G-man wrote:
Good comments from the forum. One thing you won't believe is how fast those guys are. When I lived in Hawaii we used to get a stray TdF rider passing thru that would ride with our club. We would be just talking and riding with our hands on the hoods and any little short rise like a 2 meter climb they would have gained a half a bike on our best riders and didn't even try to do that. We had one hill on our no drop ride. I was the last dog up the hill every time. When you got to the top you turned around coasted down to me and started climbing again. We had some what I would call good climbers, but the peloton pros just rode away from them at every turn around. Just like poof ...and they were gone. It is just sick how fast those guys can climb.
We have a relative that was high up in the Lance Armstrong Foundation, so he would get to ride with Armstrong, Hincapie, etc. on the charity rides. Even fat, old Eddy Merckx who wasn't even riding much at the time could sit on the hoods at the front and just cruise at 25mph or so on the flats.
The club I rode with back in the day mostly had a bunch of hacks like myself. One guy who had been a cat. 1 and didn't even ride anymore because of back issues and loss of interest would show up every once in a while and smoke everybody up the climbs.