Quote Originally Posted by 7rider View Post
Ride with faster people. Ask lots of questions and apply their answers.
+1 on this for sure. I am amazed that yes, I CAN keep up when I ride with some of my uber-rider friends (all of which, to make it worse, are uber-men). They totally lose me going downhill (everyone can, even when I pedal till I run out of gear, I'm light), but I catch up on the climbs. On the flats, I match my cadence to theirs and practice pedaling in a harder gear at the same cadence before I have to drop to an easier spin to keep up.

When I ride with my friends that are weaker riders, I help them build strength and speed and also help me stay motivated by playing "catch up"...we do a six mile loop composed of long slow easy climbs with short flats. I start and set the average pace at whatever is doable but moderately hard. At the end of the first loop we stop, note the average speed, then the next person leads and tries to up it by .4 or .5 mph (depending on how low the first lap was). We repeat this for four loops, the person pulling sets the pace. I do this with two people (me and someone else), for more a shorter loop repeated more times would work, so that everyone gets to pull and set the pace before the group gets tired and the average drops. Its fun and works for me and my competitive, goal oriented friends.