Originally Posted by
Heathpack
Haha. I love training. Its my favorite part of cycling. My training is indeed very strictly structured. Yet it infuses my cycling with joy and pleasure. It is a magic thing to train hard and then go out on a ride and easily pull the boys through 20 miles of headwinds. Or pop up a 10% short hill like it is nothing. I love to hit my power targets so exactly that my coach accuses me of faking the data.
See ... the structured training program provided to the club was one-size fits all ... and never provided much in the way of improvement. Sure, I was a lot faster back then, but I was also a lot younger and in general rode more than I do now.
I rode those intervals week in and week out, through all sorts of weather, for 2 years ... and each week, my TT speed stayed pretty much the same.
That much misery ... no results ... no thanks.
And then I discovered that my strength is long distance cycling. When I was at my peak with that, I also discovered that I didn't really settle in and feel truly comfortable on the bicycle until I reached about the 100 km point. The first 100 km was usually rather restless and uncomfortable with various parts of my body telling me to go home ... but something always clicked about the 100 km point, and after that I was happy to continue cycling to 200 km, 300 km, 400 km, 600 km, 1000 km, and 1200 km.
Training for that involved riding lots ... and that I could do!