The Art of Drafting

I love to ride my bike, however it took me about three months to get the hang of it. The wheels are very thin. If you hit a pebble or a bump in the road wrong you may have a flat tire or suffer a fall. The seat is tiny – way too tiny for my backside but over time I developed a ‘tough hide’ in a matter of speaking. Now, I only have two problems when riding my bike . . . wind and the last mile home.


When the wind is at my back I can fly 20-24 miles per hour – the feeling is exhilarating but when the wind is in my face I am crawling along at 12 mph and the feeling is exhausting. Yes, I have been told that riding in the wind develops cardiovascular and leg strength but it is still frustrating – especially that last mile home after a 16 mile ride.

The last mile to my house is open country-no houses, trees and rarely a car- nothing to break the wind cutting across the field or block out the blazing sun. To make matters worse, there is an incline as you turn onto my road that although barely noticeable when I am traveling in a car, it seems like a mountain when I am peddling on a bike. So struggling with a hill then battling wind makes a rough end to a ride.

Unless I time my return to home to coincide with my husband’s ride.

One day, on the last stretch of my ride, I was seriously considering getting off my bike and walking it home. Out of nowhere, Freddy zipped by on his bike. Noticing my distress, he slowed down and fell in beside me. Asking me if I was okay, I told him that I was just tired-the wind was hard, the sun was hot and I was boinked (my favorite term for when I have run out of gas).

Grinning he said “follow me close” and pulled ahead of me. Looking back, he instructed me to tuck up near his back tire. What? We were traveling about 18 mph on two bikes with tiny tires – disaster will ensue if I bump into his tire!

I slowly edged up to ride beside his back tire and PRESTO! The wind was gone and I was flying again!

Laughing, I urged him to continue on past our street. I got my second wind and was not ready to go home. We continued on for about a mile and then he told me to take the lead. Passing him like a car, I shot ahead and he tucked into my left back side. I was nervous having him so close to me. When I was following him I could control the distance of my tire to his back tire, but while in the lead, I had no control.

Funny, I am now in the lead but I have less control.

We traveled on for a distance and I began to fatigue. He noticed and with a surge he passed me and I once again tucked into his back wheel. We switched off like this for another 10 miles.

When we got home, he told me that we had been drafting. I understood the concept. I knew the geese flying south flew in formation to cut down on wind and to rest. I was amazed because my husband, who is larger than me and has a big bike can still rest while drafting off my smaller petite frame and bike.

I learned a couple things that morning. I usually ride 12-16 miles alone but drafting allows me to go further-with less effort. I also learned that size does not matter – at least in drafting. I provided the same amount of protection as my larger framed husband did. This is empowering since I live in a world where I am constantly asking my kids to get stuff off of high shelves and tote things that are too heavy for me.

I wrote a book on delegation. I became a delegating pro when I realized the benefit but this was different. This was sharing the task – teamwork.

I am a controlling little freak, but over the years I have become comfortable delegating tasks once I can define exactly how I want the task performed. However, I am still a loner when it comes to doing new things and this can hurt me sometimes. An example – I hate the tile floors in our office. The person who laid them down put a sealer over the tile itself, not just the grout. This may be fine in a home, but in a busy pediatric office the tiles look worn and torn up. I did not want to pay someone to strip the floors and place new sealer every other month – so I found a product that I could apply myself. It makes the floors look shiny and brand new.

In my usual pig-head controlling ways, I set out to do all 4000 square feet of my office alone. I am known for dreaming big and setting unrealistic goals, usually to the detriment of my health. I know better. I just published a book on this very matter. Yet here I was two hours before my office opened, steam mopping and applying floor sealer. Sweat was pouring off my face, my muscles were aching but dang the floors looked nice and I wanted all 4000 square feet to look like this before my patients came in this morning! Unrealistic, right?

Yeah, I know!

My staff shows up and they are amazed with the two rooms I was able to complete. Patients notice the floors as well-this only fuels my fire. I count the hours until I am done seeing patients so I can do the rest of the office - all 3600 square feet before I go home tonight –even if it takes until midnight. Yeah, I know – unrealistic, but this is the world I live in every day.

When the last patient leaves, one of my assistants’ asked when I planned to do the rest of the floors. She knew…she knew I planned to stay up there and do it alone for as long as it took to get the job done. She gently chided me and said that I needed to delegate this task to them. I told her I would, after I did it myself and got it just the way I wanted it.

She laughed and asked to help. I hesitated and told her there was a ‘specific way to do it’. Internally I was resisting her help, and she knew it. She asked me to show her how to work the steam cleaner. I conceded and showed her how to clean a small area. I was beginning to feel a little ridiculous; after all, she was a woman. She knew how to clean floors! She was ‘handling’ me. She knew that like a drug addict or alcoholic I had fallen off the wagon and it was time to intervene. She started steaming the floors with a vengeance and they looked just as good as when I did it, so I started following her and applying the sealer.

After a while, I saw she was getting tired so I offered to switch jobs. She giggled as I insisted on showing her exactly how to apply the sealer even though she had been watching me for the last half hour. It must be such a trial working for me!

We switched jobs back and forth until the job was done, in half the time it would have taken me alone, and I was not exhausted!

We drafted! Not against the wind and sun but against time and fatigue. Teamwork!

Many hands make light work. My mother repeated that so many times while I was growing up. She knew she had an obsessive, compulsive, perfectionist, does-not-know-her-limits daughter! Well mom, if you can hear me in heaven, you will be proud to know that not only am I a pro in delegating, I am getting pretty good at drafting now too!