Cycling goals ruining friendship

[MartianDestiny]

Definitely a rock and a hard place.

It sounds like you are going to have to find a way to ride some on your own and go hard and some with her and just "hang out" (recovery rides). If she can't gracefully accept a "I have some training rides with set goals that I just really need to do alone, but I really like riding with you so let's still ride X, X, and X together" then that's her problem.

I always get dropped, yes, it hacks me off (insert nastier word ), but with myself, and if I'm not riding with people that drop me I'm not motivated.

I love riding with my shop owner as he's super amazing at knowing *just* when I'm going to pop and keeping me there without dropping me (and then of course 50 feet from the agreed upon "finish line" totally creaming my arse). Loads of fun and really tells me where I need to work. BUT, if she's not going to think that's fun (and it doesn't sound like she will) then it can't help either of you, which is unfortunate.

I have a friend that is slower than me and doesn't want to race. When I ride with her I attack the hills and then soft pedal the downhills until she catches up, rinse and repeat. When we get to a long flatish section we chat and pedal normally. But she has no problems realizing that I'm stronger on the hills than she is and that I want that exercise where she just wants to pedal up them in a lower gear.

[limewave]

I always get dropped, yes, it hacks me off (insert nastier word ), but with myself, and if I'm not riding with people that drop me I'm not motivated.

I love riding with my shop owner as he's super amazing at knowing *just* when I'm going to pop and keeping me there without dropping me (and then of course 50 feet from the agreed upon "finish line" totally creaming my arse). Loads of fun and really tells me where I need to work.

Sounds like we would ride well together--as that is my idea of fun too

I love riding with DH but it doesn't happen often as we have to get a babysitter.

He'll ride out for set time and I ride out for 15 minutes longer than his set time. When he catches me on the way back he'll pace me, really pushing me to my limits. It's a lot of fun.

If we do a road ride, he'll zig-zag the route, adding 1/4-1/2 mile increments to his ride. When he does that, I'll go as hard as I can and he tries to catch back up. Then we'll soft pedal for awhile and chat. It's fun and we both get in our workouts.