Originally Posted by
BikeWNC
With your goals, I would first examine what you ride now. You ride 5-6 days a week which is great, but are all these rides short? Your schedule is very agreeable to getting in a couple longer rides a week. Work on extending your ride length first. Then on days you can only ride for an hour, ride harder. It doesn't have to be scientific at this point. Think of your effort as a curve. Longer rides require backing off on the effort while shorter rides you can push it. Soon enough you will build endurance on the longer rides and speed on the shorter rides. Those will eventually start to blend so that your longer rides get faster. Pay attention to how you feel, allow enough rest and record your rides so that you can chart your progress.
This + Focus on weight loss and here is why. Women produce a lot less power than men. But lower weight and a smaller frontal area have the same impact from a power perspective. I understand you do not have hills but bear with me on the point. 20 pounds correlates to approximately 30 watts of power climbing an 8% grade. I suspect you make about 100 watts. 30 watts is a huge percentage of your power generating capability. Similarly, losing weight will slightly reduce your frontal area so that you can go faster with the same power. Losing weight increases your ability to reject heat and allows you to make more power at higher ambient temperatures. If your cycling remains the same and you lose weight, you will go faster and feel a lot better.
In terms of degrees of difficulty in getting faster here is the Hermes rankings:
Conformity = easy. The least difficult part of cycling is shaving ones legs. You probably already do that.
Seriously, observe what better cyclists wear and how they behave and copy as appropriate.
Weight loss = moderate. Pure discipline....stop eating as much and focus on higher quality food.
Ride harder = difficult. Most would think that riding harder is easier than weight loss. Riding harder requires more rest, more chance of injury and takes a lot of discipline to keep improving. We are all oxygen limited and it takes a long time to improve oxygen intake, transport and utilization. Losing a few pounds can happen quickly and its impact is positive all the time even when it is difficult to ride because one is tired. And there is little chance of injury.