I have a riding buddy that wants me to do a 102 mile group ride with him on Saturday. I’ve never ridden that far, just 85 miles about 3 weeks ago. I rode 63 miles with him last Saturday, at a pace of 18 mph, but I’m afraid the pace on this ride may be a bit faster and out of my league. It starts an hour away and I’m afraid I’ll either get left behind or slow everyone down. I’m training for a century in August, and have been in an extended base phase through the winter and I’m not wanting to wreck my training for the next couple of weeks, unless those of you that know more about training than I do feel that the benefits would outweigh the possible setback in my training. I know that I have a looong time before my event, but I also want to hang with the faster group this summer!
I would think the distance is not the problem, depending on how you got through the 85 miles ride. If that brought you to your knees anywhere within 10 miles of the finish, it might be though.
The pace is probably the real issue here. To that, there are two things relevant: will you be able to benefit from the draft of the group (is it big enough for that?) and would they, or at least a few of them, be willing to stick with you, should you not be able to keep up.
And I’d be weary about being too optimistic the first 50 - 60 miles, being able to keep a higher than normal pace (for you) and having to fold after that. Maybe you can agree on a slightly lower pace, even if only by 2 mph…
It does sound like moving up a division. Your main ride is in August - no reason to rush things now.
Why not do 45 or so out with them and then turn round and come back and do the extra to get to 100 if you are up for it.
It looks like there will be 6-8 or maybe 10 riders in the group tomorrow.
According to the route that my buddy sent me, it will be a total of 104 miles with 3,800 ft of climbing and calm winds. The ride that the 2 of us did last weekend was 63 miles with 2,000 ft of climbing, but the first 35 miles were into a 20-25 mph headwind. After we turned around, the wind calmed down a bit to 10-15 mph. We averaged 17.9 mph. I’m hoping the little bit of additional climbing will be outweighed by the lack of the awful headwind!
Well, the ride went well! There were 6 of us and we had a great time. My buddy and I had to cut our ride a bit short, due to an urgent family thing for him.
The 2 of us ended up doing 85.4 miles at 18.6 mph and 3,700 ft of climbing. I had 15 more in me, but we didn’t have the time.
I was trying not to, but I had several breakthroughs on the section with short(ish), steep, punchy hills. I gained half a star, up to 4 now.
