It’s easy to come up with excuses to flake out on a long ride when you’re on your own: The weather sucks; all your bibs are dirty; your dog looks really cute all snuggled up, and how can you leave that face?!

But that workout needs to get done, and there’s a super simple way to guarantee you get on the bike: Grab some friends or join a group ride. Group riders average a 52 percent increase in mileage compared to solo riders, according to Strava’s 2018 Year in Review report. Athletes who joined a club on Strava also uploaded three times more activities annually than solo athletes.

With friends, you can push the pace, rack up more miles, pedal to more far away places, and be less likely to give up your whole day spinning alone. Plus, it’s often a surefire way to make sure you get out there. “Riding with a group, even an informal small group of friends, adds an element of accountability that doesn’t exist when you ride alone,” says Ed Nessen, a Cycling Club coordinator for Rapha, which hosts a variety of group rides out of its 22 locations in 13 different countries.

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Strava’s not the first to illustrate the performance-boosting benefits of workout buddies. Working with a partner, especially in a team format, doubled the workout time of people who exercised alone, according to a study by the Society of Behavioral Medicine. That makes sense with Strava’s data: The further you go, the more time you’ll log on the bike.

There’s a competition element, too: People who worked out with someone they thought was better than them upped their workout time and intensity by a whopping 200 percent, researchers at Kansas State University found.

“Riding with a group tends to push you harder than you’d be able to do alone, especially if you can regularly work in rides with cyclists that are a bit stronger than you,” Nessen says. “You’ll ride beyond the limits of your comfort zone both in terms of distance and physical effort.”

Just be sure to recruit others who are slightly stronger and faster than you for days you want to push it hard, or friends who are close to your fitness level for days you want to go slow and steady for several hours. Getting dropped on a ride by cyclists who are vastly stronger than you can be a blow to your confidence, and pedaling too slowly with those who aren’t close to your level can result in boredom without gains.

And, not that you needed a scientist to tell you this, but it’s just more fun to ride with someone else—people who worked out with friends reported enjoying the exercise way more than those who went at it alone, according to research from the University of Southern California.

“Cycling is an interesting sport in that it has a very solitary side—yet we all know that nothing makes the miles go by faster than having a group to kvetch with, to challenge each other on the climbs, and to share a coffee and stories of the day with after the ride,” says Nessen. “It can be so rewarding to share those great (and sometimes not so great) experiences together on the road.”

If actual roads aren’t an option due to weather or other factors, you can also use friends and groups for extra motivation thanks to virtual options like Zwift, which even includes group-riding advantages like drafting.

If you’re used to riding on your own, though, the thought of clipping in with a bunch of people—especially a bunch of people who might be stronger, faster, or fitter than you—can be downright terrifying. But remember: “This is supposed to be something we are all ostensibly doing for fun, whatever level we’re at, and it’s important to not get too caught up in feeling inadequate or ‘less than,’” says Nessen.

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The most important thing to keep in mind is to try and find the group that suits you best—both in terms of fitness level and character of the rides. “There are a million variants of group rides ranging all the way from loosely organized, super-aggressive ‘fake races’ that can feel very sketchy, ungoverned, or even out of control, to structured, orderly, rule-following, controlled, steady pace and tempo road and gravel rides, to social or slow-paced short urban spins, and everything in between,” explains Nessen. Don’t get discouraged if you have to try a few before you find the right group. “You’ll get stronger every ride,” he says.

Ashley Mateo Ashley Mateo is a writer, editor, and UESCA-certified running coach who has contributed to Runner’s World, Bicycling, Women's Health, Health, Shape, Self, and more.

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