Training - The Group Ride

One of the things that bugs me about group rides is that inevitably some riders treat the ride as their own personal race. Or they do their own thing during the group ride.

I know that in the old days I either rode with a pretty disciplined group (generally speaking it was with the club I belonged to) or, sometimes, less disciplined ones.

I have to admit that when I was in charge of the school's cycling team I started losing some control over the group rides. It's not as much being weaker, because I was, but it was that some riders would just hammer themselves into oblivion regardless of the goal of the ride. If the ride was supposed to be hard, okay, fine, but if it was supposed to easy, or if we were in the warm up part of the ride, the expectation was that you'd ride the same pace as the leader.

It's tough to slow down, I get it. Think about when you're driving on the highway, whatever speed feels about right, maybe 63 in a 55. Then you get behind someone that's going, say, 61. Or 59. Most people will pass when they can, not slow down to the slower driver's speed.

Unlike driving though with bikes I'm the engine, and with group rides I'm already pretty challenged to maintain pace. My FTP is definitely on the low side, 200w on a year like this one, maybe 220w on a spectacular year, like in 2010 when I upgraded to Cat 2. In races I can work with those numbers because I "snipe", meaning I target specific races. I select those that are flat or, even better, have a short hill at some point. The short hill courses, like Bethel or New Britain, work best for me because I can always punch up a short hill and there's got to be some descending elsewhere and I recover on that bit.

At any rate I avoid races with hills and, given reasonable form, I can hold my own.

Zwift Challenges

On Zwift I'm even more challenged than normal. The main reason is that the drafting engine isn't quite there so the benefits of drafting don't stack up like they do in real life. In addition there's some kind of virtual brake so as soon as you stop pedaling it's like you're braking. In real life I coast a LOT during a race, or soft pedal at zero watts, literally 10 or 20 seconds at a time. I've even seen as much as 3 to 5 seconds of coasting during a sprint where I contested the finish. Coasting is how I survive a race and average 160 or 180 watts. In Zwift if you coast for 20 seconds you'll be off the back of any group out there, of any size. If you soft pedal for maybe 5 seconds you'll realistically be at the very back of a big group, off the back of a smaller group.

To make things worse Zwift shorts me some power, about 35w with the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine, at least compared to my SRM. I believe the SRM before I believe the calculated power from Zwift, else it means I upgraded to Cat 2 with an FTP of 185w, which I highly doubt, or that I averaged 27.5 mph during the 2011 Tour of Someville while doing just 140 watts, which, again, I highly doubt.

Who knows, maybe my SRM is optimistic but I seriously doubt it. For whatever reason Zwift shorts me about 35w with the KK Road Machine.

With Zwift my 160-180w race pace becomes more like 125-145w (because Zwift shorts me 35w). At my current weight that's 1.6-1.8 w/kg. Although I'm barely capable of holding 2.0 w/kg in real life, on Zwift I fall below that cusp. I can't hang with a B ride for sure, nor a C ride, and I struggle with D rides, the 2 w/kg rides.

If I do a group ride on Zwift I look for the Sub2 rides, which over the 2015-2016 winter typically targeted 1.5 w/kg on the flats, 2 w/kg on the hills.

I joined one the other day and we were out of the blocks at well over 2 w/kg, which, if you look at the numbers above, is like me averaging at least 190w in real life. One of the hardest races I ever did was the 2010 Francis J Clarke race and I averaged 187w there. 2011 Cat 2 Tour of Somerville, 175w. So 190w, which is only 2 w/kg on Zwift, annihilates me.

I dropped off that ride pretty quickly.

Fine, I'm Weak

I understand I'm weak on the bike, and I'm okay with it. What gets me is that people are joining a Sub2 ride and then not riding Sub2. If someone joins a group ride then there's this implication that they're going to follow the ride's goals, the ride's stipulations.

For example, if I go do some super hard group ride, I'll go there with the expectation that I'm going to get shelled and it's my responsibility to figure out how to get back to the cars. Generally I'll be okay until the road tilts up, I get shelled, and then I decide do I turn around or should I keep going.

And that's fine.

At the same time if I'm on a easy group ride then I don't expect anyone to do any hard riding, or if they do they'll be waiting, foot on the ground, at the top of the hill or at the next intersection or something like that.

With Zwift it's even more... I don't know, it's more clear cut. You can see riders long after they're out of sight. Not only that, you can see their power, and, if you click on their name, you can actually see their heart rate and cadence.

You get a good idea of what they're doing, if they're struggling or just sightseeing.

Why Join A Too-Slow Group?

So why do these riders insist on joining an easier group and then blowing it apart by riding above its advertised level?

I don't know. Is it ego? Insecurity? Ignorance? Lack of self control?

Celebrity Rides

Every now and then I'm fortunate enough to have a celebrity ride with whatever group, sometimes even a race. Marc Wauters, a long time Rabobank pro, showed up for Gimbels one day. Because he wasn't riding hard we got to talk to him, and it was great, to be able to talk to this guy that you realize when you get home that, oh wow, he was in the finale in Paris Roubaix! and he was leading out Tchmil for the finish of Ghent! And he did the Giro. The Worlds. And this and that and the other thing.

At one race way, way back a recently crowned Mike McCarthy showed up at a race in World Champion colors (US Pro Crit champ, world pro pursuit champ, technically not WC on the road but hey, he's a WC at something). The first lap was like a wedding reception paceline thing were there was a line of riders dropping back and saying congrats to Mike, who, to his credit, was politely thanking everyone for their congratulations. Then after everyone got that out of the way Mike just smashed the field to pieces.

It was awesome.

Now those are racer celebrities. There are other celebrities that you get to ride with. Maybe a state representative or a mayor or something. Maybe the President, or Vice President. They're not "cyclists" per se so you ride with them like you're riding with your mother/father (if s/he doesn't ride), or, say, your grandmother/father (if s/he doesn't ride).

You take it easy. You watch them ride. You adjust your pace to theirs. You make them feel welcome to the group. If you wanted to get a workout  you wait until after the ride to go hard, or, even better, you do a bunch of hard efforts before the ride.

Today's Ride

Today (Sept 22) I did a group ride, advertised at 2-2.5 w/kg, an "easy" ride, but with one catch.

A guest rider.

Romain Grosjean.

He's an F1 driver. Admittedly he had a tough start to his F1 career but he's matured and he's one of only 22 full time F1 drivers in the world. Significantly he's one of the drivers that actually gets paid to drive - many are pay-to-drive drivers - and he's held in high enough regard that just his presence helped legitimize Haas Racing's new F1 team.

As an F1 driver he has to be somewhat fit. He said (during the ride, one of the few questions he got to answer in an hour) he rides about 2500 km a year (1500 miles), runs 800 km (500 miles), and works out in the gym and plays tennis. But he's not a world champion cyclist or anything.

So automatically my thought was, "Okay, this is a celebrity, the group should take it easy. If he wants to push a bit then he'll rev up everyone else's competitive spirits and it'll be game on.

Remember the ride with your mother/father or grandmother/grandfather? You watch them, let them set the pace, then adjust to whatever they do.

You don't go and blast up the first hill and shell them.

So what happens at the start of the "Romain Grosjean" ride?

Literally 2/3 of the group goes and shells him, hammering at the front.

I don't have solid data but I saw lots of 2.5-3.0 w/kg up front. With Zwift's limited drafting benefit it is harder than real life to stay together, yet these riders were at the front going well over the advertised ride pace.

For what?

I say again, for what?

To say that they beat Grosjean in a virtual bike ride? To get him pedaling so hard he can't answer questions from fans of F1 who happen to be on Zwift?

It took a lot of CAPS LOCK pleas to get the front group to ease a bit, but as soon as Grosjean was on the hammer went back down.

I was off the back pretty quickly so I eased, letting them lap me. I was only on my second lap, they were on their third, and the third/last lap was an open free for all per the ride description. I had a selfish thought here - with such a big group, and with the group racing, I could try and beat my PR for the green jersey sprint. I usually start the sprint at about 24-25 mph, but if I could jump at a higher speed I could take literally a second or more off my PR.

Per the ride leaders they did keep it together until the start of the sprint, saying that the start line for the sprint was the place to go go go (the "go" words were in caps). Even Romain himself messaged the group to ride as they pleased once the "race" was on. This means the group did 3/4 of the lap under some kind of control.

So I got in the group just before the sprint (i.e. they caught me). I was looking forward to sprinting down into the 21s range, possibly into the 20s, depending on how my legs felt.

I got to the sprint, I jumped really late at the line per the ride rules (not 5-8 seconds before), went a few pedal strokes...

Then I stopped because it looked like no one was sprinting.

I mentioned before you can see other riders' power, specifically their w/kg ratio. If their power goes up a lot the number turns orange. However most of the riders weren't even bright white, they were still regular white.

Well one guy was orange but I didn't want to be one of the two nimrods that sprinted to show Romain just who's boss. So I chilled on the sprint.

Then, about 3 or 4 seconds later, I saw other riders sprinting, so, after a bit of internal debate on if this was a dick move or not, I did another jump.

Ends up that after all the stutter start/stop I posted the third best time of the group. The guy that jumped on his own posted the best time. It was insane, 19.9s or something, I've never broken 20s in this physics model. He jumped early, was in the 13-15 w/kg range, and held it to the line. I think it's justified and probably accurate. With a 30 mph leadout I think low 20s would have been possible, mid 21s would have been pretty slow.

Of course it helps if I had actually sprinted the whole sprint.

In looking back at the data it looks like I sprinted for 2 seconds before shutting it down, then waited about 5 seconds before doing a half hearted sprint to the line, sitting up a bit early because I was disappointed that I didn't jump at my normal mark before the start line and go all the way to the finish.

Nonetheless I did a 22.97 second sprint. This is the same time as a pretty poor solo attempt a bit earlier this week but one that ended up my 30 day best until today (22.99).

I didn't take a shot of the leaderboard but I was third after the sprint.

The list of riders to the right are all part of the group ride.

I'm slowing hard (4 mph) so they're passing me en masse.

After The Sprint

After the sprint I recovered at my normal 0-1 mph, 5-20 watt pace. The group quickly disappeared, literally in fact. Once a rider gets to the end of the ride they revert to a normal rider, not a group rider, and dropped off the visible riders in the "group ride list". Ends up me and a guy named Mike were the only two that decided to do the third lap solo, and he was a few minutes ahead of me, looks like about 12 minutes by the time I finished the final lap.

Typical road race result for me. Dead last, 35 minutes down from the leader.

This would have been a short road race, like 30-40 miles.

Note that all the other riders have zero heart rates. They're already logged off the ride.

In group ride mode you can't see non-group ride members except when they pass you. Can't message others. Can't search for them. Etc. So although there were about 500 riders on the course I was really alone.

I started thinking of stuff on this final lap.

I understand that I'm weak on the bike, weaker still on Zwift. But the 2-2.5 w/kg ride pace should have been possible for me, at least for a lap. I got about 8 minutes in before I had to pull the plug.

I understand riders want to go hard, go fast, go at whatever pace they want. I get that.

What I don't get is when a rider joins a group and blatantly, obviously, rides above the pace and shreds the front of the group. The ride leader has a couple options. One is to ignore the offender. Another is to call them back. A third is to chase down the offenders.

Unfortunately the third option will push people over the edge. I've seen this happen where the ride leader says, "Okay, follow me, I'll pull you up" and half the riders basically explode. They were already redlined and the pace increase killed them. Limited draft, redlined riders... not a good combination.

The first option, ignoring the offender, works sometimes, but if people start bridging it gets tough. There's a critical mass point where if, say, 2/3 of the riders ends up in the front group, well, that's 2/3 of the group.

The second option, calling them back, sometimes works, sometimes doesn't.

I don't understand the mentality of "winning" a group ride.

Racing

One big difference, I think, is that I actually race sanctioned races. We race for a known goal, typically the finish line after a number of laps, and with a controlled environment you usually get a good idea of where you stand. Sometimes I do okay, often I don't.

I'm good with that.

When I'm not racing I don't need to "beat" other riders. You want to pass me while I'm climbing this hill? Go ahead. Want to sprint past me to make the light? Be my guest. In Florida in 2009 my 7 year old niece wanted to race me, her on her scooter and me on my bike.

She won every time.

In fact with Zwift I toodle along at ridiculously low wattages, 60 or 80 watts or some absurdly low power like that. I like doing sprints at designated points because, frankly, I want to see if I can get the green jersey, but it's a 100% effort that makes it even harder for me to hold even minimal power levels after the sprint.

Going for lowest average power possible.

If you look at the above screenshot you'll see that I averaged 51w, 87w, 65w, 145w, and 93w. What's kind of ironic is that the hardest ride, the 145w one, I quit after 26 minutes because it was a Sub2 group sustaining well over a 2 w/kg pace.

I also skipped mentioning the 33w partial ride since it was me briefly contemplating riding on my own and deciding I'd much rather read to Junior.

Put me in a group ride (not a race) and it's all about the group. I don't sprint unless the ride leader says we're sprinting. I don't attack the group, I don't push harder just because I can. Admittedly I'm rarely in that situation but it's happened.

It's disappointing to go through everything I need to do to join a group ride and then have it ruined because the ride doesn't follow the advertised pace. I've gotten my dad settled, or, worse, asked the Missus to handle some of my responsibilities. Left Junior for bed without reading him a few books or even checking up on him as he's drifting off into la la land. But I do that now and then because I'd like to get in a group ride that has a pace I can handle.

Then the group hammers, redlines me, and eventually sheds me.

And to join this ride I made the choice to sacrifice a bit of family time. I could easily ride later, on my own, but then I wouldn't have the group to ride with, the conversation, the feeling of solidarity, etc.

However this is what I miss when I'm joining a Sub2 ride at 8 PM:

Reading to Junior.

Bella is the feline sitting on the edge of the bed rail.

I make the call to ride instead of read to Junior, I acknowledge that. However I make the call with a certain expectation of the ride.

On the Romain ride I elected to stay on, mainly because it was a weird time ride (2:30 PM) and we'd all have time after the ride. However on that 145w ride a few days prior?

I climbed off the bike, went upstairs, let Junior know that I'd read after I showered, and then I got to read some books with him.

Training - Group Ride Behavior

A great article that basically describes the responsibility us cyclists have when on a group ride. The most critical takeaway from the article is that a group ride needs a "patron" (ride leader) who sets the ground rules, and who keeps the ride in line.

The article is at People For Bikes.

Equipment - Radical Steelman Stem On Bike

A few people have asked me what my stem looks like on the bike. I posted a pretty distorted picture that really makes the stem look ridiculous so I wanted to post something a little bit better.

The distorted picture, a still off the helmet cam; the stem was unpainted at that point.

When you look at that picture it looks like the drops end up below the 60mm fairing of the front wheel. The saddle looks like it's a good foot up in the air (I guess my National Lampoon style taillights don't help either). Although I have some saddle-bar drop the picture makes it look just a little bit ridiculous.

Therefore I lugged the camera down to the basement take a more reasonable picture.

The now-painted stem on the bike, in the trainer room.

I took the picture kneeling, hiding myself from the camera by placing myself behind the head tube of the bike (meaning so I don't appear in the mirror, or the flash in the mirror doesn't drown out the bike). The drops are shown a little more accurately in terms of relative drop.

Of course my kneeling position makes the saddle look like it's pointing up but trust me, it's not. It's level with a little dip in the middle. However the saddle doesn't look like it's towering over the bike like it does in the first picture.

The drops end up in the same spot as they were before, about next to the tire. Due to the compact bars, with their 3 cm shorter reach and 3 cm less drop (meaning it's 3 cm higher), I commissioned Steelman Bikes to make me a stem that would situate the drops properly.

They did and it does.

Yesterday I went on an Expo ride and the unstoppable Heavy D had his helmet cam on. I grabbed a couple stills from there to illustrate that my position on the bike isn't nutty as the stem makes it look.

In the paceline. I'm on the right, in case you didn't realize.

(still from a clip by Heavy D)

I admit I do have a flatter back than many riders out there, but it's because my back hurts if I ride in a more upright position. Another Expo rider, chatting with me on the roll out, theorized that the longer, lower position would reduce the load on my back by transferring it a bit to my hands. That makes sense. My back is definitely my weak point and it can be almost crippling at times. Riding on the drops is almost like therapy for me, easing the discomfort and making things much more manageable as far as my back goes.

Of course it doesn't hurt that it's aerodynamic or anything, but if my back forced me to sit upright that's what I'd be doing instead.

Making an effort following a hard working Jeff.

(still from a clip by Heavy D)

My position isn't radical at all. My arms are a bit bent but the low drops isn't meant to give me straight arms or bent arms or anything like that. It's meant to give me a good position when I'm out of the saddle and my only contact points are the pedals and the drops. I need the drops to be low enough that I can pull up on them and so that the front wheel gets a bit of weight on it. With higher bars (by 3 cm) the front end got really skittery, making the bike hard to control in sprints. My short legs determine the bar height, not any need for mucho drop.

Unfortunately I was behind Heavy D when I made my rare jump efforts on the group ride so there's no shots of me actually going hard out of the saddle from that ride.

You may notice that I have a saddle bag on my bike. I normally carry stuff in my pockets but with a limited amount of pocket real estate on my jacket (one huge pocket, one key pocket), plus the fact that the stuff was moving around too much on me in Florida, pushed me to use my saddle bag again. It's nice - no worrying about it, not as much weight bouncing around in my pocket, and easy access (I tightened a bottle screw just before we rolled out).

So that's the bike. I need to get a second stem for my other bike, so that I have two bikes with the same set up. There are other maintenance things I need to do, mainly gluing tires, but for this year that's the only significant change I'll make as far as the bikes go.

Training - Expo Winter Ride

I've been busy with working on Bethel stuff so I haven't been updating the blog much. When I've had time to potentially do the blog I've also skipped it, choosing to do other things instead - look after Junior (the main reason) and to train (another significant reason).

With Junior around we're trying to keep electronics to a "less than all the time" thing. For me it's meant leaving the laptops in the office area, a gated off area. With gated off areas more difficult for us to hang out in with Junior they've become "use as needed" space rather than "go in and chill for a while" type spaces. This has led to me looking at the laptop, on a somewhat typical day, just four times or so - early morning, when Junior naps, when the Missus is around, and after Junior goes to sleep.

(He's taking an unexpected afternoon nap, hence the furious typing on the computer.)

Even the phone is sort of off limits. I have a smart phone and now Junior has realized that it's full of pictures of him, pictures and video he loves to watch. Therefore even my phone sits out of sight (and out of mind).

This has led to at least one missed appointment, with no electronics to remind of stuff. Now my appointment book is more old fashioned - I am using a notebook left over from my school days (so it's literally 25 years old) for my "to do" lists and such.

At any rate with our lives a little less centered on electronics and a bit more centered on real world stuff, we really didn't know what the forecast would be for this weekend. Yesterday we headed out with Junior because it was so "warm", in the mid 40s. He played happily in the playground, we went out and did some stuff, and he was happily exhausted.

The Missus asked if I wanted to do a ride outside. I'd already ridden about an hour and a half, stopping because I heard the Missus and Junior upstairs (and figured I could help with something more so than if I stayed on the bike). I declined, although the outside did look tempting. Then, checking the forecast and such, the Missus mentioned that the weather would be better Sunday, today. I was sure there'd be a group ride and I used my precious electronic time to see what Expo email had gone out.

Sure enough there'd be a group ride, leaving from the shop. I even know where to go for that, better than a ride leaving from who knows where, so the Missus and I planned on me going to the ride.

Of course that meant gathering stuff for riding outside, radically different than riding indoors. Head gear, booties, jacket, tights… some of the stuff was still packed in our rolly-bags from our trip to Florida in mid December. I charged the camera, left the SRM where I'd remember it, and all that.

I even found my favorite winter gloves. Okay, I found one side of my favorite winter gloves - it'd been downstairs behind one of my old frames. I haven't had them since 2011 so this was a nice bonus.

I threw everything in the wash, pulled it out when it was dry, and I was ready.

Today I woke up later than I expected, at 7 AM. I've been waking up earlier, sometimes as early as 2 AM, trying to get onto a Bethel schedule (wake up is at 5 AM for Bethel). I scrambled to get out of the house by 8:00, failed, and hit the road at 8:15. I left Junior behind with a worried look on his face - normally Mommy goes out in the morning, not Daddy.

Base camp for Expo, Manchester Cycle.

With great weather forecast a large group showed up for the ride. I'm not going to review the clip to count but I think it was in the 20 rider range, good enough for me. A lot of the guys were surprised to see me since I'd only done one (one!?) Expo ride since the team formed in late 2009.

To be fair I only remember doing two group rides after 2010, and one of them was in Florida in December 2013. Basically my group rides have been races, and any outdoor rides have been solo, with the occasional random fellow rider joining me for a mile or three.

I bought a bunch of gels and Bloks because I forgot to bring bars. Let me tell you, it's handy starting rides from a shop.

We set out at a normal clip for everyone else, a kind of fast clip for me. I glanced down a couple times to make sure the SRM was working (initially it wasn't starting because the speed bit wasn't picking up so the auto-on wasn't working). I'd see 230w consistently on the flats, sitting in, about 10% over my FTP. I realized I felt like I was holding my breath a little because I really was sort of holding my breath a little - I was falling behind the oxygen curve.

At some point we hit one of the first hills on the loop. A lot of guys started moving up, surging, and I followed because I figured the stuff was about to hit the fan. I made it up that hill okay (4th on Strava, shared with the others around me today), but that was my one and only success.

I got shelled on the flats shortly after. I think it was a tailwind so the draft wasn't great, or else it was a false flat so we were constantly climbing, or I was just too weak to hang.

Jeff M waited a bit for me to make sure I wouldn't get lost, we did a little regroup before yet another hill, and Jeff rolled away effortlessly from our group of four (the Laughing Group if you will, the ones just trying to make the cut off time).

We caught up to them at the regrouping point (they actually waited) and we all set off again. I found myself on Jeff's wheel. As a fellow Cat 3, a savvy rider, and someone I've raced with for a number of years, I trust his wheel. Therefore I felt comfortable sitting in a normally unsafe spot, overlapped by a good 5 or 10 inches on the right side. At about the time of the picture below I actually peeked under his arm to check out oncoming traffic to our 11 o'clock (front left).

On Jeff's wheel.

The camera makes things look really far away, seriously, so this is close.

I was at the back, trying to be polite. It's not polite to get shelled and leave a gap, so I positioned myself so that if I got shelled it wouldn't bother many people. Of course if someone eased and got in line behind me that's a different story. The team morale booster, Heavy D, did just that, a mischievous grin on his face. He started talking about some town line sprint and how he'd get Jeff to jump for it.

Of course this piqued my interest as we were rolling at a more manageable pace. Heavy D rolled by Jeff, taunting him. You could see Jeff fighting within himself but then you could tell he was going to go.

Bam.

He went.

I had rolled up on his wheel, waited in the drops and in the right gear, so I went with him.

He went a long way out, and in fact I couldn't see any kind of sign that might resemble a town line sign. Then I saw a little sign that you'd normally see labeling a creek or something. It was still way out there, but now close enough for me to go if I wanted to go.

I eased though. Jeff had waited to make sure I didn't miss a turn (and I would have had he not waited), I was already tired, and he'd done all the work.

The group rolled by and I was glad I didn't go any harder - I had enough trouble reintegrating into the group, so much so that I had to swing out of line, recover a bit as the group rode by, then tag on the back.

I made one small effort close to the bike shop, trying to get rolling. I didn't think I was going that hard but when I blew, just as I caught the leading rider, I saw that I'd been rolling in a 53x11.

Well now.

Of course we turned left immediately after that, started up a hill, and I couldn't hang on.

So much for being strong.

We rolled back to the shop. A subset of the group immediately headed out for another hour or two. I headed home for some R&R.

Overall the ride went well. I mean, okay, I totally blew up a few times, reduced to twiddling the pedals at 130-150 watts. However I didn't have any of the "been on the trainer all winter" side effects, like a stiff neck, fatigued shoulders, or even sore legs. I realized that it wasn't that I could ride for two hours, it was that the ride was, at times, way too fast for me.

I realize that I need to work on some higher end fitness, a minimum amount so that I can finish the races in the spring. Things seem to be pretty good otherwise.

Some positive signs for spring then, the ground hog notwithstanding.