No wheelsuckers around here

So, on a bike the wind is a big deal, right?  And every road rider knows that the best way to get out of the wind is to get behind somebody else.  This, as any NASCAR fan could tell you, is known as “drafting”.  It’s called that in road riding too, at least when it’s done in a respectable way.  By that I mean that riders, at least riders who are at a level more or less equal to each other, will typically take turns at the front to set up the draft for the rest of the group.  Or, if a stronger rider is in a group of less experienced riders, the strong rider will spend most of the time, if not all of it, at the front of the line while the others ride in the draft.  Or, if there is a new rider to a group who may not be familiar with the route or with the group dynamics, that rider wouldn’t necessarily be expected to spend much time in the front—he’d be welcome to draft the whole ride.  These are all respectable examples of drafting.  But if you ever come across a group where there is somebody who is just as strong a rider as everybody else but doesn’t ever take a turn at the front, then what he’s doing isn’t called drafting anymore, it’s called “wheel-sucking”. 

The way the draft works is like this:  Somebody is in the front of the line, and then, either when he gets tired or at some pre-determined time or distance interval, he moves out to the side of the line and drops back to the back.  The person who used to be in the second position is now in the front, and he takes his turn and then moves out to the side of the line, drops to the back, and then the next person in the line is now at the front.  A group of riders who are well-matched and familiar with each other can keep up this kind of rotation all day long, and if they do, the whole group goes faster than they would in any other arrangement, and they got much faster than any one of those riders would by himself.  But you can spot a wheel-sucker a mile away.  This is the person that stays in the line until he gets into the second position, and then, when the person in front of him moves out and goes to the back of the line, this guy moves out too, and goes back with him.

It doesn’t happen very often, and never in close-knit groups where most of the people are friends off the bike too, and they ride together often.  You’ll only see it in big groups with lots of turnover and no clearly defined ride leader.  But the great thing about riding is that even when there’s a goof-ball in the crowd, it’s still fun, challenging, and rewarding.