That was a bummer.\u00a0 A big bummer.\u00a0 And it kind of tanked my motivation for the next couple months.<\/p>\n
However, if you've been looking at my Strava profile<\/a> recently, you'll have noticed a big bump in the amount of riding I've been doing.\u00a0 That's because I've been through “the reckoning” that most of us have been through in the past.\u00a0 I've suffered at the hands of others.\u00a0 There are times I've looked down at my legs and wondered why.<\/p>\n I've been dropped out of the group.<\/p>\n Click through the jump and let's figure out why getting dropped out of a group is such a motivating experience.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A group ride<\/a> is a special kind of experience.\u00a0 It's one of the times when you'll have a friendly wheel to follow.\u00a0 It's a special kind of bonding experience between riders where they all work together for the greater good of the pack.\u00a0 And what's the greater good of the pack?\u00a0 Obviously, it's riding as fast as possible over the length of the particular par cours.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n But there's always a caveat with a group of riders.\u00a0 The group is never of comprised of completely evenly matched fitnesses or abilities.\u00a0 In general, some of the riders will be stronger, some will be more efficient<\/a>, and some will be a combination of both.\u00a0 \u00a0 That means at some point, the group will begin to shed riders, and thusly, shed horsepower.<\/p>\n Such was the situation I found myself in several weeks ago.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The concept behind the Wednesday night slugfest, otherwise known as B3 (B<\/strong>ikes, B<\/strong>eer, B<\/strong>urgers) is simple.\u00a0 We get a bunch of guys together to ride a known route at a brisk pace to get a quick hard workout.\u00a0 Hopefully, we have some fun along the way.<\/p>\n The thing about this ride is that it's a certain variety of a “drop ride.”\u00a0 There are always multiple groups on the road, including A+, A, B and C level groups.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n That doesn't help your ego when you get popped though.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 You don't make good decisions on when to pull and when to sit in.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Finally, there comes a point when the road tilts up, you stand up to accelerate and your legs just don't work anymore.<\/p>\n You're dropped<\/a>.\u00a0 Or, more precisely, I was dropped.<\/p>\n So once I was dropped, I slowly pedaled back to the parking lot and jumped in my car to change.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Nobody ever mentioned it, save for the occasional comment of “that was surgey” or “we were\u00a0moving<\/em> today, huh?”\u00a0 There was no<\/p>\n That doesn't mean I wasn't thinking “damn, I used to be able to hang with those guys.”<\/p>\n So what's the cause of being dropped?\u00a0 Was I tired from work?\u00a0 Not feeling well?\u00a0 The weather was too hot, that had to be it!\u00a0 Nope, it was plain and simply a case of not getting my ass on the saddle enough and riding enough.\u00a0 Sure, I spent a bunch of time training all sorts of intervals on Zwift<\/a>.\u00a0 But Zwift just doesn't replicate the real world<\/a>, not by a long shot.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But all those things are an awesome motivator to get your ass out the door, I'll tell you that.<\/p>\n It's easy to build fitness outside<\/a>, too.\u00a0 You just have to pick a route and ride it.\u00a0 There are literally countless varieties of workouts you can build into pretty much every ride you do.\u00a0 From sprinting town line signs to rolling your climbs<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n Obviously, many of you will be going on these group rides on the weekend.\u00a0 Monday Motivation is aptly named, because that's the day we look back and say “man, I used to hang with those guys.”<\/p>\n So if you're struggling to find the motivation to get out and ride, there's one quick way to make it happen.\u00a0 Join a group ride that's just a little faster than you\u00a0think<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>you are.\u00a0 Getting dropped will certainly make you sit up and take notice of what more riding might do for you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On this edition of Motivation Monday, we’re examining what getting dropped by your group ride can do for your psyche. Maybe it’ll amp you up enough to get out there and ride more? It truly worked for me…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,21],"tags":[172,60,5408,187,110],"yst_prominent_words":[4974,5614,1007,5616,5615,5143,407,5637,5636,5635,301,5624,4990,417,222,4969,5625,5623,5019,5634],"wppr_data":{"cwp_meta_box_check":"No"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Getting-Dropped.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13647"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13647"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13675,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13647\/revisions\/13675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13647"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=13647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Magic Of The Group Ride<\/h2>\n
![\"Getting](\"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/gettingdropped-300x176.jpg\")
<\/a>The ignominy of the drop<\/h3>\nSolo Motivation<\/h3>\n
The Monday Motivation<\/h3>\n