Originally Posted by
bbeasley
One more thought about your friends. The good and bad thing about cycling is you get better with time, years, and it's tough chasing the folks that have been doing it for decades. Good news is once you get close, say within 30% of their fitness, you'll be able to draft them and hang on.
On the flats, anyway. Uphill not so much. One thing is that as a new out of shape rider, your performance is going to be improving a lot faster than theirs, as people who have been doing it for decades will plateau or be getting faster extremely slowly, or getting slower as father time starts to win. So if you keep at it, you can eventually get close (or maybe even better!), as long as you continually strive to improve. Might take a couple years.