[MrB1obby]

I would doubt police would see you long enough to know that you keep overtaking each other so much on NSL's unless you're doing it in rush hour with heaps of traffic...

 

[CopperCyclist]

Carry on, just do it safely! We're only likely to get involved if things go badly wrong and in your over exuberance you swerve out in front of that truck to overtake without looking. Just maintain road sense and hammer the same point to your son, and alls good

 

[black'n'yellow]

chain gangs are probably ridden a good deal faster - and providing you are not both riding like idiots then I don't see the problem. My suggestion would be to satisfy your competitive urges by seeking out a local crit or TT series..

 

[Globalti]

Nowt wrong with it; my cycling buddy and I race along on our evening training runs. Sometimes we cut corners and frighten motorists, it's amusing to hear them sound their horns angrily probably five seconds after you've passed them. I expect one of us will have a crash one day.

 

[black'n'yellow]

Nowt wrong with it; my cycling buddy and I race along on our evening training runs. Sometimes we cut corners and frighten motorists, it's amusing to hear them sound their horns angrily probably five seconds after you've passed them. I expect one of us will have a crash one day.

 

[Boris Bajic]

chain gangs are probably ridden a good deal faster - and providing you are not both riding like idiots then I don't see the problem. My suggestion would be to satisfy your competitive urges by seeking out a local crit or TT series..

A good suggestion. In truth, we ride as we do because he's just started to do some TTs. I have the feeling he'd like to get into longer road races next year, but I'll wait until I'm spoken to on that.

We are amateurish with all this training gubbins and it has to be fun, so we sometimes do sequences of short (3-5 minute) one-on-one raced intervals or competitive rides over bigger hills. For the longer pieces we tend to just tuck into wheels and take turns.

Speaking as the deepy biased father of one of those involved, I like to think that overtaking at full chat while breathless enhances his road skills. He seems to be cautious, but I do get nervous when he's on my shoulder and looking for the chance to come past.

Having said that, I've known many a driver who's said that driving at speed on the highway enhances their 'car control'. I don't want self and son to be the cycling equivalent.

I take the point about the similarities with SCR (from another poster), but the slight difference is that we both started in the same place, both hope to finish in the same place and both know that it's 'competitive'.

We'll carry on with our 'competitive' training sessions for as long as he finds them fun. Thanks all for the positive responses.

 

[black'n'yellow]

as long as you're not putting yourself in any danger, as implied by the idiotic post from 'globalti' above, then carry on. Even if you don't go the crit/tt route, it might still be worth tagging on to a chaingang if you can find one locally - that would really bring on your speed...

 

[Eddie]

The police can't even catch actual criminals, you think they have a hope in hell, or care enough to bother with this!