Thanks for sharing. The article is basically on the bike racing career of Dr. Andrew Coggan

Also, I got a real kick out of his description of "taking riders to the back". For those not in the know, what this means is that if in a group of 3+ riders, and one of the 3+ isn't contributing, what one should do is to slot in front of the rider refusing to pull and start soft pedaling, so that a gap grows between the other riders and the smaller group of the two of you. The goal is to force the person refusing to contribute to close down the gap (and burn a match), thereby attempting to even things out a bit. If, however, the person refuses, then the goal becomes to attack that person and shake that person off; it's a lot easier said than done, and one could end up costing one's own chances in the process as well. It's certainly also quite dangerous when there are only three or four riders in the group, as this effectively gives the other rider(s) a gap without attacking. All the more impressive that he's doing this despite being quite a slowtwitcher.

But as he alluded to earlier in the interview, it's a great way to troll people.

Good read, thank you for sharing Neal.

I completely understand Andy’s mindset. I’ll be 64 in less that two months and went snow biking on my fatbike with a group yesterday. I too could not sprint and hated the stragegy behind other types of racing. So I time trialed and when I ride with my team my enjoyment comes from making others suffer. I also come from a running background and when running the marathon was my game and started serious cycling in the late 80’s. So going thru the trails on my fatbike I go into time trail mode and reel everyone in. I did have one guy that was doing a good job of staying on my wheel. I eventually dropped him, He is also 30 younger than me. When he told me how much he was suffering to stay on my wheel that warm feeling and internal smile opened up. I made people suffer yesterday. For me that is what its all about.

It really only works to go back if you have teammates in the group. Otherwise they’ll just dump both of you depending how far there is to go.

We do this at wnw as we usually have three guys in the group. Pickoff the solo guys for sure.

thanks for sharing, good read.

I've always been a fan of Dr. Coggans work. I wish he had a slightly different way of interacting on social media/forums, because his knowledge is indeed deep and contributions are often very insightful (if you can get past the tone :D )

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Not dissimilar to how he’d take a recent bridger out the back, without at all allowing the guy to recover. No one likes freeloaders, but he came across as overly confrontational. Could have given the guy a few minutes to recover before taking him out the back, if the bridger had refused to pull even after rest.

Then again, one also gets the sense that he was really good at pulling it off, that one suspects he was perhaps quite a bit stronger than others in the group.