It's something that comes with practice. You learn to read the ride, and be able to predict accelerations, or at least react to them quicker.

Keep your head up; don't fixate on the wheel in front of you. You need to keep the wheelin your peripheral vision, so you don't overlap, but your focus should be up the road, looking past the rider in front of you. That will make you smoother in the paceline, as well as safer in that you can see problems developing sooner.

Use your ears too. You can hear sounds such as free hubs clicking( or stopping clicking), people shifting, etc., that also help you anticipate surges and lulls.

Watch who's pulling, and when the lead at the front changes. You'll be able to learn what happens to the pace of the group as those changes happen.

Mostly, its just repetition, and trying be really situationally aware.

Sounds like a good workout. The surges are what I was talking about. A group that goes a steady 23mph can be easier to hang with than a group that averages 18, but constantly surges, sprints and attacks. The latter will probably make you faster.

As long as this group doesn't mind that you keep coming back, you should jump at the opportunity, since it will make you a better and stronger rider. Experience only comes with miles and time in the saddle, so do different rides, but keep challenging yourself. If you feel like you're struggling to hang on with a group and are doing full rotations, don't spend much time at all on the front and save enough to get back on, otherwise you'll be cooked and quickly drop off the back. Most groups don't mind if you do short pulls, but they do mind if you slow down their pace.

First of all: Great job!

Seconding all of what Merlin said. On the bolded part: when I first started going on group rides, a friend of mine who was an experienced racer advised me to keep my eyes on the jersey pockets of the rider in front of me. You will see any changes of pace or direction immediately and more importantly it's easy to look from there past the rider and up the road.

Group rides are high stakes games. A few milliseconds of inattention can take you or someone else down. You shouldn't be allowing more than a wheel width gap to open. If you're having bike lengths open, you aren't paying anything like enough attention. You can't do that. If you were in the middle of the line, you'd be splitting the group. Keep your cadence up so you can respond, and watch what's happening.

sounds like a good learning experience
it's been mentioned to monitor riders in front of you, but I like to place myself where I can 'see' 3-4 ahead, at least. 'Learning' the gap distance between riders is important. Experience lets you develop an understanding of the visual distance between you and other riders - I like to use the head and shoulders. That allows you to 'see' ahead quite a bit and anticipate much better.
You can 'practice' this observational skill during slower warmup times, when riding is steady. Place your wheel the distance you wish from the rider in front, then look up to observe the distance - try to hold that distance. AT first it will take some concentration, but surprisingly quickly it'll become second nature, as does constant scanning of the surroundings. Soon you won;t even notice you;re making adjustments to your position based on this observing.
Additionally, unless there is a single paceline under high duress, I never ride directly behind the rider in front. I offset a few inches to one side. It allows for some natural accordianing of the group without causing disasters. Additionally, you'll easily be able to 'see' 3,4 or 5 layers ahead to anticipate much better, and you have the ability to see some road hazards. When you see a road hazard hand signal, that's the time fall in line with the wheel in front (hoping the rider in front is picking a good line...)
I try not to offset to the 'outside' of a rider unless I plan on advancing my position. If riders in front are 2 or more abreast, natural quick movements go to the outside. It almost never happens that riders abreast go towards each other (except in a crazy sprint...); so the safe place to be is between 'pairs'/3/4 upfront when in a large group - you have a guaranteed 3 ft of space between them that will keep your wheel clear.
As in here:

each following rider is offset from the pair infront...
However, when the group is riding 2up in steady tempo, it's expected that you'll also follow suit and ride behind the wheel in front, and not hog the middle...
...lot to learn, but riding in a fast group is huge fun!

True. And OP...you could also do a trial run. You don't have to just dive into the deep end.
Rent an electric moped and pace the group you intend to ride with. If possible track speed with a Garmin and download it and then study the speed signature and elevation changes. Then compare that to your power production adjusting for the aero benefit of pacelining.
This will give you a better sense.

Perhaps some clubs have this, but this scenario's a race more than a ride. I personally wouldn't think of this as a very enjoyable event; if I want this kind of thing, I'll do a Fondo, but to each his/her own.

I've never thought of them as such, really. If you're part of a racing club and going on a training ride, then sure. But to many people, there's nothing enjoyable about a normal recreational club ride that has a "high stakes game." Heck, we don't even have that much in the NYC area unless you want to do the all out races at Floyd Bennett Field or something similar.

Here, we call that Tuesday night.

I think the high stakes Carbon fiber boy is thinking of are not "winning the ride"

Rather it's the risk of serious injury or death that is on the line anytime you ride in a group. Obviously it's fairly rare for people to suffer severe injuries on group rides, and fourtunately exceedingly rare for people to die, but both happen.

The point being that bad stuff can happen if you mess up, even on a moderately paced, non competitive, ride, and you need to take care in your own riding, and be alert to trouble developing from others

While surging can be an issue, in my experience, very few pacelines average 18mph unless that they are a C group. 23mph average is a fair average in a paceline for a decent cyclist.

Yeah...depends on the ride. OP..keep this in mind. Group ride dynamics are as variable as the day is long. Some eat their young and other rides are like a mild breeze. Pick the type of ride based upon your temperament and skill level and you don't know until you try. Worse case you get dropped and that maybe better afterall if you don't like to suffer.

+1

Coincidentally enough, I was thinking about our local Tuesday night ride.

My wheels are 23mm wide. Are you telling someone who has never done a fast group ride to ride within 7/8" of everyone else?

He's likely talking about the average for the whole ride including stops regroups, warmup, cooldown etc. 23mph avg for a complete ride would be unusual.

Turn the wheel 90 degress and it's 26" wide. But I think you knew that

I guess that gets down to what you mean by "average". I'm talking about the distance traveled divided by the time you were out. Yes, flat cruising without a headwind is often around 23 and up, but there's also points where we wait to regroup and slow spin a bit after a sprint, etc. that bring the total average down.

The ride definitely cruised around 22~24mph on flats. Very windy stretches, slow-down after surges and rolling re-group from time to time and slow stop and move all combined (Plus me having to stop for a minute to tighten my saddle that came lose for some reason), my bike computer averaged the complete ride at 18.3

In the past month, our club has had two riders abandon after going down from wheel touches. Two other riders abandoned after running into curbs. Two other riders went down when their tires were caught in pavement gaps. These were on relatively easy recreational group rides. The curb hits are especially interesting. It's easy to hit stuff that's hidden behind the riders in front of you if you aren't paying very close attention, or to make a small error and drift into a curb. And always cross a pavement cracks at a decent angle, but OTOH don't take someone down if you jerk the bike around. Which means you also need to know where the bikes behind you are.

Yes, the stakes are injuring yourself or others. One go-down can ruin your whole season or someone else's. Those are high stakes to me.

I'm not a good climber since I am a lardass now, but on the flats, I'm always itching to go. Usually I'm the one who attacks at 30 mph. Over in Davis, the only elevation we had is the overpasses, but those are not very steep so it's still very easy to ride wheels and attack at 20+ mph.

I used to ride in the slow ride with my hybrid commuter bike. In the medium to fast ride, I love it when others try to attack. I always am able to latch on. It's more about keeping your senses aware. There's always a slight body movement and a change in sound when the guy goes. Immediately I go out of the saddle.

I used to do heads up sprints with the sprinter on the Davis collegiate team although he'd be on his fixed gear. Always a fun and close match

ok.

an example where average is not a very good metric:




The average for this group ride was 23mph. But the top speed was almost 34 mph, peak 5 minutes almost 29 mph, and peak 30 minutes 26mph.

The warm up and cool down distorts the average.

I've had a really tough time find a group that works for me. I've ridden with one that advertises, "18-20mph," got dropped, caught up because a guy got a flat, then ended up passing some of them on a hill.
Another group said 18-20 and it was unbearably slow. To the point that I told the SAG guy at the back that I'd go off on my own. He tried to talk me into hanging, but I took off. I ended up seeing the group later--after I had ridden a pretty big hill and done an extra 4-5 miles--and was really glad that I split off.

My best, "group rides," have been small rides with friends. Through Strava I've connected with a bunch of locals, and have some triathlete friends. We get together, do a nice ride, all agree on our start time, route, and stops ahead of time. These don't happen as often as I'd like, and I end up riding alone 90% of the time.
Of course when I'm out riding solo I sometimes latch onto other riders or groups. I'll ask if they mind if I join them. We'll usually talk about where we're going, etc. I usually ride in areas that are bicycle-friendly, so it is pretty rare that I'm all alone the whole time for any ride.

For most of my solo rides I hold 18-19mph, but when I do organized tours I'm able to hold 21-22 for 65-70 miles.