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, is followed by a support vehicle 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 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... multiple times! I even ended up drafting behind the support vehicle and got dropped from that too. I spent the entire climb as the last rider on the road. This is the fastest and hardest group ride I've ever joined, and I documented all of the action and suffering here:
Fast 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 and push me. Fast group rides are intimidating, especially if you don't do them often. Pushing yourself to keep up is uncomfortable, and that discomfort is exactly why they're worth doing.
Arriving at the summit last. There were two national champions in this group!
Feeling intimidated or scared, has stopped me from seeking out these sorts of expereinece in the past. You know it's going to hurt. You know you'll probably get dropped. The scariest thing is that you might embarrass yourself along the way. I've felt all of that, and honestly, I still do every single time I join a ride full of fitter and more experienced riders.
But a hard group ride that pushes you out of your comfort zone is one of the best training tools available to you. Riding with faster riders forces you to hold power you didn't think you could hold, corner with more confidence to hold the pace, and make split-second decisions about positioning and drafting that you simply can't learn from riding solo or 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.
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 involves setbacks. It can mean being the slowest person in the group until one day, you're not. If you wait until you feel "ready" to join a fast group ride, you might wait forever. I tend to do this, and I'm trying to change that. I'm showing up. If I get dropped, I get dropped, and I try not to let that become a reflection of my value as an athlete. I use it as motivation to 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. When I'm on the rivet trying to keep up with faster riders, I want a bike that won't hold me back while I work on figuring the rest out. 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.
