he’s right, you know
The key to Cat6 victory is that you are NOT racing, you are just riding home and always lope along at this pace. With that in mind:
Him being in Team kit and all means he cannot win, he can only tie or lose. ( assuming you are not similarly in team kit).
At this point the saavy cat6er would have accelerated when you heard his hub. You are not racing, you just happened to accelerate to your more typical leisurely pace on your ride home. Plausible deniability is key, you’re clearly not racing, and therefore you clearly did not accelerate to stay in front of him, you had no idea he was even back there!
Did you have to accelerate to re-catch him? As you are clearly not racing, you really shouldn’t have acclerated. This is against you. HOWEVER, because he is in team kit, you are allowed a single acceleration to a greater steady speed. Again, you’re not racing, but just so inspired by his racy-ness you can’t help yourself, it’s OK he understands he has inspired a lowly commuter to greater things. Also you are permittied to accelerate to get on his tail, and then hold that steady speed no matter what -curves, hills, puddles, RR tracks, whatever. If he slows one iota and you pass him at that crusing speed that is a flawless victory, no matter what happens after.
(Aside: It is also permissible when you first heard his hub to quicly sit up and take a drink of water or adjust your pack or look at your phone. Obviously this involves slowing from your typical commuting speed. Which means that once he passes you, your future acceleration to re-pass him is not racing, it’s just you returning to your typical cruising speed.)
You are clearly racing now, and have shattered the Cat6 not-racing illusion. You should have passed him earlier when you first caught up, maintained that steady speed so he couldn’t re-pass, and turned off whenever you want, that’d be a victory.
But to have to accelerate to pass, then get caught at a light trying to turn off? Sorry that’s a Cat6 loss. At the least you gotta make that light.
Even though you lose, it does not necessarily make it a victory for him. You know you lost, but he does not. If you want to be extra jerkey and suck the joy from his victory: Maintain a proud attitude, act like you won. Maybe look over and say “better luck next week” with a cheery smile. He will think that you think you won, and the annoyance it causes will haunt him the rest of the day.
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Holy shit, this is probably one of the best tarck posts I’ve read in years.
Thanks for that!
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i believe this is called the “cat6 hustle”
Incredible.
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Went through a wide empty pedestrian light (running late to work), motorcycle cop pulled up beside me and tried to chat, eventually gave up and sped off
Lol.
I treat pedestrian walk figures as “bicycle green lights” most of the time.
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In PI you can get ticketed for doing so unless there’s a bicycle light as well. Happened to me and I was pisssssssssssed off. Gotta CX dismount those crossings.
There’s a bunch of intersections on campus where I work that have signage indicating that cyclists can cross with pedestrians, which is very nice
oooof i think i’ve been inadvertently breaking the law for years
you haven’t broken the law, if you haven’t been caught 
There were a bunch of douchey bros (maybe 4-5? they were kinda pacelining but I don’t think they knew each other ) trying to wheel-suck and/or pass me dangerously on a rather crowded stretch of Seattle MUP. Soooooo I dropped them then spent the rest of my ride home fucking killing myself to stay quite a bit ahead of them, then as I slowed to make a sharp turn up to a bridge one dude sprints up to get in front and nearly knocks over a ped. I passed him on the little hill to the bridge, doing a sitting-sprint, and literally held my breath so he couldn’t hear my labored breathing.
When I got home I actually puked a little in a bush outside, it brought back “fond” track-and-field memories.
This was both my greatest cat 6 triumph and a shameful expression of my own limpgenital competitiveness (I’ve done enough velodrome funteim with cat 1 roadies while they work their way up to know I’m not hot shit). I still enjoyed the smugness, though.
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The sitting sprint while pretending not to be breathing hard is the real cat6 pro move.
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The other day I passed another cyclist on a 25 foot wide, empty gravel road.
There was probably 15 feet between us as I passed.
He yelled “YOU HAVE TO SAY ON YOUR LEFT WHEN YOU PASS!!!”
I said nothing, but thought of witty replies I could have used all the way to work.
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I blew through the walk signal at the bottom of the hill I live on, and watched a police cruiser not bang a right through the walk as I did so even though it was inching forward, then 2 second later pull up next to me and say I need to obey the same laws as car. “Yessir officer, won’t happen again officer” then I rode slowly in the middle of the street in front of him for a block.
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I would have just yelled nuh uh and rode away. Or call the cops.
My standard replies are:
Citizen: “I didn’t ask for your opinion”
Super Citizen: “What are you, a cop?”
Johnny Law: “I didn’t see that”
“No comment”
“what are you, a cop” doesn’t work as well as I’d like it to, because by the time they’ve rolled up with their window down the head has been so firmly implanted in their ass that they can’t hear a word I say.
I had someone say “what are you, a cop” to me when I scolded them for parking in the bike lane.
Against my better judgement, I simply said “Yes, now move your car out of the bike lane immediately”, and… he did.
I was not dressed like a cop.
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I had possibly my worst ever commute this year, or maybe just worst this year.
Within the first mile, I have to cross Speer, which is 3 lanes each direction. It has a stop light.
Opposing traffic turns red, mine turns green. It’s green for at least 5 seconds before I even make it on to the road, at which point some truck flies past at no less than 60mph. Stark reminder that people are absolute trash.
So, I’m already pretty pumped. At some point, I got in between Roadie 1 and Roadie 2. We get to the bike lane portion of my commute and Roadie 1 slams his brakes on in the bike lane, I suppose to wait for Roadie 2? That pissed me off, but whatever.
Get to the stoplight. Roadie 2 shoals me. Light turns green, I pass him easily as he fumbles into his clips.
A car then stops in the bike lane to parallel park, which is fine. I’m not even mad. I go around it and Roadie 1, unannounced, flies past me and almost clips me off the bike. <---- It is at this point that whatever remaining adrenaline I had from the car incident immediately releases into my central nervous system.
So, I catch up to him, lay a barrage of profanities on him that nobody should ever have to endure, tell him that he has no business riding a bike, etc, and then proceed to sprint the rest of my commute at full speed until I got to the train station.
I suppose this is what 'roid rage feels like.