The are two rides that leave from the shop at 6 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The A-rides average 22-plus for 30 miles around and through the outskirts of Cary. The B-ride is usually 19-21, so it’s a pretty fast ride. Other rides I have done from bike shops in the area, including Cycling Spoken Here and The Spin Cycle in Cary. The B-rides on these I believe were held to 18 mph, which is perfect for this time of the year. One local shop offers a ride on Sunday mornings that is huge! I think I’ve seen as many as 50 riders on that one.

Check around in your area for bike or triathlon shops. Most offer group rides leaving right from their stores. It makes it mighty convenient for them to sell you bikes, helmets, cycling shoes, tubes, etc., when they do that sort of thing, so it behooves them to make sure the ride is fun and safe.

Anyway, over the years I usually have done one or two fast group rides per week. This, along with one long-ride on the weekends, was essentially my cycling training. I have picked up some tips that I share below on etiquette for riding in a group. Many folks are nervous about group riding because of the close proximity to the other riders. You have to pay attention and you count on your fellow riders to do their part in keeping everyone upright.

In no particular order, below are some tips on how to ride in a group setting. Etiquette, I have found, is usually consistent from group to group on organized rides. But there are group specific gestures and signals, as well, so be sure to pay attention to the ride leader for instruction. Someone is usually designated the ride leader before the ride starts.

There is usually an “A” ride, a “B” ride, and sometimes even a “C” ride. Don’t hesitate to ask either the ride leaders or any of your fellow riders about speeds of groups, skill of riders, etc., as this will vary somewhat.

Here are my tips. If I have forgotten any that you think are relevant, please leave them in Comments.

1. Ride in a group that is appropriate for your cycling ability. For instance, if you typically average 16 mph on a training ride, chances are good you will be in either a “C” or a “B” ride. Expect “A” rides to be 20 mph plus. Each bike shop will vary and will let you know beforehand.
2. If you are a triathlete and you are going on a group ride with a bunch of road cyclists, typically you will be expected to ride upright, on your bullhorns, rather than down in the aero position. If you are fortunate enough to have a triathlon shop in your town, everyone will likely ride in the aero position. This is nice because it allows you to spend time riding the way you would in actual triathlon. If you happen to have just a road bike, you are still more than welcome to ride with triathletes! Some groups don’t care one way or another, but you should meet the expectation, as some riders get nervous when they don’t know you or your ability to ride. If you tend to weave when you are in the aero position by yourself, it’s best not to try it in a group setting.
3. If you are new to the group, just start off easy kind of in the middle of the pack. If you have never ridden with other people before, you will find it much easier to ride in the draft of the riders in front of you. The riders on the front and a few rows back are generally the stronger riders in the group and will maintain the pace, usually, while taking the brunt of the wind. Thus, the group travels much faster as a whole than you would by yourself.
4. For your first group ride, stay in the draft the whole way. Do not take any pulls on the front unless you are quite confident in your ability to stay with the group for the duration of the ride. Trust me, when you are barely hanging on at mile 25 of a 30 mile group ride, you will thank me.
5. As such, always have directions for your first ride with a particular group. Getting dropped and getting lost, which I’ve done several times, is not fun! I always carry a cell phone and an ID with me regardless of where or with whom I’m riding.
6. When you ride behind another rider, the rider in front is expected to let the rider behind know if there are hazards ahead. For example, if I’m in front of you and I see a hole in the road ahead, I would point at it and yell, “Hole!”
7. Another gesture that is used often yelled by whomever is on the ball is “Car up!” This indicates that a vehicle is coming from ahead. “Car back!” would be if a car is coming from behind. “Passing” is when one a vehicle is trying to pass the entire group. There is no rule about how many times things are yelled out, so don’t be shy. “Gravel!” is another phrase you hear yelled a lot at intersections, as usually there is debris at intersections and taking a turn on loose gravel can be very tricky.
8. Only point out truly hazardous things. Some riders point out every little thing. Then, when something like a big rock or a pot hole that needs to be avoided comes along, nobody is really paying attention anymore.
9. When turning right, most people just point to the right. When turning left, you can either make an “L” shape with your left hand, or just point left. Either way, the key is to let people behind you know that a turn is coming up.
10. When coming to a stop, just put your hand out behind you and call out, “Stopping.” When the group is slowing, just call out “Slowing.” Most of the things are common sense, so just use your best judgment. No one is going to get mad at you as long as you let them know what you are doing.
11. When you are in front of another rider and you want to move over and drop back, always move to your left. Never drop back on the right, ever. You might see some people try it from time to time, especially if you are riding two by two, and the guy on the right decides to just to “slide” to the right to come back, but it’s better for him to move two places to the left, then drop back. That way, everyone can plainly see what you are doing.
12. You will likely either be riding as a group in one line or two. On busy roads, groups will usually ride one abreast. On more desolate roads without a lot of traffic or congestion, it is usually two abreast. At other times, you may ride in a pace line, but this is usually done on “A” rides and requires quite a lot of riding skill on the part of the entire group for it to work effectively.
13. Don’t worry if you get dropped. Some groups, especially “C” type rides, have “No drop” rules. So, just keep going and you will probably catch up to someone at an intersection. Believe me, everyone gets dropped, even seasoned riders. Some days are better than others!
14. In case you have a flat, make sure you’re prepared with a tube and either a small pump or a CO2 cartridge and a connector. Even though the rides are usually only 30 miles or so, you still have flats.
15. If you do hear your tube pop, just stay calm and gradually slow down using the brakes of the tire that is still inflated. Easier said than done! Once you are safely on the side of the road, then start assessing the damage. Usually, somebody in the group will stop with you. This is especially true if you ask. Often riders will check to make sure you have everything you need to change the tire. If you are less than spectacular at changing a tire (shame on you), some kind soul might stay behind with you to help you change it.
16. As I mentioned above, conserve energy until you have about five miles left. Groups tend to get faster as the ride goes along. On the Inside-Out ride that I do, we cruise about five miles at conversational pace. We then hit it hard for 20 miles, then we cruise back in for five. Each ride is different. On some rides I have done, it’s a sprint right back to the store.
17. Have fun! Although you are probably a bit nervous, especially if it is your first time riding in a group situation, just remember that everyone is out there to have fun. Other riders will be happy to let you know everything they can about the ride, what they are training for, etc., so you are sure to make some new friends along the way!

I’m pretty sure someone told you that you need a bike. If you are going to do more than sprint triathlons, it should be a road bike—although a hybrid or MTB can get you through your first few sprints. If you have money to burn, go ahead and get that tricked out triathlon bike, but realize that “it’s not about the bike.”

It becomes pretty obvious that no matter what distance triathlon you choose to race, it’s important to be a good cyclist. There are several reasons:

• the stronger you are on the bike, the less painful it will be to run
• triathlons are heavily weighted towards time spent on the bike, so as long as you are going to be biking for most of the race, it makes sense to try and be good at it, right?
• biking is the part of a triathlon where you are going the fastest, and fast is fun, right?

So how do you get good at biking? Do you buy a bunch of lightweight parts for your bike or race wheels? No. Those things may improve your speed slightly, but once you have them and have used them for a bit, they won’t make you faster.

You get good at biking in two simple ways: bike a lot, and bike hard.

Obviously, if your race is going to include a 25-mile bike leg (an Olympic distance triathlon’s bike leg is 24.8 miles or 40K), then you want to be fit enough to ride 25 miles at a pretty good clip. Depending on how fast you ride, 25 miles might take you 1-1.5 hours. That’s not a long time. But you might want to actually ride further than that sometimes, so it makes the 25 miles seem easy (you’ve probably heard this concept applied to running and swimming, too!).

If you are very dedicated, you’d ride 25 miles maybe three or four times a week. Or, you might ride less than that, one to three times, and then ride longer (say, 40 miles) once a week. Three to four rides a week is usually plenty when it comes to building your bike fitness.

What about the hard part? Just as for swimming and running, you don’t always want to ride at the same pace. You need to have some sort of benchmark to measure what is easy vs. hard for you. Speed is not a good benchmark unless you live somewhere where it is flat, the same temperature and the same amount (or lack) of wind all the time, since hills, temperature and wind significantly impact speed.

Good benchmarks are heart rate and power—power being the gold standard. Most beginners don’t have power meters, so they use heart rate, or a combination of heart rate and perceived effort. Perceived effort is always a good measurement, since even if you do someday spring for the power meter, you will still want to stay in touch with your body’s overall sense of effort, especially at longer races like the half and full Ironmans.

Why do you need to ride hard sometimes? Because climbing hills requires more effort than flats, you might need to surge to pass someone (legally), and because when you ride hard, just like in running, you are working on raising your lactate threshold, meaning that if you do it often enough, you will be able to ride faster at a lower heart rate (or power output).

How often and for how long in each ride do you need to ride hard? When you are first starting out, you may only want or need to spend less than half of your total ride time going hard. You should always begin with a warm-up, and a good rule of thumb is 10-15 minutes for a short ride, 15-30 minutes for a ride of 1-2 hours, and 30-40 minutes for a ride of 2.5+ hours.

As you build up the amount of time you are able to ride hard, you will find it feels easier and easier or you are going faster and faster. This is where the heart rate monitor (or power meter) can really help you out by telling you precisely what you are doing. You should stay at a given level for a few weeks or prove your fitness at that level in a race before you try and go even harder.

What does hard really mean, though? “Very hard” would be as fast as you could go for 25 miles, as in a time trial. Hard would be not as hard as that, where it feels hard but you can maintain it for about 30-40 minutes easily. Below that you have basically moderate and easy, and when you warm up it should be easy building to moderate to prepare you for the hard stuff.

Just as for running and swimming, it can feel easier to push yourself in a group setting. Try and hook up with a local cycling club, which will probably have several levels of riders, or find some other folks you can ride with that are slightly faster than you. Ask around about where the killer hills are in your area. A good workout is to warm-up and then ride a hill or several hills in “repeats,” where you ride up very hard, and then take it easy going back down.

What do you do during the winter if you live in a place where outdoor riding would be dangerous or impossible? You purchase a bike trainer, which is a device where you attach your rear wheel to it and there is a resistance drum that the tire rubs against to simulate road conditions. There are many good trainers on the market, and if you can test ride one before you buy, that’s great, because depending on how strong you are, you might want a different type. If you ride indoors on a trainer, you will want a fan blowing on you because you will sweat a lot due to not creating your own wind.

There is discussion as to how time on the trainer equates to time on the road. Some people think that time on a trainer is “worth” more than time on the road. Forget about it. It is the same. Time is time! But it’s OK to spend less time during the winter months on the trainer than you would if you were riding outside, but make the time count by spending more time going hard than you normally would. You can watch TV, movies, footage of bike races, triathlons, whatever gets you going, and you can have your favorite music on.

You can also buy DVD’s called Spinervals that guide you through specific workouts. My philosophy is that if you put in a lot of hard time in the winter, then the transition to longer outdoor riding is easy. I build up to a 2.5-2.75 hour trainer ride, and once it warms up, I can easily ride 3-4 hours outdoors the very first time I go out. You don’t want to burn out mentally during the winter, so if you cut back your biking time, you can add more swimming or running, because winter is a good time to work on those skills.

It’s as simple as that—bike a lot, and bike hard!

Sheila looking quite aero!

Sheila embarked on triathlons in 2000, coming from a background of 10 years of strength training, two years of running, zero swimming and negligible biking. She completed her first Ironman (which in 1999 she said she would never do) in 2001 and has continued to do one or two a year, a few half Ironmans and sprints just to keep things entertaining. In the process, she has become a student of the sports and has adopted the triathlon lifestyle. You can find her on Facebook and on her blog at http://crackheadfe.blogspot.com.

When I first got involved in the sport four (or five) years ago, I didn’t have a bike and I didn’t have any money to buy one. Thus, I started trainining for my first race by attending spin classes at my gym. You could also simply ride on the stationary bikes in your gym’s cardio room. This is not exactly like the real thing, obviously, but it will get you used to pedaling and it will build a tough rear-end that will see you through those long rides.

My Cervelo P2SL at Ironman Florida.

For my race, I borrowed a road bike from my brother-in-law. He is a big bike geek, so he had several to spare. I actually ended up buying the bike from him later, but before I bought, I wanted to make sure that triathlon was something I enjoyed and was going to stick with. I would be willing to bet that many garages have a fancy new tri bike sitting there collecting dust. Someone signed up for a race, got talked into buying a triathlon-specific bike, and never used it again after they realized how hard triathlons are!

For my first two years of training, I used a road bike with clip-on aerobars. Only after I decided I was going to stay in the sport for awhile did I go out and by my first tri bike, a Cervelo P2SL.

For now, simply borrow a bike, any kind of bike, from a friend or neighbor. After you finish that first race, you will have a better idea of what kind of time and money you want to invest in the sport. In a future post, I will discuss the benefits of a triathlon specific bike, but for now, stick with something that rolls fairly well and you will be fine!

I really like the class and look forward to going to back to more. It was amazing how now my body seems to almost crave that trying to work yourself into those poses. I was also reminded of what a great core workout yoga is. My mid-section and obliques were sore, but it was a “good” sore.

My old friend Cindy has opened a yoga studio in Albemarle, N.C., which is very near my home town. It is called Albemarle Pilates and Yoga, so if you are from the area, defintely check it out. They have birkram yoga as well, which I have yet to try. I want to try that and try pilates, also something I’ve never done. You can also access her blog through her web site, so be sure to check it out.

I’m getting great core workout from my kettlebells. When people hear me talking about them or I show them a video, they think I’m nuts. I think the three people that I’ve actually gotten to try it were shocked at how “open” they felt through their hips. It stretches and rehabs, too. I hope to do some posts in the future on how I use kettlebells to compliment my triathlon training and recovery. It really is incredible how well you work your hamstrings, back, arms, hips, hip flexors, shoulders.

Here are some YouTube videos on kettlebells. Some of the movement involved, including turkish get-ups, are an incredible full-body workout in about 2 minutes. See what you think:

Swings: The king of exercises.

Snatches: The queen!

I will report back on the yoga and my upcoming training plans. I also have a few posts coming up that will be geared for folks who looking to enter triathlons and are wonder what to expect. I am just ramping up a little bit now, a bit of running, riding some. A group of about 15 of us braved the rain and rode 50 miles on Saturday morning. It was cold, so there were only a few brave souls out now. Big Woods and Jack Bennett, two of the local cycling friendly, or unfriendly as the case may be, roads (hills) will become easier over the next few months, thank heavens. Fifty miles was probably a bit much for my first ride in more than two months, but oh well!

Below are some before and after shots of my tri bike, a 2006 Cervelo P2SL. We were quite dirty after this one!

Dirty. Imagine our faces!

Rear view

50 miles was probably a bit much in the rain!

Yukkk!

After a quick wash.

Nice!

Cockpit!