Afraid of drafting or group riding? Share with me why.

[Crankin]

Sky King, I have that happen a bit on one of the roads right near my house. It's a long sort of flat road that is popular with cyclists and commuters. Most of the time I can feel someone coming up from behind, but I have been scared to death a few times. This road is also not in the best shape and while it's a country type road, it is full of cars.

[Catrin]

I was always scared at the idea of riding close to others and took measures to prevent that from happening in group rides. Not that it actually mattered, I am a slow rider and was always riding by myself at group rides after 10-15 minutes anyway.

To be fair and honest, I am unsure if my problem was truly not trusting other riders, or my own ability/skill of dealing with emergency situations if something happened. I was far less concerned about dealing with rednecks on back country roads than I was riding around larger number of cyclists.

[OakLeaf]

I've been thinking about this - and kind of dredging my memory since I haven't been riding at all lately - and knowing that I used to be extremely comfortable in pacelines (absent squirrels of course) but came back a whole lot less confident after my faceplant -

I think a lot of ANY type of vehicle handling comes down to visual skills. That soft focus and total awareness of what's in peripheral vision, "seeing with your whole eyes" as I call it, becomes exponentially more difficult when you're keeping a very close eye on a 21 mm wheel two cm in front of your own. It's soooooo easy to tunnel your vision down to the wheel in front of you. And (as I learned the hard way TWICE, sigh), tunnel vision is the precursor to target fixation.

Then, seeing what's directly ahead of the paceline is at best difficult, and when you're riding with a lot of people bigger than you are as I typically did, impossible, so learning to read the road and the behavior of other vehicles when you can see them becomes extra important.

I'm not sure how to teach visual skills, but I know it's important to mention them.

[Wahine]

I've been thinking about this - and kind of dredging my memory since I haven't been riding at all lately - and knowing that I used to be extremely comfortable in pacelines (absent squirrels of course) but came back a whole lot less confident after my faceplant -

I think a lot of ANY type of vehicle handling comes down to visual skills. That soft focus and total awareness of what's in peripheral vision, "seeing with your whole eyes" as I call it, becomes exponentially more difficult when you're keeping a very close eye on a 21 mm wheel two cm in front of your own. It's soooooo easy to tunnel your vision down to the wheel in front of you. And (as I learned the hard way TWICE, sigh), tunnel vision is the precursor to target fixation.

Then, seeing what's directly ahead of the paceline is at best difficult, and when you're riding with a lot of people bigger than you are as I typically did, impossible, so learning to read the road and the behavior of other vehicles when you can see them becomes extra important.

I'm not sure how to teach visual skills, but I know it's important to mention them.

This is actually a really good point and I think there are some skills that you can teach to help with visual awareness/attention. I hadn't thought of that and I will try to come up with some drills.