Speed Matters Not

I’ve been at this for six weeks straight and have yet to overtake a single rider. Those who pass me usually blow by as if I’m standing still. But this weird thing keeps happening. I get re-passed by the same riders, which means somehow I’m getting ahead of people who are faster than me. Some of them waaaaay faster.

Kate is a British emergency room doc who’s here for the opposite reason I am. I needed something to push me harder than life has pushed me lately. (Yes, I know that’s an incredibly privileged thing to say.) Dr. Kate has too much work stress and needs to ride it all out. I cannot believe how strong she is. I know I suck at this, but even so, she’s a dynamo. She leaves me in the dust in seconds. Yet the other day she saw Booster outside a restaurant and came in to say hi. Somehow I got ahead of her.

Eva and Henning are the only riders I’ve met who pack heavier than I do. With good reason: they’re going around the world. 18 months so far, 18,000 kilometers, and they’re only halfway through. Even on heavier bikes they’re faster than me, yet lately we pass each other daily, which I’m thoroughly enjoying. I get to knock the rust off my German and also spend time with people who know how to live life so well that death will tremble to take them.

Except they should be miles ahead, right? They’re faster. What gives?

With Dr. Kate I had a one-time advantage: I rode straight over the Maungatapu Saddle while she took the long detour. Yet the other day she passed me a third time. How?

With ze Germans my one advantage should be weight, but it’s no help at all. They’re faster than me with all the extra baggage. So what’s going on?

Well, sometimes Dr. Kate hops off the trail to visit friends and see cool stuff. She can do this for days. Then she jumps back on and overtakes my slow ass. Ze Germans are a different case. The second time I met them, they were stopped at a café where I’d also planned to grab a bite. We got to talking and then we decided to ride together. As the first mile melted away I got to watch them blast ahead of me. Half an hour later they were barely in sight.

So I did the math. (Not my favorite subject but I have a lot of time on my hands.) Turns out they don’t have to be much faster than me to seem uncatchable. Think about it. If you’re one mile per hour faster than I am, then in half an hour I’m looking at your taillight half a mile ahead. Barely in sight. You gain 88 feet on me each minute, or about 18 inches every second. Right from the start I see you surge ahead. In ten minutes you will be 880 feet ahead of me, which means one curve in the road and I’ll never see you again. I feel left in the dust.

But if the next café is ten miles down the road, you can order me a sandwich and I’ll get to your table before it does. At bikepacking speeds, a difference of one mile per hour amounts to five or six minutes. If we were racing, I’d lose every time. It won’t even be close. But this isn’t a race. What Eva and Henning “gain” on the road they “lose” in the grocery store. (I never discuss what I’m in the mood for.)

They’re faster than me, but the fact that I can still see them half an hour later means they’re not much faster. I keep passing and re-passing them because I’m not slower, I’m just a slower rider. Weird, but there’s a difference.

There’s one lesson from this to pass on to anyone who likes trekking or biking with friends who travel at different speeds. If you all start out together and the fast ones take the occasional break for the slower ones to catch up, it creates a vicious cycle. The fastest will always be the most rested, which perpetuates their speed advantage indefinitely. Instead, do it the other way around. When the tortoises feel rested, they get to lead the charge, and all the hares just hang out for ten minutes. Much better for the tortoises’ morale, and it costs the hares nothing in travel time. Everyone’s ending up at the same place anyway.