Quote Originally Posted by Wannabe
Hi-
I consider myself a "newbie",( although I did complete a Century last summer, and a metric century so far this summer.) I find myself becoming quite frustrated-I ride with my husband, but now he has become so much faster than I am. I know I am holding him back, so I am finding that I am frequently telling him to ride without me. But then I don't get to ride as much as I like to. Basically instead of feeling good about myself for riding, I am instead feeling like I am not good enough. HELP-I feel so disappointed. I am 42 years old, and a little heavier than I probably should be. I have a 20 something year old knee reconstruction, that really benefits from riding. I live in the country so the road riding is great, yet I am fearful to ride alone in case I would have a problem. Can anyone offer me any advice??
Hi Wannabe, sounds like you are doing pretty well if you have done a full century already - congrats! I can certainly relate to being slower than ones husband - been there, done that, still doing it. However, one thing I have found is that I started way behind him so have improved more over the past few years than he has. As a result, my speed is now much closer to his, to the point that four years later, I can keep up with him as long as he isn't going all out, and if I draft off him, we can ride together quite successfully. It has taken awhile to get to this point, though; I couldn't hang with him at all my first two years of riding.

One strategy would be to put your husband on a heavier bike and you on a lighter bike. I don't know if he has multiple bikes, or what kind of bikes you ride, but that has worked for us. On some rides, my husband will ride his heavier touring bike with rack and fenders, and I'll ride my super-light carbon racing bike. That helps equalize us. Or, we both ride our touring bikes, but he'll ride with panniers and even carry stuff in them! Another thing that works for many couples is a tandem bike. It didn't work all that well for us as we didn't have the personalities for it, but a lot of couples find that it solves all their problems with speed discrepancies.

The biggest thing for us was just for me to continue to train and ride as much as I possibly could to get faster, and for hubby to mellow out on our rides as much as possible. I still can't ride with him when he rides with the hammerhead guys in our club, but when it's just the two of us, it works out fine!

Good luck!
Emily