The Things I Miss about Group Rides

The magic of cycling outside, together

When was your last group ride? As of the time of writing, mine was on Feb. 23. I rode with a few friends from Toronto’s High Park west to Oakville. We met in the park, shook hands, rode together and enjoyed the draft. We stopped at a café. I had a coffee and a pastry. Later, there were a few sprints, and then we rode home slowly. It was a crisp winter day. We talked with anticipation about the gravel races we’d do, the trips we would take and the rides with large groups of friends in our future.

Now, as we are months i nto physical distancing and endless miles on Zwift, I wonder how much of that will return, and when. The summer racing season in Canada is essentially cancelled. Group riding is certainly irresponsible at this time and prospects for its return are cloudy. Many of us are getting fit riding indoors without freewheeling, but much is to be longed for.

I loved Peter Sagan’s comments during the pandemic lockdown: “I am a real cyclist, but not a virtual one. If this is gonna be the future, I don’t think so.”

Sagan knows what we all feel: bike racing – and riding – is so much more than just turning the pedals. It’s really all about human connection. I fell in love with cycling when I first sat in the draft. That feeling of being pulled along by the pack was magical to me, and I’ve been chasing it ever since. Then there was the rush of racing, first trying to stay with the group, then to escape the group to be first over the line. It drew me deeper down the rabbit hole than I could have ever imagined.

Even as racing has taken a backseat to kids and work, even as my tolerance for risk has dropped and my love of alternative disciplines like gravel and mountain biking have risen, I’ve never stopped loving cycling’s ability to bring me together with special people. It’s the coffee-shop stop halfway through each ride. It’s the jokes that you repeat over and over that get funnier in hour three. It’s the stories from the training camps you did years ago that keep getting retold. These are the real things we miss when we’re apart.

There’s a lot of talk that covid-19 will alter our world permanently and make us more virtual. There’s some truth to this as we are exposed to things like Zwift and Zoom and realize we can do so much more than we thought on our own. But the pandemic also makes us realize that cycling is far more than watts, that the beauty of cycling is that it’s a sport we do together. And that, I believe, will be the powerful pull that brings people back together on bikes as soon as they are able to do so safely.

Imagine that first group ride when you slot in at 45 km/h and are barely pedalling, that first coffee stop when you all sit down and swap stories, that first time you are going up the chairlift at Whistler Bike Park with your son, and then the big smile that comes across your face.

As the Queen said during her address in early spring, “We will meet again.” I just hope it’s on bikes. See you on the road.

“There’s a lot of talk that COVID-19 will alter our world permanently and make us more virtual.”