Getting dropped on a bike is every cyclist’s worst nightmare.

It was bound to happen at one point. Last weekend, on a sunny Sunday ride with my son, I realised today was the day. He was finally faster than me on a bike – and he made sure to rub salt into the wounds he dealt me by sending me a photo of me struggling to keep up.

Getting dropped is one of those things that cyclists have nightmares about. The phrase is not, as it might suggest, a barely disguised euphemism for falling off or crashing your bike. Instead, it is suffering the ignominy of being unable to keep up with your fellow riders, thus hinting at a lack of fitness and / or riding ability compared to your fellow riders. There are varying degrees of getting dropped, each with its level of self-directed shame and embarrassment attached.

The elastic snaps

Whatever the situation, most riders will experience the ‘snapping of the elastic’, that moment when they have no energy left to pedal, and they finally drop off the back of the group ride. The fact that there are so many idioms and synonyms for the phenomena suggests that it is an all too common occurrence among cyclists. Perhaps one of the problems is that, as a friend once told me, “If you have two cyclists riding together, then you will likely have a race”, as they egg each other on and the pace slowly creeps up until one rider can’t hold on any longer.

It is never as simple as just not being able to keep up.

The analogy of elastic snapping paints the picture perfectly. A dropped rider will go through many stretches and contractions of the ‘elastic’ before it finally goes. It might be a hill that initially sees them losing ground to their fellow riders. They get to the top and fight back to gain lost ground, and a few minutes respite behind the wheel in front of them, before the next rise appears.

The timescale will vary tremendously from rider to rider, but eventually, there will be one gradient too many and the effort of chasing to get back to the riders in front will be too much and ping, the elastic pops and the ignominy of getting dropped occurs.

One hill too many

The benefit of a rest, sitting at the back of a group, can never be underestimated. The sanctuary from the wind offered behind even just one rider can be enough to allow recuperation and may be the difference between hanging on for one more hill, or a lonesome ride home.

There are problems of sitting at the back of a group too (not just getting called out for being a wheel-sucker if you stay there too long). Depending on the pace of a group it can also be a very tiring place to be. On a straight and flat road there aren’t too many problems, but throw in a few corners and suddenly, the back of a group becomes a hanging-on-by-your-finger-nails place to be.

I remember one of my first ever road races, many years ago. It was a high-speed, mid-week event around Tullybaccart and Lundie at the back of Dundee. In the middle of group, I was doing fine, but I slowly found myself jostling for and losing position, and finding myself at the back of the group.

My error became apparent as we started to hit junctions and corners. At the front the speed going round a corner dipped only a few miles an hour, but at the back an accordion-effect was taking place and the speed would drop from 25 mph to 13 mph as the riders braked and bunched up from riding so closely together, then would shoot dramatically back up to 25 mph again.

By the time I had realised my mistake I had no energy left from the constant pace changes to get back into the middle of the bunch. Sprint, brake, accelerate, repeat was the order of the day, and it wasn’t long before my lack of experience and ability became apparent, the elastic snapped, and I found myself making my lonesome way back to the race HQ. 

It can happen and has happened to the best of us, spurring us into a self-flagellating regime of more training and promises that it will never happen again. But then, even that sometimes isn’t enough to avoid being dropped. A lot of it depends on how you are feeling that day, who you are riding with and the terrain you are riding on. Jens Voigt, the colourful German ex-pro rider with a droll sense of humour, had written on the top-tube of his bike when he broke the World Hour Record way back in 2014, “I go so fast I even lap myself”.

Now that would be a tough wheel to hang on to.

Scot Tares