I Get Dropped on My Local Group Ride and I’m OK With It

My quadriceps burn like they’ve been dipped in chloric acid and sweat gushes down my nose and splashes onto my bicycle. I huff and puff and grit my teeth.

The pavement kicks upward and I feel the bite of the climb. I stare at the spinning rear cassette of the bicycle in front of me and try my hardest to ignore the riders on my left and right. My mind begins the agonizing countdown that every cyclist has, at some point, performed: If I continue at this pace, my entire body will explode in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, fiiiiive…

FOUR-THREE-TWO-ONE!

And then? Kaboom. My head slumps, my back arches, my pedal stroke becomes an uncoordinated bounce. The other cyclists surge past me as I slide backwards through the group. After a handful of seconds, I’m by myself, still pedaling my bicycle as hard as I can up this steep and awful road somewhere outside of Boulder, Colorado.

Another thought pops into my head: I woke up at the crack of dawn for this. And then another: This is supposed to be fun. I look up the road. The group chugs higher up the hillside. I’m getting no closer to it, but no farther away. My place in the peloton is back here in no-man’s land.

One final piece of psychological torture enters my mind: Man, it didn’t used to be this way. 

The Group Ride Junkie

This past May, I returned to the Wednesday Morning Velo group ride here in Boulder after a three-year hiatus. My leave of absence was due to the usual scheduling conflicts that arise in middle age: parenting, work, attempting to be a somewhat decent spouse, and sleep.

For those unfamiliar with group rides, a simple primer: Dozens, no hundreds, of loosely-organized bicycle rides similar to Wednesday Morning Velo dot the country. Cyclists meet at the same place at the same time on the same day of the week. Everyone knows the route. People go hard and push the pace and try to beat each other to an agreed-upon stopping point. It’s like Fight Club, only with way more Lycra.

Is it a race? Well, no—but kinda sorta yeah? There’s no official finish line or podium or medals. Nothing more than bragging rights and personal satisfaction are at stake. Most of these rides end with a celebratory beer, a coffee, or maybe just a fist bump and a “see you next week.”

I love these rides, and I became a junkie for them decades ago. As a college kid at UC Santa Cruz, I avoided Friday night parties so that I’d be ready for the Harbor Ride on Saturday morning. In my mid-twenties, I’d skip out of work early to make the nightly Bus Stop Ride here in Boulder. I learned about the backroads of San Diego County from the Swamis Ride. And some of my fondest memories of living in New York City in my early thirties involve painful mornings on the Gimbels Ride in Westchester County.

But my love of these rides is also tied to an obvious trend—I was usually one of the strongest riders in the group way back then.

Alas, that’s not the case anymore. A lot changed during my recent break. Well, nothing changed with group rides, but a lot changed with me. I have entered my mid-forties, added a few pounds, and lost a few points from my VO2 max (the rate at which my body consumes oxygen when exercising). In total, I have gotten slower.

I learned this fact in humiliating fashion throughout the summer on Wednesday Morning Velo. My perception of myself had not caught up with reality. I got dropped again and again, and spent most Wednesdays fighting to hold on to the group. More often than not, I was the lone weirdo dangling off the back of the group. Not strong enough to stay in the bunch, and too dumb to pack it up and go home.

There’s a longstanding proverb in amateur bike racing: results on the group ride don’t count. That may be true. But every competitive cyclist I know has basked in the personal glory that comes with winning the group ride. It’s a fleeting feeling, but one that is very real.

From Junkie to Weirdo

I know what you’re thinking: who cares about your results on the group ride? It’s a fair question, and of course, I have an answer. I care! Deeply! Blame it on vanity or my own insecurities—getting dropped sucks. It’s confirmation that my days of glory are over. My place in the pecking order has forever changed.

Reckoning with one’s athletic mortality, of course, is something that every weekend warrior and elite endurance athlete must, at some point, do. For me, it forced me to reexamine my lifelong affection for group rides, and I spent ample time this summer reflecting on this, usually after getting dropped.

I’d ask myself: Why the hell do I still do these darned rides? 

My answer? My affection for group rides isn’t just about being the strongest. It it about the adventure of racing over familiar and unfamiliar roads, of learning the geography of an area by riding across the landscape at top speed. I also love the camaraderie of meeting other cyclists on the ride.

Throughout my time in group rides, I got to know the people who made up the social fabric of the local cycling scene. Sure, when the pace got really fast, many of these people faded into the background and became the ride’s early flotsam and jetsam. But they were always there, week in, week out.  And many of them had been stalwarts on the local ride for decades.

Some of these characters were especially eccentric, and everyone on the ride knew them by nicknames: Big Ring Bob, Puya, Montgomery, Randy, MoneyGram. They told dirty jokes, belted out songs, and sparked up conversation with everyone. They were the reason people kept showing up.

No, they weren’t the fastest, but they were the most memorable. I can close my eyes and still picture the 50-year-old weirdos I rode alongside in Santa Cruz 25 years ago. They had a huge impact of my love of cycling, even if I spent most of my efforts trying to drop them.

After detonating one too many times this summer on the Wednesday Morning Velo ride, it finally dawned on me. I have graduated from the ranks of group ride junkie, to group ride winner, to group ride weirdo. My quirk? Going too hard and getting dropped and then riding just off the back all the way to the top of the hill. It’s the natural progression that we cyclists must take in life.

And thus, I’m already preparing for the group rides in 2026 and beyond. It’s going to get weird.

Fred Dreier used to be fast but now he’s slow. He’s still processing it.