If you've been following any of my previous Motivation Monday posts, you'll know that I had a big date with Monkey Knife Fight 9 earlier this year. Suffice to say, the northeast winter put the damper on most of my training and I ended up bailing out on my first goal of the season after only about 55 of the 72 miles.
That was a bummer. A big bummer. And it kind of tanked my motivation for the next couple months.
However, if you've been looking at my Strava profile recently, you'll have noticed a big bump in the amount of riding I've been doing. That's because I've been through “the reckoning” that most of us have been through in the past. I've suffered at the hands of others. There are times I've looked down at my legs and wondered why.
I've been dropped out of the group.
Click through the jump and let's figure out why getting dropped out of a group is such a motivating experience.
The Magic Of The Group Ride
A group ride is a special kind of experience. It's one of the times when you'll have a friendly wheel to follow. It's a special kind of bonding experience between riders where they all work together for the greater good of the pack. And what's the greater good of the pack? Obviously, it's riding as fast as possible over the length of the particular par cours. By sharing the load of pulling the group along, the members of the pack are able to maintain a significantly higher speed than they would otherwise be able to handle alone.
But there's always a caveat with a group of riders. The group is never of comprised of completely evenly matched fitnesses or abilities. In general, some of the riders will be stronger, some will be more efficient, and some will be a combination of both. That means at some point, the group will begin to shed riders, and thusly, shed horsepower.
The ignominy of the drop
Such was the situation I found myself in several weeks ago. After a couple of weeks of sporadic riding, I thought it would be a stellar idea to show up for the weekly Wednesday night slugfest. The concept behind the Wednesday night slugfest, otherwise known as B3 (Bikes, Beer, Burgers) is simple. We get a bunch of guys together to ride a known route at a brisk pace to get a quick hard workout. Hopefully, we have some fun along the way.
The thing about this ride is that it's a certain variety of a “drop ride.” There are always multiple groups on the road, including A+, A, B and C level groups. So the theory here is if you get popped out of the front group(s) you can always grab onto the next group that flies by and have some company through the rest of the ride.
That doesn't help your ego when you get popped though.
When you realize that you're starting to fight with the bike and you try to push your legs to do things they can't do, you start to panic. You don't make good decisions on when to pull and when to sit in. There's also the oxygen debt that sets in, making it hard to focus on where the draft is and leaving you praying for a lull in the pace. Finally, there comes a point when the road tilts up, you stand up to accelerate and your legs just don't work anymore.
You're dropped. Or, more precisely, I was dropped.
Solo Motivation
So once I was dropped, I slowly pedaled back to the parking lot and jumped in my car to change. After a beer and a burger (after all, I did the first “B” so I'm entitled to the others) the sting of getting shelled softened. Nobody ever mentioned it, save for the occasional comment of “that was surgey” or “we were moving today, huh?” There was no
That doesn't mean I wasn't thinking “damn, I used to be able to hang with those guys.”
So what's the cause of being dropped? Was I tired from work? Not feeling well? The weather was too hot, that had to be it! Nope, it was plain and simply a case of not getting my ass on the saddle enough and riding enough. Sure, I spent a bunch of time training all sorts of intervals on Zwift. But Zwift just doesn't replicate the real world, not by a long shot. The differences in terrain, wind, road surface and the organic nature of riding with people you can actually look at and figure out how they're feeling just can't be accounted for on a computer. But all those things are an awesome motivator to get your ass out the door, I'll tell you that.
It's easy to build fitness outside, too. You just have to pick a route and ride it. There are literally countless varieties of workouts you can build into pretty much every ride you do. From sprinting town line signs to rolling your climbs, each mile of road is an opportunity to build strength, build endurance and spending time getting acquainted with how your bike and body work together.
The Monday Motivation
Obviously, many of you will be going on these group rides on the weekend. Monday Motivation is aptly named, because that's the day we look back and say “man, I used to hang with those guys.”
So if you're struggling to find the motivation to get out and ride, there's one quick way to make it happen. Join a group ride that's just a little faster than you think you are. Getting dropped will certainly make you sit up and take notice of what more riding might do for you.
