The past weekend I was invited to ride with someone I work with. He claimed to be an avid cyclists and owns 5 or 6 bikes. We picked up another rider who was solo and embarked on a 30 mile route. Ten minutes into the ride I discovered that my pace wanted to be faster than my partner and had to continually slow for him to catch up. On the way back the other rider decided to join a group that passed us while I held back not wanting to abandon my fellow worker. He claimed to be out of shape but I have to find a nice way to avoid riding with him in the future. The ironic part is that I'm new to the sport and asked that they take it easy on me. I don't want to hurt his feelings but that may be unavoidable. How does one do that?