28kmph seems quite quick to me, 25kmph is my general hacking along pace. Maybe it’s very flat where you are.
is that solo though? even with only the fitter ones taking their turns in this "steady" group you would expect to be much much quicker for the same effort.
Am I remembering 5mph quicker over a long distance? 5kmph?
is that solo though? even with only the fitter ones taking their turns in this “steady” group you would expect to be much much quicker for the same effort
You would but wrangling a big no drop group round any route with hills is going to be very tricky. If I bust my balls on a group ride I might average 30kmph and as a rule in any group of say 12 you usually only see 3 or 4 riders at the front unless it's a chain gang type ride.
No matter I am just surprised a huge group going steady and no drop could do about 28kmph
If that’s advertised pace rather than measured average then I’d wager they aim to hold 28 (via garmin) on the flat, climbs done at the speed of the slowest (or go up and regroup), descents over 28kph at freewheel/bravery limit.
This will (almost certainly) result in an average of below 28kph.
Last time I roadied seriously, only the rich guys had garmins. Normal folk had those cat eye things with the magnet on the wheel, so by necessity we ended up doing the above. Just as Strava for smartphones was coming in, you could then see after your ride what the actual average speed was.
My club the B group is a no drop policy and aims for 18mph. The A group can be a drop policy ride dependent, anything from 18 to 21mph. This can be 60 to 100 miles, at this time of year it’s approx 60 miles and 19.5mph with 3500 feet of climbing.
We try and keep to a max of 12 riders in each group. The A group doesn’t get that many, maybe 8.
I prefer riding in a smaller group, 6 to 8 riders. We stay 2 abreast as much as possible. But we will pull over if we are causing an issue, genuinely this is quite rare though. We tend to ride in our group rides on a Sun morning and finish by 1pm.
We are mainly all experienced roadies, I can’t think of one rider who doesn’t have at least 10 years of regular riding with the group. Guess we are fairly lucky with drivers as I’d say we have no more than 3 incidents a year with shouty drivers, close passes are also fairly rare.
