CyclingClub.cc · Resources · The playbook, in 3D
Run Your First Club Group Ride
What actually keeps a first ride together: a leadable group, honest pace bands, the surge that shells the back, and the numbers worth designing around. Scroll to ride it.
Start with the right group size
Small enough to lead
More riders isn’t more success. Ride hard, and often, across a field of unequal legs and the bunch shatters: each surge burns the weaker riders’ matches until they crack, slip the wheel, and the field strings into groups. An even field at a steady tempo stays one block. Eight to twelve is the first-ride sweet spot — a group one leader can hold on a single paceline.
One bunch — the field holds together
8–12 riders. Past ~15, split it — each group its own leader and sweep
Start with the right group size
Steady pace, one block
A nudge at the front reaches each rider a beat late, so the gap it opens grows all the way down the line — the concertina. Hold a steady pace and the bunch stays one tight block. Surge and the back yo-yos, then fractures. The sweep rides last so nobody slides off unseen.
Set honest pace bands
No-drop is a promise about the front
“Social pace” means nothing — one rider’s social is another’s threshold. Publish real speed bands and run C-pace, no-drop: the widest funnel you’ve got. In the draft a rider spends 25–30% less than on the front, so no-drop is really a promise about the front — the leader holds the pace so the group stays a group.
−25–30% energy in the draft vs. on the front
Set honest pace bands
Everyone takes a turn
A working paceline is a conveyor belt. You advance up the sheltered side, take a short honest pull in the wind, then drift back down the windward side to recover. A sliver of the lap on the front; nearly all of it sheltered.
Set honest pace bands
The wind from the side
In a hard crosswind, shelter stops being straight behind a wheel — it sits diagonally downwind, and the bunch fans into an echelon. There’s only so much road. Whoever doesn’t fit gets strung into the gutter: single file along the edge, full wind each, sliding off the back. See it coming and move up early.
Roll out of the corners
The surge shells the back
Bunches rarely break on the open road. They break at the roundabouts. Stamp out of a corner and each rider gets that jump plus a half-metre of their own to close, so by the last wheel the gap has multiplied — the front lifts smoothly while the back does a standing sprint. And a sprint costs far more than it looks: effort climbs with about the fourth power of the watts. The fix lives entirely on the front — wind the pace up, don’t stamp on it.
P ∝ W⁴ a few seconds over threshold isn’t a little harder — it’s savage
Choose the route
Plan for the third-weakest rider
Mixed-ability planning is one rule: design for the third-weakest rider — not the average, never the strongest. Keep a first C-pace ride gentle: no busy A-roads, one technical descent at most, nothing past ~8%. Then pre-ride it within two weeks. GPX lies about closures, fresh gravel, and the “quiet lane” that became a rat-run.
3rd weakest rider — that’s who you plan for
The ride-day timeline
Meet, then wheels-down
Timing is where social rides live or die. A 09:00 that rolls at 09:25 just trains everyone to turn up at 09:20. Set the convention and hold it: meet at 09:00, wheels-down 09:15. The briefing is the highest-leverage three minutes of the day — pace and route, where you wait, calling cars front and back, and who’s sweeping.
09:00 → 09:15 meet, then roll. Fifteen minutes — and hold it
Safety: read the bunch
A map of the bunch
Group riding is statistically safe, but the risk isn’t random. Read the bunch: the front pays the wind, the sheltered middle is the cheapest ride you’ll get, and the back is where the elastic snaps. Knowing which is which is half of riding safely in a group.
Safety: the wheel
Sit behind it, not beside it
The most common touch of wheels is the overlap — your front wheel creeping up alongside the rear wheel ahead. From there one small wobble from the rider in front takes your front wheel away. The fix is free: follow the wheel, stay behind it, and leave yourself the centimetres to react.
After the ride is where the club is built
Run it small. Protect the back.
The ride ends; the loop doesn’t. Post the route, a photo and the next date within 24 hours — momentum is just the gap between “that was fun” and “here’s the next one,” kept short. Run it small, roll out on time, publish honest pace bands, protect the person at the back. Do that for eight weeks and you’re not organizing a ride — you’re running a club.