NY Biker, AMC screens for group rides that are not show and go, just as they would screen for a hike or ski outing. This is an outdoor club, not a bike club. We do have weekly series show and go rides and those are more like traditional bike club rides. DH and I used to lead some of the Friday AM ones in the summer, until the group got so fast, I could no longer keep up, averaging 17-18! We are, by virtue of our liability insurance, required to keep the group together as much as we can. We have to have a sweep. We do not just give people cue sheets and go. If someone wants to go ahead of the leader or lag behind the sweep, they have to tell us and then we are absolved of our responsibility. We only had about 20 people, not enough for 2 official groups, but we did sort of end up with 2 groups. Good thing both DH and I were sweeping. DH and I lead our "new members ride" in early May and when we started there were groups of 50-60 riding through Concord ; not fun. So now we have a "beginning" and intermediate group. This is not really for just new members, just a traditional ride the club does. Every year we are getting more and more people in the beginner group who clearly have no idea what to do with a bike. And yes, while I do enjoy working with beginners, this past year we had one young woman who had just learned to ride and the poor sweep (the same man who led Saturday) spent 3.5 patient hours getting her through the 22 miles. DH and I lead the intermediate ride and as the sweep, I have had to tell many in the last 2 years to stop and wait for the slower group (it's the same route), as I no longer had any of the others in sight. It's show and go, and they just overestimate their ability.Many of the riders come out from the city and have never ridden on a hill. I got a good workout last year, sprinting to find DH, after a rogue participant wouldn't follow the cue sheet and didn't bother to tell me he was doing something different.
I'm good sweeping for DH, because we have agreed upon patterns. The guy leading Saturday is very good and cognizant of new riders and has much more patience than I do. It's just that he told me he had a "feeling" about 3 of them when he spoke to them and he ignored it. I told him never to do this. My tell-tale questions are: tell me about the kind of riding you do, where do you ride, what kind of bike do you have, and what's your average on a 20 mile moderately hilly ride? The answers are telling. If they tell me they can ride 20 miles on the bike path by the Charles River and they don't know what their average is, my radar is up. I've learned that these are signs of not qualifying for a hilly ride with an average of 14-15. Like the woman who came in jeans, with a basket on her bike. We do have rides that are appropriate for that and I just steer them that way. We want people to enjoy themselves, and not feel like it's a total sufferfest.