Originally Posted by
caloso
After rubiksoval's comment I went back and looked some training peaks data on some group rides. On a 50 mile group ride, between 45-55% of the time is in Z1. That's a lot of coasting and soft pedaling.
Wow! It really depends on the group. Not what I'm used to. On our last 40 mile local ride with the group this summer, I was:
Anaerobic 5%
Threshold 35%
Tempo 33%
Moderate 22%
Z1 4%
Course profile, normal for our rides:
That's how one gets/stays strong. Those are HR zones, not power, but I don't drift much this late in summer. This was a very hard ride even for this group. I was in Z4 for 56 minutes. Usually, it's more like 45 minutes total. Z1 is very normal, not usually over 5 minutes. My average HR was 92% of LTHR, whereas 88% is more usual. I was on the tandem with my wife, who matches me very closely for effort, not so much for watts. It wouldn't have been much different had I been on my single: I just would have been nearer the front. The finish was pretty tandem friendly, the rest not so much. We worked extra hard on the tandem friendly part, making up time. Our ride time was 2:40, 88% pedaling time. Not too bad for a 142 y.o. tandem team.
It's not just me. We've all always done this, ride as hard as we can. You need to find faster friends. We only coast when we've spun out at max effort. We might soft pedal for a minute or 2 to allow someone to catch back on, but that's rare. Usually it's a cruelty to do that and then hurt them again. Sometimes they break. It's like @
Hermes and the moto that you can't catch.