CYCLING GROUP RIDES ARE INTIMIDATING, BUT WORTH IT
Last weekend, I loaded up my Quintana Roo Service Course and headed to Boulder, Colorado, for a group ride called Project Supertraining. Isn't your regular Sunday morning group ride. It happens monthly, it's followed by a support vehical stocked with water and food, and it draws some of the fastest riders in Colorado, including active and retired pros.
This month's route was the longest of the year: 120+ miles with a brutal detour up a steep climb called Rist Canyon. My goal wasn't to win anything. It was just to hang on to the front group for as long as I possibly could.
Spoiler: I got dropped. More than once. I ended up drafting behind the support vehicle and got dropped from that too. I spent a good chunk of the climb as the literal last rider on the road. I documented all of the action and suffering here:
Group Rides Can Be Intimidating. Do Them Anyway.
There are plenty of "no drop" group rides out there, and those are fantastic! But recently, I've been seeking out a different sort of riding experience. Ever since I built up my Service Course, I've been looking for group rides that push the pace. Here's the thing about fast group rides: they're uncomfortable by design, and that discomfort is exactly why they're worth doing.
Arriving at the summit last. There were two national champions in this group!
Showing up to ride with people faster than you is intimidating. You know it's going to hurt. But you don't know if you'll get dropped. You don't know if you'll embarrass yourself. You don't know if you belong in that front group where everyone is wearing skin suits and aero socks. I've felt all of that, and honestly, I still do every single time.
But a hard group ride is one of the best training tools available to you, and not just for fitness. Riding alongside faster riders forces you to hold power you didn't think you could hold, corner with more confidence because the pace demands it, and make split-second decisions about positioning and drafting that you simply can't learn riding solo on a trainer. It's fitness, bike handling, and confidence, all stacked into one ride. Every time you ride with a fast group, you come out the other side a better bike rider than you went in, even if you get dropped.
You Can't Break Limits Until You Find Them
Drafting the support car is a unique feature of Project Supertraining. The driver, Will, is a former pro road racer and a very experienced driver, so don't try this with just anyone!
In my first Supertraining ride, I got shelled before the halfway point. I drafted the support vehicle just to survive, and I climbed Rist Canyon completely alone. None of that is a bad outcome. It's what diving into something new and harder than you're used to actually looks like.
Improvement is rarely a straight line. It's messy and chaotic. it has setbacks, and it often means being the slowest person in the group before you're not. If you wait until you feel ready to join a fast group ride, you'll be waiting a long time. The move is to show up anyway, get dropped if you get dropped, and come back next month and try again.
My Service Course Makes This Possible
None of this would've been as fun, or as fast, without the right bike underneath me. All year, I've been riding a Quintana Roo Service Course with a somewhat unconventional setup. I've paired my aero road frame with a 1x SRAM Force XPLR gravel drivetrain and 35mm Continental GP 5000 tires, which I wrote about in detail here. It's part TT bike, part gravel bike, and works incredibly well on the rough and worn roads I ride on a regular basis.
On chip seal, cracked pavement, and fast descents, that wider tire setup not only increases speed and comfort, but it also gives me the confidence to actually hold a wheel through corners instead of backing off. Getting this bike built exactly the way I wanted it, through QR's custom builder, has turned it into something more than just a bike. It's become my beloved partner and an essential tool in my own development as a rider.
When I'm trying to keep up with people who are simply better than me right now, I want a bike that's not holding me back while I work on figuring the rest out. I'm not the rider I want to be yet. But between showing up to fast group rides like Supertraining and riding a bike built around what I actually need, I'm getting closer!
