Bobby Sweeting

Before you get offended, let me be clear in saying that, to me, being a “fred” has nothing to do with talent, ability, or racing.  For those who are unclear on this term, it gets tossed around in cycling quite frequently and refers to any cyclist that the individual probably just doesn’t like.  To me, the word fred comes across my mind when I see stupid people doing stupid things on training rides.  A pro rider could be called a fred, and it really just comes down to etiquette (and maybe a little bit of style).

You can spot a fred pretty easily.  They’re the ones who ride by in the opposite direction 30 feet in front of their training partner/friend/wife.  He isn’t doing an interval, that’s just how they ride.  Why ride next to the person and  have a nice conversation when you can punish them into the ground for 45 minutes?  If you do ever spot people riding side by side, the fred will always have at least a half wheel lead.  If you get two freds riding together it will always, always turn into the world championships.  You might be asking yourself, how will I spot a fred who is riding alone?  No worries, just be friendly and wave as they pass in the opposite direction.  He will be much to serious and focused on his epic ride to notice you at all.

I really don’t mind these habits, it doesn’t effect me and is usually kind of entertaining.  Unfortunately I had two encounters in two days that were just ridiculous.

Yesterday’s encounter: I’m out on my first long ride since my sore throat of death and find myself coming up behind a 30 something year old rider.  As I come up beside him I take my ear piece out and say hi.  No response.  I repeat myself, thinking he didn’t hear me, but when he caught my eyes and then looked back at his front wheel I figured he just didn’t want to talk.  I put me ear piece back in and continued on with this guy glued to my wheel.  He then decides to attack me on a fairly hard 7 or 8 minute climb, only to get caught about a minute later.  I just ignored him as he continued to come around me and push the pace at random times, blowing himself up repeatedly and never saying a word.  He eventually turned off after about 30 minutes, leaving me wondering how someone could be so rude.

Today’s encounter: I had some speed and power work today, 1 minute max efforts up the steepest climb I know of.  About 30 minutes from my interval hill a guy came up behind me and introduced himself.  It was much better than yesterday, and he even rode next to me!  When we got to the climb I told him that I was going to be doing some repeats and thanked him for keeping me company.  He decided that he wanted to do the intervals as well, which was certainly fine with me.  I expected him to want to race, as most people do, and wasn’t surprised when he called it quits after two halves (instead of riding his pace he figured it would be best to do 30 seconds worth of the first 2 intervals).  I said he rode well and wished him a safe ride home, only to receive: “whatever, all you f***ing guys are doped anyways.”  WHOA, what?  I needed to start my next effort, and didn’t really feel like responding anyways, but wow.  At first I thought it was a joke, but he was dead serious as he looked at me.  I’m sure every cyclist has had a passing motorist yell something like that as they drove by, but I’ve never had another rider accuse all pro cyclists of doping right to my face (and it’s different when it comes from a former pro tour rider who has been there and seen it, instead of some guy who just feels like judging everyone based on what he reads in Velonews).  Maybe the guy was bipolar, because he seemed perfectly fine until then.  Either way, his fred’dom became apparent.

I think the funniest part about the term “fred” is that everyone uses it about everyone else.  You could ask the sketchiest cat 5 who just bought clipless pedals how his race went, and the response is usually: ok, but some fred was going soooo slow in corner 2.  It just goes to show how relative the term really is.  I choose to reserve it for riders who truly earn the designation, like those mentioned above.