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A member of the Green Mountain Bicycle
Club emailed a link to an article titled “The Lost Art of the Group
Ride,”
(http://cyclingtips.com.au/2011/09/the-lost-art-of-the-group-ride-2/)
by Peter Wilbourn. I had read this article before, but it struck me
that it was exactly the loss of this art that had subtly driven me
away from organized rides this year. These words are my musings on
why this occurred.
I ride a lot, but this year I found
myself staying away from group rides and choosing to head out myself
or riding privately with my wife on our tandem, instead of making the
extra effort to meet up with one of the many GMBC rides. At first I
didn't realize I was tending to steer clear of group rides, but after
a while it became obvious. I think the primary reason arose from an
incident on an early season group GMBC Saturday ride when, on a
beautiful spring day, a rider who I knew well was bumped just hard
enough by another cyclist to skip over the edge of the pavement,
resulting in his going down hard enough to snap his clavicle. I had
been directly behind him when he crashed and had stopped just short
of his body in the road. As it turned out, I was the person on the
group best suited to retrieve the rider's vehicle, pick him up at the
hospital and take him home, as I had ridden, not driven to the ride
start.
As we were chatting on the long ride to
his home, he mentioned how he had planned to just go out on a nice
ride by himself, but saw the club email and thought it would be fun
to ride with a group again, and how he wished that he had just done
the ride he had initially planned. This really stuck in my mind.
I've been in lots of group rides and have witnessed plenty of
crashes. Some have been downright funny, as when a rider went off
the road on a descent for no apparent reason, rolled in the weeds and
came up unhurt, spitting leaves. Others have just made me feel sick.
Almost all of them could have been easily avoided, but one is not
surprised when crashes occur in cycling. Still, this one stuck in my
mind, and I found myself subconsciously finding reasons to ride by
myself most of the season.
It's not really that I'm afraid of
falling. If I was, I wouldn't commute in the winter. I tend to
think anyone who regularly rides on the road has a healthy sense of
bravery, or is a fool; I'm not sure which applies to me, since there
are few people in Vermont who accumulate more road miles in a year
than I. I do get pretty attached to my bikes though, and the classic
steel bikes I like to ride are special to me and difficult or
impossible to replace. Like the article states, there was a time
when you needed to earn your way into a group ride, and it took a
little bit of time (and the purchase of a set of wool shorts and
jersey) for me to be accepted into the premiere local training ride
in 1972 after purchasing my first real racing bike. A couple of
months later, still a green 16-year old, I hadn't paid close enough
attention to the ride briefing and attempted to continue straight on
the regular route, while the bunch banked right all around me. I was
bumped by a top rider and went down. I was banged up, but otherwise
unhurt, but my beautiful new Schwinn Paramount wore a sickeningly
deep dent in its paper-thin Reynolds 531 top tube. If I were a racer
today, I'd be riding some plastic Giant, Specialized or Cannondale
and I wouldn't care, but I'd really hate to see that happen to one of
my classic, hand-made, steel frames.
Fast forward to the past decade when I
was on a very large charity ride. It's typical in the caterpillar
action of groups of riders of mixed ability and experience to find
yourself a little too close to the wheel of the rider ahead,
especially on the undulating roads of Vermont. (It's amazing to me
how many riders blast along at 24 mph on the flats, yet slow way, way
down on even light to moderate hills.) I was just thinking that I
was getting too close to the guy ahead when he stood out of the
saddle, throwing the bike back far enough that we crossed wheels and,
as almost always happens when wheels touch that way, down I went. I
am blessed with tough bones and I was merely banged up a bit, and my
'74 Raleigh Pro was unscathed, but a female rider behind me hadn't
been able to stop and she was a lot less lucky. I still have a sick
feeling when I think about her having to suffer from a broken
shoulder because I didn't read the group properly and give that extra
bit of clearance that can make all the difference.
It's a real joy to ride in a group
where everyone is a smooth, experienced rider. It's as if you are
all connected by an invisible rope, a veritable train, accelerating
and decelerating in unison. Insert even a single newbie and things
usually change dramatically. Mr. Wilborn's article sums up much that
can go wrong, but the effect is that the group not only becomes
obnoxious and dangerous—it's just not fun anymore. You have to
spend too much mental energy trying to smooth out the inchworm effect
when you're anywhere behind the inexperienced riders. The first half
of the ride can wipe you out as the group accelerates every time a
newbie takes a pull, at least until he tires (often dropping off the
back of the pack). Sure, we've all had times when we can't or don't
want to hang onto a fast pace, and there is a real fitness benefit to
riding with those faster than you, but it's a lot easier to stay with
a fast group for a longer period of time when they are all riding as
a peleton should. Group riding, especially in general club rides, is
supposed to help you conserve energy so you can all go faster, not
blow half the pack away.
I'm not going to imply that I'm some
kind of fantastic rider who is a full wineglass on wheels, but I have
been building my group riding skills for well over 40 years, and I
think I've gotten pretty good at it. I feel a slight sense of
personal failure when I have to use the brakes while the pack should
be cruising along at a steady pace, but this can become unavoidable
when shenanigans are going on in the front. I find myself trying to
accelerate just a bit more slowly when a gap telegraphs back through
the bunch, trying to read the terrain ahead so that I can close the
break with a minimal change in speed, in order to buffer the
disruption and protect the group behind as much as I can. When a
small climb approaches, I hang back a little, to provide some slack
to move into as the riders ahead slow, while providing a little extra
room, should someone throw his bike back, suddenly. Even when I'm
riding solo, I find myself trying to be especially smooth when
getting out of the saddle, so that the speed of my bike remains
constant through the action. I get a bit weary, though, of being the
only one who seems to be trying to smooth out dysfunctional group
dynamics.
It's so rare these days that one finds
themselves in a smooth group when joining a random, open invitation
ride. While it's a great opportunity for new riders to learn the
mechanics and etiquette of pack riding, and a fantastic way to
increase your own condition and skill, it can seem like too much
effort and too much risk when you just want to go out for a nice
ride. The problem is, people are not going to gain skill without
good examples and practice, and it doesn't help when experienced
riders are not there to provide guidance. With the majority of new
cyclists showing up for club rides being male, and the inevitable,
egotistic desire to be viewed as an expert after two years of riding
a $7,000 bike, it is the natural desire of these folks to be seen as
the teacher, rather than to seek wisdom. One tires of trying to make
headway against this kind of attitude. I don't know if there's a
true solution to this, but I suspect there are a lot of experienced
riders who pretty much only ride with a select group of friends or by
themselves, and I sure don't blame them.
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