Originally Posted by sprince

I don't consistently have the time required for one 4-5 hour ride, plus other rides the remainder of the week. Also as much as I like to ride, 4-5 hours reaches a point where I just don't care to sit on a bike that long, unless I'm actually going somewhere. For the next three months it's getting too hot to ride fast anyway, so I'm going to test out doing a slow and steady 2-3 hour ride once a week every week for a few months and see what happens. Which may only prove what I know already without answering either question, that working on the weakest link is low hanging fruit when looking for improvement.