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ROAD

  • Consistent weekly group rides and events Saturday mornings from April through October.

  • Ride plans are often longer routes that start out together to maximize team-building, but that also have escalating stages of pacing and one-or-more planned turnaround points along the way  to accommodate varying levels of riders and schedules (i.e. one large group starts, three groups finish)

  • During the weekdays, training targets and plans can vary wildly. Team members post their individual or small-group ride plans to our Facebook group in "Ride Board" fashion, providing a variety of weekday ride opportunities, including options to include others in one's own planned rides. In-week ride options will include "Ladies Only" rides, along with virtual group workouts.

  • On targeted event Saturdays, group training ride options are TBD.

MTB

  • Weekly mountain group rides are on Wednesdays, and will often include participation at the Mid Week MTB Series 

  • During other days of the week, training targets and plans can vary wildly. Mountain team members post their individual or small-group ride plans to our Facebook group in "Ride Board" fashion, providing a variety of mountain ride options, as well as opportunities to include others in one's own planned rides.

VIRTUAL

  • Zwift is where the action is in 2018, and our leadership group have been aggressive adopters and explorers of the digital realms.

  • Virtual rides, group rides, group workouts and racing are all a part of incredible rise of Zwift. Individual team members leverage these constantly, and so a virtual team-up ride is a phone notification away: "[Your team member] just started Zwifting."

  • Epic maximizes virtual team-ride options, including organizing and leading group workouts, and targeting and entering races together.

  • Registered team members can join EPIC Cycling Team at Zwift Power.

EPIC GROUp-THINK

Let's just get this out of the way at the start: EVERY healthy rider can start EVERY group ride, schedule permitting.

 

However, as good as any ride leaders organize and plan, not all will finish with a planned group. The consequences of this can be devastating, potentially including your worst fears.

 

Check all that may apply as potential outcomes:

 

"If I don't keep up with the group, and get dropped..."

  • I will be ostracized by the team and dropped from the roster

  • I will be laughed at and belittled by teammates

  • Having been separated from the group, I am in danger of being eaten by predators

  • I will be proven a phony and a wanna-be

  • Generations will mourn my weakness and inherit my shame

  • All my friends will see my Strava segments and secretly email them to everyone I know for entertainment

  • I can turn around and ride home with a small group that are in the same boat as me, or by myself. I can add some miles and terrain on the way home. I can keep training, keep pushing, and continue to start every group ride possible with the team.

 

Look it happens to every rider. It IS cycling. Embrace it. Any panic-tricks the deep fight-or-flight limbic portions of your brain plays on you are most-often just obsolete echoes of the fears from ancient times when being separated from the group truly meant the possibility of being eaten by something.

 

THAT BEING SAID, EPIC approaches group rides with plans and routes that maximize team-building and accommodate varying levels of riders (i.e. one large group starts, three groups finish).  We adapt on group rides and to individual riders' needs as possible, including re-group points on any rides, or portions of them, that are designated as no-drop.

 

But for the love of all that is velo, if you do get dropped, there is nothing to sweat. You've been on solo rides before, enjoy it. You got to be out on a challenging ride, it was an awesome day. You rode with a group for part of the ride and then you rode the rest of it with a small group or by yourself. No big deal. Who's to say you didn't plan it that way?

 

Consistent training stress, sometimes to near-failure, is at the heart of sports training and fitness. "Epic fail" is a good thing. It's often the indicator of personal breakthroughs that are about to come rolling into your life.

 

The decision to come back and start with the team again every week is literally the key. The trick. The hack.

 

Ride on.

 

Cyclist prepare for a group ride. EPIC Cycling Team organizes road and mountain bike group rides for Utah team members based in Salt Lake and Utah Counties, and virtual cycling at Zwift.
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