I got asked a question by a friend recently and it was a bit of a surprise because I can’t recall if anyone has ever asked me this question before. The question was: Why would I ever want to do a group ride in a peloton? We’re not talking about whether or not someone might want to do an organized century or charity ride. This is about riding in a peloton. The person who asked me saw little more than an opportunity to crash and to be forced to go far harder than they wanted, or to face the prospect of riding alone, and they don’t need to be dropped by a group to ride alone.
Initially, I was kinda flummoxed, because I see the appeal of doing a group ride as being prima facie, that is, the fun it represents is obvious, at least, to me. But that’s not the case for everyone, I accept, but I’ve never considered trying to sell someone on it if they weren’t interested, so I never really considered why.
But why it is. And honestly, the question has several answers, though one of them trumps the rest. Okay, so, first, if being competitive is of any interest, learning how to ride in a group is necessary, unless the whole of your interest is time trialing. It’s a necessary condition. My second reason—and this is a better reason—is that if you want to become fit, doing group rides will make you very fit, more fit than you will easily achieve on your own. The hardest I’ve ever worked has been when I needed to stay on the wheel of someone stronger than me. I’ve turned myself inside out in those efforts. You will likely also ride more miles in a week, in part by going on rides longer than you might have done on your own.
A still better reason is that it is social. There aren’t a lot of ways to exercise and be social at the same time. I’ve had long conversations while on group rides. And there’s something about group rides that will definitely promote more open conversation.
The best argument for group rides that I have is flow. If you want to find flow, the unpredictability of a group ride will keep you in the moment and the combination of watching people moving in your peripheral vision, the speed and your effort will combine to produce optimal conditions for flow. And it even gets better than that. Group flow is very hard to achieve; it requires people being of a similar level of ability and to be really tuned in to each other. Guess what? Group rides serve as an ideal crucible for group flow. The fact that most group rides don’t suffer crashes every single ride speaks to just how prevalent group flow is within them. Without group flow, crashes would be routine, if not a given. And some of the circumstances I’ve found myself in that didn’t result in a crash can only be explained, to me, by group flow.
I also have some backup for this. Some years back when I was working on a feature about flow for Bicycling Magazine, I got to have a long conversation with neuroscientist Leslie Sherlin and one of the points we discussed regarding flow was how research had recently been published that showed athletes are most likely to enter flow at around 80% of max heart rate. This fits with the skills/challenge matrix for flow. Because flow is a balance of skills vs. challenge, an 80 percent effort, also called “tempo,” is hard, but you’re not dying; you’re not wondering how much longer you can hold on.
Cycling coaches talk about the problem of the tempo group ride. It’s hard enough to feel like training without actually being hard enough to make a fit rider stronger. To me, the answer is obvious: riders default to this because flow is more important than actual fitness. To me, the proof is in the repeated behavior, that group rides all the world go pretty hard, but not leg-breaking hard. Even without having a word for what they seek, cyclists taking part in group rides have found a reliable hack, not just for flow, but for group flow.