ABC's of Group Riding

I've been riding with the Bicycle Club of Philadelphia since the end of November/beginning of December and although I started off doing a few D rides to get comfy in a group, I've been doing mostly C level rides on Sundays and most recently C+ training rides on Thursdays and Saturdays. What do the class levels mean? Here you go:

Class	Difficulty	Rate
Class A	Difficult, 45 to 100+ miles	18-20mph average on flat terrain 16-18mph average on rolling/hilly terrain 15-16mph average on very hilly terrain
Class B	Advanced, 25 to 90 miles	15-18mph average on flat terrain 13-16mph average on rolling/hilly terrain 12-14mph average on very hilly terrain
Class C	Moderate, 15 to 75 miles	12-15mph average on flat terrain 10-13mph average on rolling/hilly terrain 9-11mph average on very hilly terrain
Class D	Easy, 10 to 25 miles	8-11mph average on flat terrain 4-7mph average on more hilly terrain

My average right now is 15 mph, which puts me at a C+/B- level. A few people in my group have suggested I go for a B ride and I thought about it but, was nervous. I do well on C+ rides, but we also regroup and stop for snackies (Sat ride) and a lot of the B rides don't regroup and if you get dropped you are on your own. The distances covered are usually longer too.

Lucky for me I got to try out a B ride on my C+ ride on Saturday. We had about 25 people show up for our ride and it was a bit unmanageable. There was a lot of regrouping so it was suggested that the stronger riders follow Andy to the break point so 8 of us took off and rode a B pace. It was heaven. After the break we continued on at the B pace all the way back to Philly and it felt awesome. It took a bit more work to stay at that pace, but it was totally manageable. Yay me.

The next day I was a bit tired but I decided to do my first official B- ride out to Paoli. All new people, so I was a bit nervous at first (wandered accidentally over to the A riders, ha). I had nothing to be worried about as everyone was pleasant and we had a lovely, if not hot, ride out to Paoli and back. 74 miles, 3600 ft of climbing and I was officially spent! It was more challenging than other rides, but not by a huge margin and I was never in danger of being dropped. The pace was a bit slower than expected, but the previous days riding and the heat kinda zapped all of us, but if I had to go faster I would have been able to do that.

There you have it. I'm going to try to do at least one B ride on the weekends and maybe one during the week if something gets added.