On the penultimate descent of today's ride, a chap clad in bright yellow-and-black lycra on a posh road bike pedalled past me and another rider coasting down (also both on road bikes, unusually for me). I admit that as he did so, I thought "he's probably going to regret that," because I know the final climb is over a mile long, although it's only around 4%. Sure enough, once the road tilted up, I drew alongside to say hello. "You caught up with me!" he exclaimed breathily, red-faced and sweating. "Er, yes" said I, not out of breath.
What's the etiquette here? What should I have said in reply to that? I did ponder "well, I'm not carrying much" but I could see that he wasn't either - his bike didn't even have a rear rack and his saddlebag was tiny. I also contemplated "this hill's local to me" but I later found out that he's from 4 miles away, so that probably wouldn't have gone down well either. I went with the rather lame "you've probably ridden much further than us" because I figured that "well if you pedal hard on that descent, you're going to be in the red on this climb" wouldn't be welcome advice from a Fred on an old steel road bike...
Maybe I should have said that I used to live on a 12% road in Somerset, so that 4% hill isn't much trouble.
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