Two of your garmin links are the same.
Anyway, the 2 unique rides you've posted both look perfectly reasonable to me. I can't see how they'd hurt progress.
Crap, thanks. I updated the solo ride link.
I just want to make sure that it's not a waste of my time trying to hang on, blowing up, and then riding in my normal zone for the remainder of the ride. My honest goal is to get faster, and sometimes mentally it sucks not being able to keep up. I'm cool to HTFU if it means I'll get faster, but if I could be spending the workout time more wisely, that would obviously be smarter. I hope that makes sense.