I have been invited to a no-drop group ride going up the Road to Sky Route. Does this mean that the whole group finishes in the time that the fastest riders do? I have never tried the Road to Sky route at all yet and would love to join a group to go up, but also wonder how long it might take and how I would figure that out. The ride starts at 6pm my time on our family pizza-baking night, so if I can be done in an hour or hour and a half, I am seriously wanting to try it. But if I am going to need much longer than that, I would have to regretfully wait for another group. Does anyone know how these no-drop rides work? My sense is that most of the riders who have been invited are much stronger than I am and I don’t want to be holding the group back either!
Is there any etiquette regarding regretfully declining an invitation? I don’t want to appear to be ignoring the invitation if I figure out that the timing isn’t really going to work.
My only attempt went at just under 2 w/kg and took ~1hr 40 minutes. so it depends on how high your watts are for the timeframe.
Assuming that it’s a Meetup with “keep together” switched on, the timing will be somewhere between that of the fastest and slowest riders. With Zwift trying to keep the bunch together, the fastest riders will be held back a bit, and the slowest will get a bit of a boost. Or just get as far as you can within the time limit, then tell the others you have to go, and end it there.
You might well be finished inside an hour and a half, but it probably won’t be less than hour unless everyone (including you) is pretty strong. Depends on the mix of riders. You can always skip the ride back down if you’re short on time - or better still, just get off your bike and leave your avatar to ride down on his own, so you still get that free XP.
Oh the invitation thing, just click to say you can’t go if that’s what you decide. Not everyone can go to every event they’re invited to - no-one will take offence.
It would be nice if you could message the organizer of the meetup, or comment on the meetup so everyone could see.
@Beth_Klawun I say go for it. If you run out of time, just quit the meetup and abandon the ride. I think you have a good chance of making it up in 90 minutes.
Thanks everyone! I think I’ll give it a try! I’m probably in over my head, but maybe it will be a good experience…
@Mike_Rowe_PBR , @Steve_Hammatt , @chris_benten1 I wanted to report back and thank you all again for your responses! I rode with the group on Friday and with the rubber-banding feature I made it up in just about exactly an hour and a half. Which I think means that they really pulled me along quite a bit. I am not the lightest rider and at 1.2ish w/kg I think it would have taken a lot longer by myself. The other riders were super nice and I’m really glad I went. I couldn’t resist riding down, which took a bit longer, so we ended up baking our pizzas later than usual, but that was a nice reward for all the hard work 
.