I headed out for a group ride this morning. This particular group is one that I hadn't ridden with before but they were all men about my age. I vaguely knew a few of them. At the start I posed the "speed" question with several riders, but nobody would give me a straight answer. As soon as we left the lot I fell off the back. By the 3 mile mark, the rest of the riders were out of sight. This ride was advertised as "self-supporting riders only" so I'm not complaining about being dropped other than being disappointed with myself. I've essentially taken a full year off the bike, however, so I'm not even going to beat myself up over that. So what would you have done?

1. I had a cue sheet so I could have ridden the route by myself. I'm not confident enough on the recumbent to read the cue sheet while I'm riding so I would have had to make a lot of stops and I didn't want to do that.

2. There is a chance the group would have designated a "baby sitter" to ride with me. That doesn't appeal to me at all.

3. Go home and do a solo ride later in the day.