You go for a ride/run/swim with someone who is way faster than you or way slower than you.
If they are faster than you you are self-concious about holding them up and compromising the quality of their workout.
If they are slower than you they have the same concern.
What are the constructive/diplomatic ways to resolve this?
Compromise for workouts where you are willing to do so, train by yourself (or with others of similar ability) where you aren’t.
My friends know that when they ride with me, and especially if hills are involved, they’ll be waiting at the top. Just like I’ll be waiting at the bottom. 
Actually, most of my rides are done at a fairly easy pace and on the fixie. I don’t really follow a training regimen, and don’t take racing or myself seriously. My friends are slower on the swim, faster on the bike, and we’re split on the run. Swimming is easy, because it isn’t really social anyway. We do drills together and stroka analysis, but do our own warm up/cool down. (Notice the absence of a main set in there) I’ve run maybe 7 times since January, including racing. You might not even count Oliver as a “run”.
Uhhhh - I guess this isn’t really helpful for you. I have a pretty tight main group, and we don’t have issues telling each other off if need be. But given that none of us are even remotely approaching elite, it don’t matter. We ride together, we die together; bad boys for life.
Glad you asked this Tom, I was composing a post with a similar problem. I meet my current Canadian GF in Brazil at the IM which we both completed but 4 hours apart. Now, my GF came over to England for 6 weeks and wanted to train together, we ran twice and I have to be candid and say that I can’t run at slow a pace, the first time it wasn’t a problem as it was 1 minute pick up s and therefore I could double back in the recovery minutes or turn at the completion of another minute, but it hurts my legs etc to run at so slow a pace due to the plodding nature of it. Also it is not a work out for me to ride together as it is not even a level 1 ride. How do I explain that it is not good for her or I as neither of us will get a productive work out? As we are both training of IMs it’s not as if I can do my long ride and then join her for her 6 hour ride as it is not a work out and is not a rest either.
ps. do you have those sexy FSA carbon aero brake levers in stock?
Depends. When I ride/run with my wife, I let her set the pace, which generally means a much slower/easier workout than usual for me. But, I plan these rides as recovery for me; and, more importantly, ‘together’ time for us.
Tomorrow, we are cycling at Red Rock. This is a beautiful 14 mile or so ride on the paved tourists car route. She finds it challenging, even at a slow pace. I find it easy, unless I hammer. But, we start together, ride together, and finish together. To me, this is more important than any workout on any day.
…But…
When I train with others, the aforementioned rules don’t apply. I ride/run/swim at the pace that day’s workout calls for. So, if it’s a hard day, and they can’t keep up, they get dropped. If it’s an easy day and they ride fast, I get dropped. Usually, though, I try to plan training partners according to training goals.
I often ride with groups, different nights have different tempos with different etiquete(sp). On all out nights everyone knows the route and knows that no one waits but when it blows apart usually people will form smaller groups. On fast tempo rides usually there will be landmarks that everyone will regroup at. On slow/recovery rides that often have new riders it might get strung out but again points to regroup and usually someone will take up and do a sweep. On smaller rides, usually the long ride of the week, without drafting everyone is pretty evenly matched but if someone just did a race etc…people will let up to make sure everyone is together. Usually intervals I will only do with one other person and inbetween intervals we will regroup. If someone averages 15 and another 20mph…then its probably best to ride solo. I have a few friends that are slower and in those cases on group rides we know we will see each other after the ride, if its just them and myself I make sure that it is a recovery day.
I usually ask them how fast they plan on going. For biking, if they’re way faster than me I’ll let them know I’ll be off the back pretty soon and not to wait, if they’re about the same speed then no worries, if they’re way slower then I ride my road bike and stay out in front and let them draft the whole time, giving them a few tips on drafting if appropriate. For running, it’s either find people your own speed or run by yourself.
My buddy and I have worked it out over time. I’m faster on the bike, he’s faster on the run. We hang together but both know that there are times where we’re going to get seriously dropped and that’s ok and preferred becuase it makes the slow guy work that much harder. Oly’s are where we have the most fun. We’ve split the last two. He’s got me by 10 secs in the GC. Next one should be a suffer-fest and it will probably come down to a sprint finish. It doesn’t get any better than that!
I’m the “new guy” in town, so this topic interests me. When someone calls me to go work out, I ask them what pace/where they are planning on going. If I can work that in to my schedule, I go at their planned speed/venue. When I call them and tell them I’m going to hammer on my TT bike, ease along on my road bike, or do some hillclimbs, they do the same workout, or they decline. Only change is if someone is just unexpectantly getting dropped when they can’t draft well enough to hang on, even on the flats…then, at the first chance when the group is together, we agree to go different routes, meeting up at specified points. Luckily, there are some REALLY tough hills around here connected by flat routes that go around the base, so it works out just fine.
On the easy days, I go out of my way to make sure I pull the slowest guy as much as he can be pulled, so I can sort of make up for going so fast and dropping this guy on my hard days. This way, I no longer hear them say “Oh, no, this new guy is going to kill us today!” It’s certainly not very often I really knuckle down and ride hard with a group, but when you are the new guy and do this a time or two, people can get the wrong idea. There’s a couple of guys here that can ride me off their wheel up some of the hills. I haven’t been on one of their hard rides, so I don’t know if they’d just drop me, or do some of the alternate-route meeting-up plans…but, I think they’d at least alternate-route me, and not just disappear over the horizon.
We have certain unwritten rules for our group bike rides.
On Tuesday night it’s all about dropping the other guy. If you can’t hang with the front group then you’re sh*t out of luck. It sucks on the nights when you get dropped. The good thing is that you’ll most likely be picked up by the second, third or fourth groups and have someone to ride with.
Thursday night is hill night. Only the hardcore members show up and it’s all about getting to the top first but we all wait at the top until the last rider is up before moving on to the next hill.
Sunday morning is the long ride. The idea is to keep everybody together for the duration of the ride as much as possible.
I only run and swim solo. Don’t want to hold anybody up!
This is an interesting dilemma for me as the person I am most likely to train with (my boss) absolutely pounds me on the bike. I figure if he invites me along he isn’t going to mind waiting for me, and am pretty confident this is the case. He also knows that I generally ride alone and will not be in the least bit offended if he takes off on days he decides he’d like to push.
With running I put in more time than most of my friends and generally don’t want to putt along. If somebody who is not much of a runner asks to come with me I tell them before hand that I am covering a set distance in a set time and will be happy to wait for them at the car and/or suggest alternate routes that will get them home quicker. This is nearly always fine with them, and we meet back at the trail head in at set time and go eat together, etc. I do know that thinking somebody is waiting for you is frustrating as is waiting for somebody, but we always have the option of going alone.
I just remembered a neat little “rule” that was in effect the few times I rode with the GGTC. Basically, when you got to the top of a climb you had to loop back down to the last climber, and head up again. Everyone rode that damn hill until the last person (usually me) got up. It was a neat way to keep the group together, and sort of evened out the rest intervals so that the fast guys were getting a solid workout instead of just waiting around, while the slower guys got at least as much rest as everyone else. (Often the last guy would have a short wait while the “loopers” made their last ascent)
I agree with Francois. Whilst I do the occasional recovery session with my wife, I do all of my “serious” workouts either solo or with one or two keys guys. Let’s face it, when you are training for IM you spend more time with your training buddies than with your “significant other”. There are only a few guys that I want to spend that much time with, and there are only a few guys that go at the right speed anyway. In recent times my key guys have been having down time, so I have been doing most training solo. Funnily enough, that hasn’t worried me at all. I must be very boring. Or perhaps easily amused.
I’m the new guy in my town also, I showed up at the “team time trial” last fall for the first time and went about 4mph faster in a 10 mile TT so now no one where I live even wants to ride with me. Even though I try to explain that on easy days I go easy and have no intent on riding hard, I have a tough time finding riding buddies here. I think it is an ego problem for them. However, I have a decent sized town about an hour away with a few guys that very strong. I know when their hard nights are and when I show up for that ride, I would be frustrated if we were not attacking on every climb and hauling across the flats.
On the running side, my small town has a small university with a couple of decent runners, but not fast. I run with them to get miles in but to get a hard workout with a few fast guys I need to drive an hour to another town apart from the city with the strong bikers. On the flip side, I do run a few times with my sons and we usually only cruise at 8 min pace which is so slow that it actually hurts, but that is a small sacrifice to actually be able to spend time running with them. I do have them ride their bike while I run sometimes, this actually works out pretty good.
I can run/ride fast alone but find that I can get that last bit out of workouts when there is someone else there with you as you hammer, therefore, I seek out the aforementioned groups when need be. I am at their mercy schedule wise though and sometimes have a hard time scheduling. For example, this fall the hard run workout is sceduled for Tuesday nights and the hard ride is for Wed . . . I basically end up alternating weeks between the groups.
I swim alone so no problem.
I guess the rule is that there is no rule . . . do what you need to do