Riding with a much faster SO or Hubby. I've been dealing with this since I first started riding. My husband is a natural endurance athlete, plus as a mountain biker he is great cause he rode and raced motorcycles as a young boy and man. So, you can imagine!

Anyway, I'm an athletic, if not greatly competitive, woman. So, when we first started riding we were late 20's, early 30's age wise (he is 5 years older than me). I've always had a great sense of preservation and realized there was no way I was going to keep up with him. We tried to ride together when we first started riding, but he was younger, much more into competition and wanted to race at all times so it was not a good mix. I had to learn that when he got on my case (as he would do regularly) like when I did not ride over a large obstacle that scared the bejesus out of me or something like that, I finally learned to fly him the bird and ignore the criticism. He was never able to keep his mouth shut! I just learned to take care of myself. If he waited for me fine, if not fine. The only time I made him wait for me was when I did not know the area and then we would just regroup.

After a while, we both realized what our potential as bike riders was and occasionally, he would just go out for a fun ride with me and that was usually pre-ordained from the start ( and with other riders).

I should say that most of the above, has to do with mountain bikes.

Road bikes is a little bit of a different story cause 1. I'm better at road riding (not as much handling involved) and 2. I can draft and learned race tactics so that I could use those to my advantage when I really am slower. So, when we rode or still ride on the flats, I can usually keep up unless he is intent to ride me off his wheel. On the hills, he is still too fast, but he will circle around to come back to me or wait for me at the top. It's usually not that long for me to catch up. On the road I do not have any trouble keeping up downhill so that is okay.

What we have learned is that 1. I'm not as fast and never will be. 2. on the road, we can ride together better and will ride together more often. 3. on the mountain bike, we don't ride together much, but when we do, hubby has learned that he will have to wait, or we will be creative in our routing so he rides longer and I meet him somewhere (stuff like that). It's all a compromise just like a marriage or a relationship and sometimes it takes a while to learn what the compromise needs to be.

Keep trying. Express your fears; express your needs; and express to him that women (with few exceptions) are not as fast as their male counterparts. So, even if you can keep up for a while, you are at your max and he is not. Eventually, he will come around a bit and you can have fun riding together.

spoke (I'm 46 years old now and much more of a selfpreservationist as before. Why? Cause things take a lot longer to heal anymore and guess what, I don't think I'm going to become a pro racer this late in life! ) We ride for fitness and fun at this time in our lives. If you hurt yourself, you are not helping yourself, making yourself healthy or even enjoying yourself. You need to tell your boy this stuff. It's not worth getting hurt.