Originally Posted by
RMoudatir
I just realized that the group ride I went to was the advanced group ride though they seemed very forgiving I would expect an advanced group ride to ride at 23 mph+. I found that there is also an Intermediate group.
The odd thing is how am I supposed to bonk within 20 miles of hard riding? I did a 5 mile ride to the train station early in the morning then took the train to the closest point from the meet up point and I realized I had just 50 minutes to ride 13/14 miles to the meetup before the 8 am deadline. I did like a 13.5 mile time trial and ended up with barely 5 minutes to spare. So that should have been a decent warm up before the group ride I assume. The group ride starts and in the first mile I feel strong and think I can handle this but by mile 3-4 I start feeling hopeless knowing I cannot sustain that pace for another 45-50 miles it soon started to feel like sprinting giving it my all by mile 5 and the harder I went the bigger the gap became. I was cooked by then, I felt like this was one of the biggest failures in cycling I had I even felt a bit ashamed to come back again to the same group ride. The weird thing is that I had been able to keep a 20 mph solo pace for 7 miles on some rides and this group ride was slower with me at the back of the pack and I still failed pretty bad, I would have expected at least 15 miles before I get dropped but 5 miles?
Several things at work here. You already did a longer, sustained effort where you were "burning matches" in your attempt to make it there on-time, and then only had a very short window to rest and recover. You used up muscle energy, and you burned some nervous energy as well. Your body was already in an muscle glycogen burning phase, so right from the group ride start you were digging into reserves. The next thing to consider is that in a fast group ride - you are going at the pace of the pack, which may not be in your comfort zone and also does not allow any real time to rest. Even in your TT effort to get to the starting point you were pushing the pace, but riding to your own rhythms, maybe easing up after a short rise, or punching it in certain sections and relaxing on a flat. One in a group, there will always be a couple riders rotating through and keeping the pace constantly high, or one really strong rider dictating the pace. It puts you off your pace and out of your comfort zone, especially if you have not built up a similar fitness base as the riders in the A Group. The body is also a funny thing. Possible you could be feeling the effects of fighting off a cold or any number of other things. Sometimes you will just never figure it out. I've been on a Tuesday ride, felt great and just blitzed the front of the pack, then come back out on Thursday raring to go and got grunted off the back of the group on the first tough hill - wondering what the h*ll was going on, and then won two Masters races in a row a few days later.
Failure is mostly achieved by giving up and not being willing to try again.