The Value Of Group Rides: Aug/Sept ‘24
Hey, this is Tom and Emma from High North Performance with the August/September edition of our In-Form Newsletter!
In this month’s email, we thought we’d discuss the value of group rides, since we get frequent questions from athletes around whether club runs and social spins are beneficial or detrimental to cyclists who have specific fitness and/or performance goals associated with their training.
In our experience, group rides are quite often looked upon as antithetical to structured workouts that are carefully built with a specific outcome in mind, as a training file from a group ride is typically much more “stochastic” or variable. This can lead some athletes and coaches to be fearful of group rides detracting from the focus of a training plan, not being purposeful enough, and interfering with a careful balance of stress and recovery a coach or self-coached athlete is trying to strike in a given training period (e.g. a week).
We think that whilst there’s merit and good intentions behind the skepticism of group rides by this cohort, we believe it’s also important to recognise the value that social rides do provide and why they can (and perhaps should) be a part of any cyclist’s program, if group riding is in any way desired by the athlete.
So, here are the main benefits we think group rides provide:
Social interaction: Riding with others is fun, and cyclists who enjoy the time on their bikes are liable to do it more! All things being equal, more time on the bike usually leads to higher levels of fitness being achieved, so the fact that group riding can significantly increase the level of fun and enjoyment is a massive plus. What’s more, if cycling can add to the level at which we interact with others (something that WFH and other societal changes are making more difficult generally), then the mere fact that our mood, mental health etc can be improved through group riding is going to have a positive impact on training too!
Accountability: Group rides can be amazingly helpful for ensuring you get in the riding time you want to do! Having a time in the week where you know you’ll be riding and a bunch of people you don’t want to let down is a powerful motivator, and acts as a buffer against other days in the week where you might have to forgo the training you planned to do because of schedule changes and time availability issues.
Specificity: Training that is overly structured has a danger of not truly preparing you for the demands of racing and event participation, where efforts are far more variable and unpredictable. A final piece of the puzzle in terms of shaping your high level of fitness into that which is tailored for the demands of competition is first-hand exposure to this unpredictability and being pushed by others. Group rides can provide this racing-like experience at opportune times close to your events, without the need to formally compete. They can act as effective high intensity sessions, even if the specific intensities and times spent at them are somewhat of an unknown quantity.
Skills development: Riding at pace in close proximity to others is again another important specificity benefit of group rides. On top of that, there are likely to be higher ability riders to learn from too. Observing them and how they control their efforts, take lines through corners etc can prove very useful to take into races and other events, and could well be something you’d miss out on if all of your preparation was solo.
It seems clear that when used in the right frequency and at the opportune times in the training calendar, group rides offer big benefits, some of which can’t easily be derived from other sources.
Of course, trepidation towards the use of group rides in a training program is somewhat warranted and we’d say these are the main issues to watch out for:
Variety of abilities: Not all clubs and organised rides will be homogenous in terms of ability, and so it may be that you don’t get enough of a stimulus from a group ride itself to stimulate the desired adaptations in some cases. If this happens, tacking on some of your own riding either before or following a group ride can add to the overall load and give you the best of both worlds in terms of the social benefit but also a more controlled session that works on what you need to improve. Likewise, it might be that the group is currently too fast for you and thus you end up working harder than you should do and/or get dropped early. Again, a similar approach of combining this with riding alone/in a smaller group would be a good solution or choosing a different group to ride with.
Unpredictable: Depending on the time of the season, the randomness of the efforts and the lack of focus on specific abilities might not be the right training for you, especially if you are group riding multiple times per week. In this case, maybe riding with a group every other week could be better, just to tip the balance of your training towards being more structured than unstructured until a time in the training cycle where the need for more stochastic rides increases in importance.
In any case, hopefully the above points give you a few guidelines to work within when it comes to incorporating group rides into your training and gives you a balanced perspective on whether they might be helpful or a hindrance to you and your individual situation
News:
We have new “mountain” hill climb plans specifically for longer climbs of 20-40 minutes, distinct from our existing hill climb programs which are geared more to shorter hill climb TTs! The new plans should be great for those preparing for alpine training camps/holidays or longer hill climb efforts/events against the clock.
You can find out more and pick up a plan here: https://www.trainingpeaks.com/my-training-plans/HNP-specific-HC
Thanks as always for your time reading our material and please let us know what you think about the points raised and also what might be useful for us to write about in future newsletters.
For reference, you can read all our previous newsletters on the website here: https://www.highnorth.co.uk/cycling-newsletter
Until next time, enjoy your riding and we’ll speak to you again soon!
Tom and Emma
High North Performance
