Introducing Groups

Indoor cycling is mostly a solo activity. You put on headphones, start a workout, and stare at a screen for an hour. Groups change that. They turn Ride Cave into a shared space where you and your friends can talk, strategize, and optionally ride together—regardless of what platform everyone is using.

What Groups Are

A group is a voice-enabled hangout for up to 20 people. When you create one, you get a shareable link and a randomly generated name like Swift Pedalers or Blazing Crushers. Send the link to friends, they click it, and everyone lands in the same room with live voice chat.

That is it at its core. No workout required. No trainer required. You can create a group just to talk while everyone does their own thing. Think of it as a voice channel for cyclists.

Cross-Platform by Default

Here is the thing about indoor cycling right now: your friend is on Zwift, your teammate uses TrainerRoad, and you are on Ride Cave. Normally this means you train in isolation even though you are all riding at the same time.

Groups solve this. Because voice chat runs through Ride Cave independently of whatever workout app you are using, anyone can join a group from their browser while their trainer is connected to any platform. Your friend does their Zwift group ride, your teammate follows their TrainerRoad plan, and you do a Ride Cave workout—all while chatting in the same group. You just need a browser tab open.

This makes groups useful for coaching calls, team strategy sessions, training camp coordination, or just having company on a Tuesday morning ride. The voice connection does not care what is controlling your trainer.

Adding a Workout

Groups become group rides when someone suggests a workout. Any participant can propose a workout from the library, and the host decides whether to accept it. If they do, a ten-second countdown syncs everyone up and the workout begins simultaneously for all riders with connected trainers.

Everyone runs the workout independently at their own pace. If you need to pause or fall behind, a catch-up button lets you jump to where anyone else is in the workout. You see each other's real-time power, cadence, and heart rate. A visualization shows the whole crew color-coded by power zone, so you can see who is cruising and who is buried. And if someone needs encouragement, you can send them a cowbell.

The workout is optional. Participants without a connected trainer can still hang out in the group, chat, and watch the ride unfold. When the workout ends, the group stays active so everyone can keep talking.

How It Works

Creating a group takes one click. From the ride page, hit the Group button and select New Group. Share the link or the group name with whoever you want to join. They can enter the name directly or click the link to join automatically.

Voice controls are simple: spacebar to mute and unmute, plus a deafen button if you want to block incoming audio while you focus. The host can silence the entire group if things get noisy. Speaking indicators show who is talking, both in the participant list and in the crew visualization.

Groups stay active for up to 90 minutes. If everyone leaves except one person, the group will wind down after a few minutes of inactivity. The host can also end the group at any time.

Use Cases

We built groups to be flexible. Some ways people are using them:

Training partners. Two or three friends who normally ride together outdoors can maintain that connection indoors. Same conversation, same accountability, different locations.

Coaching workout classes. A coach creates a group, assigns a workout, and provides real-time feedback while watching everyone's power data. Voice makes the interaction natural—no typing mid-interval.

Cross-platform hangouts. Your cycling club has members spread across Zwift, TrainerRoad, Rouvy, and Ride Cave. A group gives everyone a shared space to connect during their individual sessions.

Race strategy. Before an event, your team joins a group to talk through tactics while warming up. Or during a longer training block, use the voice channel to keep morale up and share how the session is going.

Early Access and Pricing

Groups are new and we are actively stabilizing the infrastructure. During this early period, free users get one group per month to try it out. It only counts against your limit if you stay for more than fifteen minutes, so quick test runs are free. Cave Crew members get unlimited groups along with all their other perks.

We want to get this right. If you run into issues or have ideas for how groups should work, let us know. This is the beginning of making indoor cycling genuinely social—not just parallel solo efforts that happen to share a virtual road.