My guess is that she will be embarrassed and embarrassment can show up as huffiness.

One possibility is to ride with them but say you are going to push it a bit but you will wait for them at a certain spot. I sometimes ride with a friend of my husband's. He rides much, much faster than me. He will go up and down a hill as he waits for me. I am glad he does that because otherwise I would feel like I am holding him back.

When I ride with my cousin, I do the same thing. I tell her that I am going to push it up the hill because "I want to get the blood moving," and I either wait for her at the top or circle back around.