Heathpack 

The interesting thing for me was that once upon a time, I only knew how to "train" by adding volume. I kind of rode some HR-based intervals twice a week, but I thought I couldn't do back-to-back interval workouts and that I had to take a day off in between to recover, so interval workouts seemed to hold me bacl volume-wise. And I didn't realize at the time how influenced I was by Strava- which is mostly about counting miles and elevation gain and time on the bike. It was just hard for me as a newby to really prioritize what I needed to work on to improve my cycling. I realize now that the Stravafication of my cycling was holding me back. Even though endurance is my forte, it's no problem for me to ride 100-200 mile rides, too much volume just leaves me fatigued. I didn't feel fatigued, but it would make me ride slower when I'd go out to do my next epic thing.

Then I got a power meter because I wanted to understand training. Then I got a coach because I wanted to understand the power data. Then I learned what an interval workout was really like, lol.

I remember when coach first looked at my data he commented that I had surprisingly poor aerobic conditioning for someone who rode as much as me. I thought, "how could that be? I ride 150-200 mile per week, 10k+ ft climbing? I'm still going strong when other people fade.". But I eventually came to understand it- it's that high-end aerobic conditioning, the ability to ride around threshold that I was lacking. It's been an interesting process. I kind of imagined previously that going fast would involve developing a top-end short-duration speed and that would drag speed at all the other durations up as well. But improving speed for me has been all about being able to sustain hard efforts longer and longer. This used to confuse me when it was happening because I'd be out riding with friends and something would happen that picked up our pace. Eventually maybe 10 minutes would go by and I'd realize I was the only one still riding hard and my friends were back at the last stop light.

So now I get the "poor aerobic conditioning comment". It's that ability to not just produce speed but to sustain it.

Anyway, OP, training is not pseudo-science by any means. I do all the standard training things- interval workouts, long rides, recovery rides, rest days. I ride less volume & greater intensity than I did previously. No way does everyone need to train like this, but it's helpful if you're racing. You really do in that scenario want to start to be pretty focused about your cycling, less haphazard. The younger you are, the more wiggle room you have to survive a sub-optimal training plan. But still, having an optimized training plan makes it more fun because you get results more efficiently.