Originally Posted by
CafeVelo
It's never occurred to me until this thread that I ride a lot more than the average roadie. When I started riding it was for weight loss, and I rode to a coffee shop about 10 miles from home, so I'd do 20 miles. When I got more serious, I just carried over the metric of 20 miles being the baseline for a ride, eventually that got translated to an hour being the baseline of riding, I ride almost every day, and end up riding 160-200+ miles a week. I do the "unofficial" Tuesday ride that leaves from the same parking lot as a scheduled ride wth the local cycling club. It's almost exclusively CAT racers, many 2-3, with a grab bag of 1's and 4's. The ride is brutal, and I think everyone there is doing about the same mileage as me, but many are doing far more focused training and coming in at the lower end of that range. Just about all the people I know who are successful are putting in about 10 or more hours a week though.
Well said and good advice to consider OP. Why the vast majority aren't CAT racer level.
1. desire
2. time
3. discipline in terms of what you eat and willingness to suffer to get faster. There is no other gateway other than to work your body harder...take it beyond its current level to get stronger. You can't do this with zone 2 and 3 riding. You need intensity. Btw, my mentality is...I can't do intervals...or seldom. I need to latch with local fast guys to push me as I don't like to get dropped.
Then there is the punishment of a hard A group ride strewn with CAT racers. I used to have more of an appetite for pain. A typical B ride is a bit too slow for me and a racer A ride too fast. So you need to find the right ride bottom line based upon the above.
To me training with a power meter just makes good sense. I have considered owning one but don't want to be abused by reminded how weak I am
and honestly, don't have the discipline to train to specific targets.
Below is an excellent video of an ex pro Daniel Lloyd worth watching to see how it can be used purposefully.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrzvzmtU50A
Brief bio of Daniel during his racing career. I like this guy because we are built the same
...I have a few pounds on him...he is very skinny...but in his prime he could hold 300 watts for 3 hours and actually beat Froome in a race.
He also talks about how a power meter helped:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqDKQ_t3KLw