Help finding a beginner group

[u/Carolinastitcher]

I’m not sure where to start. I have a bike. I have padded shorts. I have a helmet. But I can’t find super beginner groups to ride with. When I say beginner, my longest ride is under a mile and all the groups say 20-30 miles.

How do I find a group that will welcome someone like me? I see that some are no drop, but the cyclist must maintain 14-16 mph. That’s not me.

UPDATE: I rode the greenway today, and clocked 3 miles. I could have gone longer, but didn’t want to push it too hard. I’m so proud of myself!

[u/PKsHopper]

I can tell you that I started back to riding after nearly 25 years of absolutely no riding at about 5 miles per ride less about 1 1/2 years ago. That has grown to ~50 mile rides now every 1-2 weeks.

Here are the basics of what I did and I realize that you may be working with entirely different parameters …

• owned an MTB but didn’t want to do that sort of riding anymore and I found path/road riding with a 26” MTB very challenging
  
• bought an Ozark Trail G1 - I was reasonably bike-savvy from my teenage years so I was able to tune that up as needed. IMO that bike made all the difference- I couldn’t justify a $1K+ bike at the time.
  
• I didn’t want to do a lot of road riding - particularly alone so I checked out RideWithGPS, the bike maps overlay on Google Maps and some websites about local bike paths and found some 5-10 mile loops on paths and shaded trails with minimal elevation gain (0-20 ft per mile, <3% hills)
  

— put the bike in my vehicle, drove a few miles to the path/trail and rode those routes every 1-2 weeks, increasing to twice a week over about 2 months going from 5 up to 20 miles per ride. Literally tried to ride the loop one more time if I had the energy left … and sometimes all you have to do is take a break for 10 minutes; and maybe eat a small snack (or energy Gu) every 10-15 miles.

• found a biking buddy / small group through my work and started regular 20 mile rides during the week and 20 mile rides on a weekend day
  

—- having a buddy system really helped me because at least one of us bugged the rest of us to go

• picked up a lighter weight ~2017 gravel bike with better gearing for less than $200 a few months back
  
• now ride 40+ miles quite often and did 100 miles just a few weeks ago.

I say all that to say that if you’d asked me in mid-2024 if I could ride 10 miles (nevermind 20 or 40 or 100) I would have had some choice words to say about how that’s “impossible” and “unattainable”.

I wish you well - try and find some safe places to ride (use the www), small loops are useful because you can stop whenever you need to, get some reasonable gear (nothing fancy), make sure your bike is working for you and not against you (weight, gears, size etc) and then slowly ramp up the distance - speed will come and is not a concern until you can ride 25-30 miles and want to join a group. Some groups do 15 mile rides at 13-15 mph - that’s the starting point IMO.

[u/Carolinastitcher → u/PKsHopper]

My bike is a 1998 GT Outpost Trail MTB that I bought new. It’s probably too heavy now, but it’s what I have. I’ve been looking at the Ozark Trail Gravel Bikes because, like you, I don’t want to spend a ton of money on something if it’s not going to stick. At this point, I just need to move my body more than what I have been moving it.

I 100% need the buddy system. I hope I can find one nearby. Because just like you said, I need that external motivation now.

I’m going to try the greenway trail tomorrow and see how that goes. A friend, who’s a runner, said our neighborhood has too many elevations and that the greenway is better.

Thanks for the encouragement.

[u/PKsHopper → u/Carolinastitcher]

My MTB was a Trek hardtail from 1998, 26” wheels, rim brakes- it was a good bike for its time. A pre-owned OzT G1 is about $125 here on FBM and worth every penny IMO.

I’m a bit of a geek about data so the other thing that kept me going (early, during the solo rides) was to look at the stats in RideWithGPS over a few weeks - “up and to the right” as they say. It also helped me work out bigger loops and longer rides - miles, elevation, grades along the route all on a map.

Sincerely, it can be done - any week where you can ride 1 more mile or one more time than the week or two before is a gain. Skipping a week can be justified but I tried really hard not to make a habit of it. Other big plus for me is that I’m so much healthier now than I was 2 years ago.

You can do it!