Yesterday I did my first long ride on my new bike. Either I got a lot fitter over the winter on the off-wheel trainer or my new bike is fast … I mean really fast. Roughly 10 minutes less on 60 km without even trying on a course around Lüneburg is quite a lot.
I have to stop myself a little bit. I have a self imposed limit of 200 maybe 220 watts, but with a smile from one ear to the other I was frequently between 275 watts and 300 watts yesterday. I must keep myself in check here. That said It is great to be back on the streets again. Road cycling is a sport on tarmac and not for the basement in front of a monitor.
I’ve learned yesterday from a tweet that the problem of cars passing with minimal distance is not only a problem of muscle-driven bicycles. People riding the bigger siblings of bicycles called motorcycles have the same problem. I always thought their much larger profile protects them a little bit from this, but now when i’m really thinking about it … why should they not have the same problem.
It doesn’t seem to get into the heads of the people that just because you don’t need the all of the lane that it’s still your lane in total and you should pass like if you pass a car. I don’t have any crumpling zones. If you hit me, it’s dangerous and as you don’t wear leather on the bicycle even just falling from the bike hurts a lot. The reason why I ride with long cycling gear on legs and arms and gloves as long as it’s feasible temperature wise.
It getting more and more frequent, even in the little over 2 years I’m doing cycling now and I have the impression some drivers get more and more aggressive. On the other side: The vast majority of car drivers pass with vast lateral distance. It’s just the few idiots that that make rides problematic.
I wrote a few months ago on a YouTube video of DC rainmaker when he wrote about an app able to tap into the speed data of the radar based Garmin Varia rear light, that I would like a GoPro control feature. A GoPro filming to the back, starting when a car gets into the radar range, stopping when it’s out of radar range (either used a different road or passed by). Deleting it after 30 seconds. Keeping it when the cycle computer doesn’t recognize any cycling in those 30 seconds. So if I’m mowed away from a car that at least there is some documentation of the situation. Something like a crash recorder. Sounds morbid and for most encounters with cars this is not necessary, but at least once in each ride there is a situation you can consider dangerous.