Of course you're an athlete! All of you gals (or am I committed enough now to say us gals?) are athletes! And shame on any man who tries to deflate your self-esteem!

That said, I'm not so sure about the advice to challenge said MF to a ride and rub it in his face that you can leave him behind on a hill. Your MF is hardly alone in being particularly competitive vis a vis women, not least in the area of physical prowess. Another area might be, say, earnings. Even my DH, who was very supportive and proud of me when I got my PhD, even though it outranks his ME academically, was a bit shaken (or at least joked about being shaken) when I made full professor and began to outearn him. It may have helped him get over it that he can still outrun me hiking or biking. And just to show how common this need to outperform women is, check what men report as their greatest biking embarrassments on this site:

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...light=humbling

Every other one (well, I haven't counted, or even read to the end, but it seemed that way) is embarrassed that women, older men, or people with shoddier sports equipment left them in the dust. That and falling through failure to unclip -- when women are watching.

So before you brutally make MF face the truth, you might want to consider whether you're mad enough to actually want to be rid of him, or whether this is one flaw you're willing to try to tease him out of slowly and diplomatically. If so, then when you take him out on a ride and leave him behind on that hill, remember to say that you're sure he could BECOME faster than you if he trained for it.