Hello
I have a question.
I usually do a group rides with faster and stronger guys than me on mondays.
Is it good or bad for me as training? I see a lot of zone 7 spikes in the 2 hour ride.
Regards Roger R
Depends what you’re training for and how you’re else training.
I can’t see it be a bad thing to ride with faster guys. One thing is fitness another is getting used to go faster and push yourself. That said - if you’re pushing yourself to bonk and be bonked a lot of days after, it might not be the best for your overall training.
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Riding with fast people can be a good source of training stimulus and serve as motivation/positive social engagement, but it lacks the specificity and efficiency of structured training.
Most top-level athletes train alone nowadays because their training is tailored to them. It’s based on their schedule, their fitness, and their needs.
A fast group ride is often dictated by the strongest riders, and the others are left hanging on for dear life. Again, this type of stimulus has its place, but just make sure you’re fitting it into your training routine in an effective way.
If your #1 goal is to get faster, there are more efficient ways to train. If you need a little extra motivation and social time, group rides are great for that. 
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I hardly never bonk these days if I fuel properly.
tis 14 okt. 2025 kl. 15:51 skrev eddie via TrainerRoad Forum <notifications@trainerroad.discoursemail.com>:
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i bet you see a lot of coasting/Z1 too. Like @eddie said, there are more efficient ways to train.
I can relate to your question and think there is a benefit to incorporating a ride like this into your plan. I have been on TR for several years and have definitely gotten stronger through structured training on the trainer through the winter months. This summer I decided to put some (mountain and gravel bike) group rides with friends stronger than me on my calendar and let it get incorporated into my training plan. For the first few rides I was surprised at how slow I was compared to my friends. I could hang on the smooth sections but getting dropped on climbs and technical terrain. I wasn’t slow due to power but it was bike handling skills holding me back. As I started to ride their pace it forced me to corner smoother and hold momentum in undulating terrain which helped me save a ton of energy and get a lot faster. I guess there is something to be said for practicing at faster speeds which is tough to do by yourself but a ton of fun with friends.
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Yes but I have had some problems with my trainer and prefer being outside if I can 
. I know bad weather is coming soon than time for the trainer.
tis 14 okt. 2025 kl. 17:12 skrev vbx2010 via TrainerRoad Forum <notifications@trainerroad.discoursemail.com>:
I never got so fast and strong as I did when I regularly did fast group rides. I was doing 3/wk totaling 100+ miles. I was doing three different ones and also rode to/from the start of those. Two started ~12 miles away and one started 8 miles away from my home. Add that (~65 miles) to the group ride miles. Competitive group rides were the only time I could max out my HR.
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It’s my experience that fast group rides are like racing. They will make you faster. You will push harder than you were expecting. The other side is that too much will wear you down. Like with everything ( moderation ) is a good thing.
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I totally agree. You can’t do it too often though I like it.
tis 14 okt. 2025 kl. 18:43 skrev TrekCentury via TrainerRoad Forum <notifications@trainerroad.discoursemail.com>:
I love fast group rides. They can be great training (though rarely ever with as much quality, sustained time in zone as a good structured workout) but in my experience, the key to getting productive training from a very fast group ride is to do as much work as you can, while also making sure not to get dropped—even if that means sitting in for a bit longer than you’d like.
This is because it’s not very productive to go to a group ride with faster riders than you, hang on just a little while before blowing up, and then ride home. This feels like great training in the moment, but usually just ends up being one or two short all-out efforts.
I get the most out of fast group rides when I push myself to my limit as near to the front as I can reasonably sustain, then sit in long enough to just barely recover (at a higher-than-comfortable intensity) before moving back near the front to do it again. In some groups, this means I’m pulling and chasing lots of attacks; in others where I’m a weak link it means I literally never take a pull. In effect, it makes the ride a lot like an over-under workout; the longer you can last, the better the workout. This kind of strategic pacing also helps teach you valuable pack riding and sheltering skills that really benefit you in a race.
The thing to keep in mind about these rides is they often burden you with a ton of fatigue that could negative impact your upcoming structured workouts. Minute-for-minute, these are going to be more productive than your group rides, so I like to arrange my calendar to make sure the group rides don’t impact the quality of the rest of my training. Watch those red and yellow days, and have fun!
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Interesting that this is the case for cycling. In running, training partners/teams/groups are probably the biggest (legal) advantage outside of genetics. While it does push you beyond what might do on your own it often pushes you through barriers you couldn’t do on your own.
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For top-level athletes? I would have bet that they train even more alone than cyclist.
I think group rides are good but it also depends on what your goals are. Everything in moderation as it can be a “race” effort for some in that they need to prep/recover and it interferes with the training. For me I do the training and sprinkle in the group rides as a filler for miles but the training comes first. If the ride gives me a yellow or red day and bucks my next workout, it is too much. I have the group ride set up the day after my hard intervals day so often time I cannot physically keep up. The next day is then a rest day. If it’s a taper week I ride low and slow on the group ride. After my A race this fall I finished a training plan and hadn’t yet started another and decided to race the group ride and OMG I was flying 2+ mph faster which was something I hadn’t been able to do all season so I feel the training has been working! I did that for about two weeks and now am back on a training plan so back to behaving!
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If it is one of two hard days a week then all good. It needs to be balanced with easy if you are to get faster than the faster guys in the group.
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Do them, getting faster on a bike is more than just watts. Even better if you can ride with some guys that have raced in Europe, they see and approach things completely differently. The awareness of wind direction, how to roll through the group smoothly etc is incredible and helped me get faster both in power and seeing/understanding what is going on outside of pedaling.
I would rather be on the rivet with much stronger riders than being the hammer in a group of fairly strong but dodgy riders.
The fast group ride doesn’t supplant the foundations of good training, but is massively beneficial. Getting dropped off on the front of a group when you are already at threshold is painful, but fun, and in a year, you are rolling turns with them like it is easy.
The same goes for slower easy rides, a bunch of my Z2 work this summer was done with my wife, eventually I would have to ease off and ride on the low side or below Z2, but I still got fitter and had fun riding with my wife.
Am I getting every last bit of training benefit? No, but we are playing on the margins with 1 not quite perfect workout a week.
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Yup. Running 100 mile weeks solo is miserable. 
Now I’ve never been a runner but dropped into a couple XC practices in high school so correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d imagine these top level running groups are much much different than the typical amateur group ride. Running is inherently much more steady state than cycling and because there’s no drafting you can reasonably have a big group all do the same workout at the same time. So if that group helps you push out another couple minutes or go just a little faster then it would probably help.
But most people’s idea of a cycling group ride isn’t some steady affair with 15minutes SS repeats. It’s basically an anaerobic hammer fest that is equally not hard enough to elicit great anaerobic adaptations but also not steady enough to elicit great aerobic adaptations. Now you’ll get a bit of both but usually not as much as if you did dedicated workouts for each. They still have their place though for social, skills practice, etc.
But I think pros are also riding so so much that they do a fair bit of their intervals and such alone or in pairs but will get together with a handful of other pros to do their more chill endurance riding.
Agreed. I think there is a big distinction between a group ride and training partners/group/team. A small group of riders that push each other similar to your HS cross country example would be a benefit in cycling as well wouldn’t it?
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Yeah definitely. It’s just hard with the effect of drafting to do longer sustained intervals (unless you’ve got a long climb or something). But there’s probably also a benefit to doing a small rotating paceline TTT ride as well. Like a natural over-under.
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