Quote:
Originally Posted by bcroslin
What other sport forces it's athletes to train in traffic?
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Here's a different perspective:
Because the roads are common ways, cyclists and motorists have to share the roads. Therefore, in order for a cyclist to get anywhere, they must often ride in traffic.
However, competitive cyclists shouldn't be training in traffic. Training usually requires certain types of efforts and/or types of riding styles, for some pre-determined duration. If traffic becomes an issue during a training session, then in the interest of safety, a competitive cyclist should curtail their current training activity to whatever extent prudent, and instead should share the road with traffic as any other non-competitive cyclist should. When traffic abates, they can resume their training activity. Some training activities, such as endurance distance rides, may be little affected by traffic, and may largely continue when traffic is present. But other training activities, such as maximal effort sprints, may be very unsafe in traffic, and should be curtailed if traffic is present.
As far as the Romain Guyot tragedy, do we know if he was actually training (i.e doing some type of training effort or activity) when the crash occurred? Or was riding as any other (non-competive) road cyclist would? Just because someone is a professional racing cyclist, it doesn't mean that they riding competitively every moment they are on a bike.