After maybe 6 months of riding, you've progressed from "let's go on a bike ride" to "training." You feel healthy and fit and strong. You are excited for new challenges on your rides. So your invitation to The Group Ride sounds like a fun time, a social time on bikes. What could be better?

Time to meet a new character...

BRAIN
It's time for The Group Ride.

BODY
Yay! Bike ride! With friends?

EGO
w i t h. a d v e r s a r i e s.

BRAIN & BODY
Who are you?

The Group Ride starts off nice enough.

BODY
Woo! Bike ride with friends!

BRAIN
This is nice.

EGO
. . .

Then the pace increases.

BODY
Huh, we're getting tired. Seems earlier than usual.

BRAIN
No worries, this won't last long.

Then the pace increases again.

BODY
Wowza, this is hard.

BRAIN
If it doesn't stop soon, we can go home.

EGO
n o .  c r u s h.  t h e m.

BODY
Crush them?

BRAIN
Crush??

EGO
c r u s h.  t h e.  a d v e r s a r i e s.  c r u s h!  t h e m!

BODY
Crush them!

BRAIN
Hey, wait, this may be a bad idea.

You dig deeper than you ever have yet you still get dropped. Now you're back to riding alone.

BRAIN
What the heck was that?

BODY
We don't know what happened! But we had to stay with the group!

BRAIN
Well we didn't.

How was that?

BODY
Hard. But not too bad.

10 minutes later:
BODY
Bad. Bad bad bad bad bad bad! Bad things, bad feelings!

BRAIN
Can you do that stronger thing again?

BODY
We don't know, we'll try.

EGO
n e x t.  w e e k.
r e d e e m.

BRAIN & BODY
Who invited this guy?!


Ego takes you deep. Going deep puts you in a heavy recovery hole. Now you're hungry *and* tired. All the time. But ride after ride, week after week, you get better at going deep. After a couple rides, you realize you have to go deep riding by yourself. So you go deeper on Wednesday's Hill Repeats and you go longer on Monday's Long Ride and you go way deeper on Saturday's Group Ride.

A few months of this, even though you're getting fitter, faster, and stronger, the fatigue just won't let up. You can't sleep more at night, you can't eat much more. You're sore day after day.

Fun fact: you have to start resting. You have to build a new routine around recovery. When recovery requires equally conscious dosing as training, you've reached the Advanced phase. Things are about to get complicated.