Keep Together: One Group, Whatever the Watts
Hosts can now turn on Keep together for a Group Ride or Group Run, so everyone stays in one bunch to the finish while each rider saves the distance and speed their own effort earned.
Put a 150 W rider and a 300 W rider in the same Group Ride and they used to be riding alone within minutes. A few of you asked us for a way to keep a social ride social. Keep together is our answer, and it is live on Group Rides now.
It is free for everyone, like the rest of Group Rides.
How to turn it on
Host a Group Ride on any eRoute and, in the ride's Options, switch on Keep together. Tap the setting under it to choose the window: how far a rider can roam from the group before Keep together steps in. It goes from 5 m for a tight bunch where everyone is on each other's wheels to 50 m for a loose group that can string out, and starts at 15 m.
Attach a workout to the ride and Keep together switches on by default, since a workout ride is usually one the group wants to do together. You can still turn it off.
What it feels like
Inside the window nothing changes. You ride on your own power, so drafting, attacks and sprints all work exactly as they did. Drift outside it and Keep together eases your place on the road back toward the group. If you fall back you are pulled up; if you ride away off the front you are held with the group.
So a pull or a hold never feels like a glitch, a small pill tells you in one word: Regrouping while you are being pulled up, Tethered while you are held at the front, and nothing at all while you are riding in the group. Stop pedalling for 10 seconds and you are Dropped; pedal again and you are brought back. With a workout attached that wait is 30 seconds, so an easy recovery is never mistaken for a stop.
Your trainer stays yours
Keep together only moves where you are on the road. It never touches your watts or your resistance. In SIM mode your trainer gives you the grade where you are with the group, so you climb the hill the group is on. In ERG mode your targets do not change at all.
Honest numbers
This is the part we cared about most. The usual way of keeping a group together saves the group's speed as yours, which puts flattering times into your history and onto segment leaderboards. Ride Cave keeps the two apart. Your saved distance, speed and climbing come from your own power on the road you actually rode, so a hard climb still counts as a hard climb, and the extra metres the group gave you are not credited.
A ride that Keep together moved saves without a GPS track, so an upload never carries the group's pace as yours, and your time stays off the eRoute's leaderboard. A rider the group never had to move saves a normal ride. Results show the group riding in together with no places, and your ride summary notes that the ride was kept together.
Workouts, races and the rules
With a workout attached, everyone rides each interval at their own targets, and Skip is off so nobody runs ahead of the group's workout. Group Races and solo eRoutes never use Keep together: when it is a race, the strongest rider still wins.
Group Runs too
Keep together was built once for every sport, and running is the next to plug in. Host a Group Run with Keep together and runners at different paces stay in one pack, with surges and sprints still working inside the window. Each runner saves their own distance and pace.
Get started
Open any eRoute, host a Group Ride or Group Run, and turn on Keep together. Read more on the Keep together page, and tell us how your first ride together goes.
