Putting on more weight is not necessarily going to make you faster by somehow upping your FTP to huge new heights.
Build your aerobic engine around the body that you have and maximize its potential. Plenty of flyweights can hang with the big dogs on the flats.
Yes because putting on âmore weightâ also will make you âbiggerâ, and harder to push your new girth through the air. Be happy you are âskinnyâ. Work on the engine you do have.
Just because you are maintaining weight does not mean you are not in negative energy balance. The human body is an amazing biological machine that will do what it can to maintain homeostasis. Typically if you are under fuelling, recovery and adaptations are reduced or non-existent, i.e your FTP stagnates, sound familiar?
Headwind conditions penalise riders with low FTP/CdA. Putting on weight wonât increase your FTP. Overall body conditioning working on flexibility and mobility to enable you to hold a more aero position will help and will involve putting on negligble amounts of muscle mass.
@Power13 nailed it.
Sadly, itâs a process, and itâs a considerably long one. Itâs not tires, gels, or elbows bent, itâs foundation and ability to ride in a group. Those âmarginal gainsâ will come.
About group rides, you have to learn how to ride comfortably, and very close to the front guy. And thatâs a process that doesnât depend only on you. You need to develop a sense of who is a good guy is to follow. There are all sorts of riders. The unpredictable ones, the âdo not signal onesâ, the inexperienced ones, and there are the âgood guys to followâ. They donât do crazy movements, they ride and pull steady. You can glue to the latter ones and ride with peace of mind. For the former you have to be more careful, keep a few cm more and glance at the road constantly.
Another thing is, although youâre a beginner, I wouldnât avoid doing some pulls. You have to learn how to pull, rotate, etc. Donât go crazy, ride 1 min at 250w in your case, youâll still need 1 min to reconnect, so itâll be 2min in total. Donât go crazy and try to push 300w to impress someone.
EDITED:
I forgot to mention, that you have to avoid unnecessary surges by riding steadily. Ex. you lost 1 meter from the guy in front of you, donât go crazy and put 400w to close the âgapâ. If you do that, youâll go too fast and then have to brake, and then push again. Itâs terrible for the group (the rider behind you) and your energy management. Try and go steady, the more fluid the better, thatâs why the comment on âfind a good guy to followâ.
This is great advice as well. Get into the habit of building good group riding skills, but donât feel the need to pull as hard as everyone else. A short pull that you feel is sustainable is enough, and again, let people know your intentions. Theyâll likely be more understanding and helpful if they know your goals and where youâre coming from.
I totally forgot to mention this stuff too. 
Learning how to ride in a draft well and be efficient with your energy is absolutely huge in these situations. 
Sometimes you are simply outclassed by a certain group and the real answer is to find another group. Wednesday Night Worlds is not for everybody.
When I was racing in my 20s I could hang with the A group. Iâm 58 now and can no longer hang with the A group. I donât want to ride 15+ hours a week like itâs a part time job and Iâm not motivated to starve myself and loose that last 10 pounds. Plus the A group kids have 30 years on me now. It is what it is.
Cant argue with the fueling as its defo something ill work to improve, and likewise your comments about a headwind, however lighter riders are also penalised with headwinds given they have a lower mass whilst travelling at the same speed as the heavy riders and thus lower momentum. That reduced stored energy sees a bigger impact from gusts etc, albeit not so much persistent winds.
Absolutely noticed the difference in following individuals even after only two sessions with them. One guy on the first week was great to follow, could sit a few inches off his wheel and know exactly what was going on. Taking turns with him was also great as on his pull in, there was an expected let off which naturally let me progress to the front and pull in.
Compared to last week, the guy I was pulling behind was a bit more edgy. Not so bad being directly behind, but when it was my turn to overtake him & pull onto the front, it felt like he was still giving it full beans & gapping the guy behind him, making my job infinitely harder to get infront of his wheel.
Whilst none of us can escape the effects of age and im certainly not daft enough to believe I can keep up with pros etc (And like you say, when your well past your 20âs you probably shouldnt try to), I think I have to try to get the most of myself, whilst maintaining a life balance to suits a 39yr old with 3 kids & a full time career to look after.
It may be where I am now & no further progress can be made, but with room for more TSS, plenty of experience to take in with group riding etiquette and piss poor nutrition, Im sure I can atleast try to close that gap on these guys.
Plus, some of them are older than me by a good 10-15 years, so I should catch them eventually 
You should try! You can improve a bit. I didnât throw in the group ride towel until my late 50s and that was only because we moved and road riding is crap around here and there are no good groups.
Let me tell you about those fast old geezers. They are ones that have been doing it for years and years. They stayed in it because they were good and found success in cycling. They also treat cycling like itâs their 2nd job.
The fastest people in my last two groups were 40-50 year old ex pros and cat 1s. We even had a 67 year old former Olympian who could still drop me in a heartbeat despite being 13 years older than me.
While that is not incorrect, you are likely overestimating the impact of weight alone. The brutal truth is that the power output youâre expected to make vs. the power output you are able to make is causing you to get dropped. Gaining weight will slow you down unless you also gain at the same or ideally faster pace. You wonât magically stay with your group by putting on 10kg unless you also add 50W.
I ride with the local A groups, and while we have some power, weâre donât currently have any Cat 1 riders, so weâre not that fast. On the faster rides, 200W @ 62kg will get you dropped pretty quickly unless you stay on the back. We just had a rider whose FTP is under 200W hang on with us until a surge 3-4km ahead of a sprint spot, and they managed to do it by staying on the back of the group the entire time. On the same ride, someone got popped after their first pull. The pull wasnât long or hard, they are much heavier (80kg+ Iâd bet), have a higher FTP, but the wkg was just not enough to hang on. If they stayed on the back, theyâd have hung on too âŚ
Youâre nowhere near a peak. I am 42, have 4 kids aged 10 to 17, a full time job, and have âonlyâ been riding 5 years. Iâm not genetically gifted, but I was able to get my power up significantly compared to yours through more work (volume/tss). I see no reason you couldnât reach 4wkg+ IF you make it a desire and priority to train more. But that part is up to you and whether it is worth it to you 
This is good perspective. Find the right balance, train smart, and be happy with wherever the fitness falls.
Sorry, but as an old fart, I canât let that comment go. Around here, the 40+ and 50+ represent a majority of the top finishers in most events and they are often the ones pushing the pace in fast group rides. They may not be on the top step of the overall podium, but they are on average much faster than the 20+ and 30+ guys. Much of that is the self-selection since the old guys still riding are the ones with decades of training in their legs, but there are monsters in those age groups. Also, keep in mind that as many of us age, we also have less time constraints compared to the young guns and can train more. Iâve not one of those âoldâ monsters, but I do OK and Iâve never been faster/stronger than I am in my mid 50âs. Lots of time to train and not too many life stresses will do that.
100%âŚIâm stronger at 58 than I ever was in my 20âs or 30âs. A lot of that is due to improved training and significantly increasing my volume over the last 5-7 years, but the reality is that there there are bunch of really fast 50 YOâs in our area and we are some of the strongest riders around.
Iâll second this - as a 42 year old (young by some standards, old by others), Iâm faster than most younger ones locally on road. No competition on MTB and less so in CX as that requires skill that I donât have and have not practiced as much âŚ
More watts is great in the long run but, on the skill front, whether you want to win races or just not get dropped, you need to master the ability to do the minimum watts necessary in any particular scenario. Group riding (or racing) rewards the lazy. You need to cultivate a mindset where youâd be just as excited about doing that first 1/3rd of the ride at a 200w average skillfully buried in the pack as you would be about doing it at the front at 300 watts 
Great consistent drafting is key but so is anticipating accelerations so you can minimize what you need to put out to stay in the draft. Surges happen but donât create them for yourself. And, minimizing or even skipping pulls when necessary is key too.
Of course, once you can, destroying yourself at the front of a fast group is super fun and good training. But for now, take advantage of the opportunity/necessity of learning drafting and pack skills and do whatever you have to do to make it to the end of the ride.
You may be more genetically gifted than Matt though. You never know.
Iâve been in the sport for decades. Iâve seen people who didnât get faster and Iâve seen guys start training and then in 3 months blow by people who have been training consistently for five years.
For those of you who are faster in your 40s or 50s, you just didnât train/race in your 20s. Iâm 58 now and I did train and race in my 20s and I absolutely know that I will never be as fast or as thin as I once was. That ship has sailed now. Iâm still fast for my age and faster than a lot of people but not as fast as the race hardened 20 or 30 somethings. Iâm also not willing to make cycling my part-time job.
Guess those were hallucinations then. 
I usually ignore you Power and will continue to after this post but seriously, if you are faster in your 50s than your 20s, it was because you didnât know what you were doing when you were in your 20s.
You may be right, but I also put in more than 325TSS/week which is what Matt will have to do to get the power numbers up. That was my point, though I may not have been clear - heâs nowhere near the top, not at 325TSS/week. He may be near the top based on the amount of time/desire he has to invest into his fitness today, but the limiter is not his genetic potential at this state.
Imagine if I he had said something like this immediately after the part you initially quotedâŚ
oh waitâŚ
It is true that a lot of just relied on natural ability when we were younger and probably didnât train as well or as hard as we could/should have. I know for sure I goofed off my entire swim career in my teens and just figured the kids faster were better, not training harder. Riding there was 0 structure, didnât even know it was a thing.
We still raced and trained in our 20s (ok most of my 20s I didnât), but he also did say that he is doing it better now. So maybe if you are going to ignore someone, ignore everything or donât ignore anything instead of picking and choosing what you are going to criticize someone on.
I am confused by the eye roll. Are you saying that physiological limits in your 40-50âs can be higher than when you are in your 20âs?
