Originally Posted by Carbonfiberboy

My HR will be consistently 10 beats higher on the front than being 3rd wheel, in fact that's how I used to set my pace, speed not always being the best metric there. That's pretty noticeable. My group could always do 3' or so, but then we rode a lot of long distance. If a prize fighter can do it, why not us? The idea of pulling is that the riders in the line will be going as fast as they can go and still do the distance. Thus the rider on the front shouldn't experience more than ~3' of high effort on a century or longer ride. I don't know about anybody else, but I've done a lot of 2'-5' intervals in training. That's all it is, and not even a hard effort, just tempo. I don't see what people are complaining about. 1' of tempo is nada. 15' of unnecessary tempo on a long ride is not smart.

Of course if it's just a short ride, 25-30 miles, do whatever. I don't have much experience with short group rides. In fact, I can't remember ever doing one.