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General Banter / Re: Group Riding Speed Rating - Proposed Pace System by Mr. Gadget
« on: September 14, 2011, 08:23:37 PM »I know on my 1st group ride last year with the MN-MSTA at the Tri-State Boogie I wasn't sure what group to go with and since I have a ST1100 someone suggested I go with a slow group. .............I hope this will help ride leaders and new or newer riders to decide which rides to go on and / or what group of riders to go out with at a big group event.
The irony here is....as the leader of the "slow" group on that Boogie Ride last year, we still wound up being the first ones at the lunch stop. Nothing beats following a leader with a reliable GPS with the accurate routing so no time is wasted making wrong turns or backtracking.
But yeah, when you were stating that you did not necessarily want to ride "slow" and started showing me your ground down metal parts, I encouraged you to join the faster group. But here is the deal....with a group of familiar riders, I'm not that slow and I have plenty of LEO awards to prove it. It's when I have unfamiliar riders that I tend to keep a sedate pace and wait at most intersections for everyone to gather. This winds up being sort of tedious and does make the pace feel slow. As Ray said, when you start assigning riders a ranking, there winds up creating a mental frame for that rider to maintain a specific pace.
Back when I had a VFR, I could ride well over my head with a comfortable feeling. But pace was rather streaky, not something I could sustain all day long. I enjoyed being able to decide when and where I would get into that zone, and I could not deal with having to maintain a predefined pace. This is one reason why I generally would ride alone, or with only a few others at the most. I found myself stressed trying to lead faster riders on extended higher speed pace or frustrated while trying to lead slow riders all afternoon.
If anything, I found we should break groups up into map reading skills. Those who can't read maps, read route sheets or use a GPS are encouraged to follow guys who call themselves 'Mr. Gadget.'