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Old 03-26-22, 12:19 PM
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Bald Paul
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Originally Posted by Bob Ross
fwiw ^^^this is my biggest beef with most Club rides. Posting what the average speed will (or should) be encourages riders to focus on speed...and, worse still, encourages them to focus on what their average speed will be at the end of the ride, rather than how fast/hard they're riding at any given point during the ride.

My cycle club did a long-term experiement where they tried to get riders to focus instead on perceived effort ...and to strive to maintain that same level of perceived effort regardless of whether the road was tilting up or down. So instead of posting that "the average speed will be 20mph" you would post "the perceived effort will be the equivalent of riding at 20mph on flat ground with no wind". When it worked, the results were sublime: You didn't ride off the front or drop the slower climbers when the road tilted up, and you didn't have a bunch of angry clydesdales cursing you while they grabbed a handful of brake during descents, and (astonishingly) the group remained together for the entire ride.

Of course, this approach absolutely requires that everyone in the group agrees to ride that way, and that they have a modicum of sensetivity about their own perceived efforts.

In hindsight I have to admit the experiment mostly failed; cyclists seem to really want to ride as hard as they possibly can when they can (until they can't), and screw all the folks behind them.
I guess we could adopt the Zwift method of ride classification by w/Kg, and say, "this ride will be between X and Y w/Kg". Then everyone has to figure out what their w/Kg numbers are, and must have power meters installed on the bikes. I have to see if there's a calculator screen on my Garmin.
Average Speed means just that - average. Nobody is going to yell at the clydesdales for going too fast while coasting downhill. Believe me, around here there will be an uphill shortly afterwards where the flyweights will catch up (and pass) them. One of my Garmin data screens includes Speed and Average Speed readouts. If we are on the flats and riding above the posted average speed, I'll ask if everyone is comfortable doing so. Usually the answer is yes, because the riding is easy. (If I'm riding above the posted average speed, it must be!) On the other hand, no one says we have to pick up the pace on some long, grinding climb, either. It really isn't that difficult to pre-ride the route at whatever pace / effort you're comfortable with, and then figuring out the average speed and advertise the ride as such.
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