Poor passing etiquette-how to escape another group of hikers?
Hi hikers, so I had a hiking experience today that I have not ever dealt with before now. My boyfriend and I were just getting on the trail and ended up passing a small group of teenage boys. This led to about 20 or 30 minutes of them absolutely tailing us. They actually ran to catch up to us and seemed to be using us as a pacesetter. If we stopped to let them pass, we would end up just catching up to them because they would slow their pace. And then they would again stay glued to our behinds if we passed them again lol. At one point we had to go over some rocky chunks of trail with water over them and one of them was literally right behind me as if we were a group hiking together. There was no point to let him pass because he was so far ahead from his bros that we would've had to wait some time for them to also pass, and again they would slow their pace til we caught up. I should've told him to give me some space because the distance was too personal and unsafe over the wet rocks but I was too focused on my footing.
This really messed with our timing and pace for the first quarter or so of our hike lol. We ended up taking a super long break to get rid of them but I felt annoyed we had to do that and lose our momentum and time. We ended up getting a bit close to them again and I heard one of them say "guys how did they catch up to us" I guess my question is how do you all deal with extremely poor passing etiquette or hikers using you to set their pace? I had never experienced this before and was really at a loss for words lol