Surviving the Group Ride

Every so often, a rider may find him or herself a bit out of shape to hang with the usual group ride. For some of us, that so often comes a lot more often than we'd like.

Then it's double servings of humble pie. Your legs get blown out. You get dropped on the hills. You get shat out the back of the paceline like a double helping of salmonella-tainted Chicken Vindaloo. You are humiliated, ashamed, left gasping for air and coddling what's left of your scorched pride and punctured ego. And that's just in the first three miles.

I've been reminded of this situation recently. I've been slowly ramping up the efforts following my foot operation. This last week was the first week I've actually met my training goals, knocking out around 200 miles of zone 1/2 spinning. The foot's fine, thanks; feels like a very bad bruise now, which sounds awful but it's way better than feeling like a badly broken first metatarsal, which is how it felt just a couple weeks ago. But even the mildest group rides are still very tough at times.

Yep, it's the Rolling Group Ride Death Syndrome that I've got, and I have it bad right now.

There are only three ways around The Syndrome.

First, you can simply skip the group rides until you're in shape enough to hang. This produces a snake-eating-its-tail problem. If you don't hit the group rides, you won't get fit enough to hang on the group rides; and if you hang on the group rides and get dropped it will be really hard to get fit enough to hang on the group rides. If you're going to do this... well, I don't know what to say. It's like one of those time travel paradoxes. I just don't know how you solve it.

Second, you could turn into an utter wheelsucking jerk - the King of Sitting In. Now nobody minds it when a buddy sits in for a ride, or even a few. The problem for me right now, is that your July is my January. I'm knocking of base miles. I'm doing this partly because I want to train right for cross season (guess I'm aiming for a November peak...) and partly because I have no choice right now, having alternated month long train/rest periods for the first half of the year. This is a good approach if you always want to buy your own beer, never get invited to parties, and want to be the butt of jokes behind people's backs.

Third, you can figure out how to use social ju jitsu to control whatever pack you happen to be riding with.

That's my approach. Social ju jitsu. Here's a handy list of phrases to put you on the psychological attack and help you control the pace of any group ride you're on (aka the "you suckers should never take what I say seriously... seriously" list).

1. Hey, so-and-so is a NooB to the ride/cycling/life. Take it easy on him today, alright? It's bad form to drop NooBs. So slow it up.

2. Who's up for the easy coffee run today? I could sure use a couple shots of espresso myself. I think they have good muffins there too.

3. Take it easy. I'm having wicked trouble shifting. I think my derailer is about to go. I'd hate to break it this far out.

4. You've had a pretty epic week. Shouldn't you be spinning recovery today?

5. I have to take it easy. I'm trying to do an early season base peak Bompa taper. So I need to ride slow but if you aren't down with that, I totally get it.

6. I had foot surgery a month ago and can't push hard. So I'm riding base or at most tempo for a while. Seriously. It's true.

Any one of these phrases should suffice to slow down whatever group ride you're on. Some work by making the group feel a sense of responsibility for noobies and injured people. Some prey on ego - any comment praising somebody for their epic week of riding is sure to butter them up for the suggestion to take it easy. Some prey on the roadie's insatiable fascination with shiny things, and coffee, like the derailer and coffee run excuses. But the most important feature of all these psychological approaches is that you believe them.

Seriously. You have to believe them. Or at least convince people you believe them.

Now you may think that this has nothing to do with racing, but you couldn't be further from the truth. Your newfound skills at deception and rationalization (self-deception most of all) will put you in good stead. If you're in the break and can't pull through, you will know that you have it within you to tell a craven lie, to fake weakness and to avoid working until just past the 200m mark. If the pack is getting frisky, you will have the ability to lob in a suggestion to get some hated bastard to attack off the front - after which you will be able to convince the other front-markers to let him dangle for a while, and they will all slow up if you're convincing enough. And if it looks like you're about to get dropped, you'll know how to make plaintive clicks and sobbing noises, which will definitely distract your rivals long enough that you can recover and catch a handy wheel.

See? And you thought this was going to be about how to avoid doing work when you're riding. In fact, it's doing quite the opposite. You're working hard - it's just that they don't make an SRM to measure the kind of effort you're putting out.