One of the good things about Strava is it helps users objectively evaluate their real performance on popular segments vs subjective impressions.

For example, practices vary on A and B group ride speeds. One casual group I participate with once in awhile often splits into A and B groups if they have enough riders. Their B group is around 10-12 mph; the A group is around 15 mph. But this is a fairly social group. Officially it's not no-drop, but in actual practice they prefer to keep everyone together. So they'll adjust the pace to suit the slowest participants. I've been on a few B group rides that pushed 15 mph when all participants were able to keep up.

Another group I've tagged along with only once describes their B group as around 15 mph and A group around 20 mph. I found it easy to keep up with their B group's actual pace of closer to 14 mph, but didn't care for the B group's usual route. Besides being a bit boring and too familiar it includes the least suitable part of the MUP for a group ride -- a narrow, winding part of the path through heavy tree cover with limited visibility. It's really not suited to fast solo rides, let alone a ragged pace line of 20 riders. That path is mostly a 4-foot wide sidewalk shared by nearby residents who are walking or jogging, often with kids and/or dogs.

So I've considered trying the A group route, which is mostly public streets. But I'm checking not only their published routes, but also the actual Strava riding data for participants. I know from Strava the usual ride organizer is pretty fast for a guy in his 50s-60s, with Top 10 speeds on many popular segments. So if he's riding hard and expecting the group to keep up, I'll be dropped. But I need to check the actual speeds for the group rides, checking data for participants, to see what their real pace is. If it's closer to 16 mph average overall, I can hang with them on their usual 20-30 mile weekday rides.

But they claim they average 20 mph on their weekend 50-60 mile rides. I know that's beyond my capability right now.

So there's one tool you can use to help would-be participants decide on an appropriate pace for the group, and whether they're able to keep up. I'd encourage anyone who's considering group rides to use Strava. Even if they don't care to publish their rides they can set everything to private and still use the Strava tools to evaluate themselves against others on popular segments. It's a useful tool for evaluating ourselves without being competitive.