Our friend normally keeps up just fine. It's just that he's been a little out of shape recently bike-wise. He told us at the start of the ride that he had been lifting a hell of a lot of weights / doing a lot of squats and strength workouts the day before and that he was sore all over. So we felt bad, but didn't have much of a choice. He'll hopefully keep up next time, though.

We scheduled a ride like this because we're trying to fit as many training rides in as possible. All other days this weekend conflicted with something else, so this little time slot was all we had.