Originally Posted by
burnthesheep
Still not a competitive ride.
A group ride where you have the luxury to get in and out of clipons ain’t that competitive of a ride.
I think you’re confusing weeknight worlds rides with group rides that chase segments and drop and regroup.
Weeknight worlds, it ain’t happening. I think there’s some inflation value to the competitive nature of this ride.
Back when I led the largest recreational fast group in the area, our rides did not match any of those descriptions. That was before Strava even existed. We had a good-sized club for a rider pool, 10,000 members back then, largest club in the country. The racers trained with their teams or their racer buddies. The local crit champ rode with us sometimes but on his fixed bike to make it more even. We rode his legs off in about 30 miles so he'd cut it short. Sometimes he'd complain about the pace being too fast. He was a 2 back then.
The way we did it, we tried to teach riders to ride fast and safely. I'd run the paceline and holler at miscreants. Yes, I yelled at people. We didn't regroup. Off the back was gone, see you in the beerpub, maybe. The front group would gradually get smaller as selections were made here and there. The idea was to keep the pace high and use other riders to help you do so. The after ride joke was how many riders did you come in with? My record was 3. We'd start with maybe 25, DOW.
I always won the finishing sprint until we attracted a younger racer wannabe who became. Then another guy showed up who could beat me on the hill sprints. Eventually i quit the fast group and started riding tandem with my wife in a slower group, aged out of the competition. I don't know how you do it but that's what we did here. There was one other fast group in town and we'd compete for riders by each trying to post a better route. These routes were 40-50 in winter and 60-100 in summer with a 50'/mile standard gain, but sometimes up to 100'.
We had a system for it: We'd post a route with the club and maybe 70 people would show up. We'd lead them up a nearby hill to see who could stay with whom, then divide them into 3 groups, each with their own leader and off we'd go. I started with this ride series in my mid-50s. It was tremendous fun. If we liked a rider, we'd make a personal invitation to come back and put them on the list. We'd post a ride with the club when we thought we needed a new infusion.