Keeping your Wine Country Biking Adventure Great
Know who you’re riding with
As a life long maximizer, one who tries to get the most out of everything, over time I’ve come to learn that my goals and the team goals are not always aligned and to get the best output from the team you need to adjust your thinking to support them. I know that is a tough concept, but stay with me.
One of the quickest ways to ruin your Wine Country Cycling experience is to plan too much in an itinerary that expects riders of unequal levels to keep up with more advanced riders or expect riders with more leisurely goals to ride hard. If you’re reading this article, yes I’m talking about you! When one or more riders in your group can’t keep up or don’t want a strenuous ride, they won’t be having fun, and you won’t be getting in the miles or plan that you had in mind either. At best this can leave folks frustrated, and often times angry. Trust me, it will not set a good mood or tone for one that most people expect to be a relaxing and enjoyable trip.
Communicate in their Language
I think part of the challenge is that we plans rides from our perspective and our bias is based on our level of performance on the bike and everyone else is relative to that. You may generally expect, or more like know but just hope, that other riders will be at the same level. I understand this phenomenon all too well, in fact my wife calls me the “Bike Lier.” Generally because either before or during a ride she would ask me about how long, or how difficult the ride would be. As in “should only be about an hour,” or “that grade on that hill isn’t too bad”, and her all time favorite “that should take less than 30 minutes to climb.” Needless to say, that while I did not feel like I was lying and my estimates were correct, they were ONLY correct for me. From her perspective, and I have to believe she is right, I was lying on every single one of them as my estimates were nowhere close based on her riding level. My estimates consistently under estimated the time, length and effort required for her, and one of the worse things you can do is to set expectations incorrectly as this will definitely cause some frustration. So much so, that my wife and I had to have a common language, because we realized that we were literally talking a different bike language.
Bike language 101
So in order to communicate effectively we had to come up with some simple definitions for each other on what each term meant in our own language. We came up with this, but definitely use your own. The key is, don’t be a Bike Lier, keep everyone on the team in sync and communicate in a way everyone can make their own assessments.
| Term Used | What you thought it meant | How it was heard & interpreted |
|---|---|---|
| Mountain | Any climb that takes an hour or more. Generally 10+ miles of climbing at a rate of 2500+ feet an hour of climbing. | An extreme high intensity event that will take a good part of the day. |
| Hill | Anything over 15 minutes of climbing, but less than a Mountain. | A significant effort, on sometimes steep and challenging inclines that will take significantly longer than 15 minutes. |
| Slight Incline | Any incline less than a Hill. | These are all considered climbs and hills even if they were only 1/8th to 1/4 of a mile. They were climbs that added to the strain of the overall ride. |
| Rollers | Rolling terrain where you could use inertia to roll over the top without losing speed, or where a good portion of the climbing effort was offset by your speed. | Yet another hill, as inertia would not carry the rider over most or a significant portions of the incline. |
Conclusion
To get the most of your trip, make sure you are accounting for all the levels of rider in your group and communicating in their language. Does that mean that you have to plan based on the lowest common denominator, the least capable rider? In some cases yes, but really that is part of the planning. You have the option to plan itineraries for different rider levels that include mixed, hybrid, and separate rides. Doing so will create a much more enjoyable experience for everyone, advanced and beginning riders. See our articles in Planning for tips on options to consider here for different ride experiences.