I tend to average 20-25 hours a week
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Crazy volume! Hoping to average 7h per week this year (350-360 looking doable for the year), never previously averaged 6 hours per week, never been over 300h for the year so to anyone else who cannot fathom 20 hours per week, then there is hope to get near 5wkg or probably above on lower hours.
I have noticed this year that consistency (barely had any poor weeks) and that slight increase in hours has worked wonders, power pbs across the board (FTP was up 20W) and this led to a high wkg of 4.85-4.9 at one point in spring.
I’d be keen to hear from riders development as their load increased. Was this the key?
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I’ve posted in detail further up but I can mention again I average 10h/w, also when I look at my TrainingPeaks my 28 day TSS is above 2000 which usually includes any easier week
Some big hours per week there! Are these double sessions per day or just one big session (3-4hrs) each day?
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That’s exactly what this thread is about though…sharing successful experiences in the hopes that it can help other riders. I don’t see anyone saying “you must do this” but just “this is what I find to work”
What I’ve found is that you can get a pretty similar 20min power on 12 hours and 20 hours a week. But the added endurance in a 20 hour week enables me to spend far more time at near that intensity in a session without fatiguing.
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Did you just tack on extra endurance work onto the sessions @Charlie_Botterill? Eg finish a sweet spot/threshold session and add on +45-60min of Endurance work? Or did you keep the Endurance sessions completely separate from the other sessions?
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Some double days - 1h easy pre-breakfast, then 2h interval session pre-dinner. One long 5h ride at the weekend eats up a lot of the hours.
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Yeah, that is a staple of my training!!!
Here’s my strava if you want any ideas 
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Great insight @d_diston. Thanks for sharing! I’d love to do a program like that. Mat Hayman did a very similar training set up preparing for Paris Roubaix. Easy endurance session in the morning and then a more targeted interval workout at night.
Thanks @Charlie_Botterill … it seems like the addition of Endurance at the end of the session is the way to go! The General Build HV program has quite a few Endurance extensions on the end of the interval sessions and now I know why! I might look at extending those Endurance tack on’s even further to see if I can get to 12-14hrs a week which is just inside the realm of capabilities for me whilst also juggling family life and work life. 20hrs a week is only possible over summer holidays!
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Thanks for sharing guys !
How many years of structured training did it take you to get there ?
3-4 year messing around, then last 5 have been proper structured 10h p/w. Increased volume steadily over the past 2 years, recently making step to 20h (though a lot of this is easy).
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Well, I’m a bit odd 
, I’ve only actually been riding a bike for 3 years, 2 of which have been structured training (since I got a power meter). In that time I’ve stayed the same weight but have added 80W to my FTP.
I previously played football at a high level representing Reading FC’s youth team as well as competing in the 800m so already had a fairly decent level of fitness. Unfortunately, a knee injury means cycling and swimming is all I can really do.
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I think I had 10 years of long distance and club riding. Which built a good base but when I finally saw a coach I was told up to 16,000 miles was too much. After halving the mileage it was about 3.5 years of structured which took me too the brink then and then weight loss post my operation and fighting chemo that took me over it. (4.5 years structured training in total). After 6months though through big losses in power and slight weight gain I’m back below it.
Summary:
2019 - 417hours of which 85% unstructured training
2020 - 569hours all structured
Progression:
JULY 2019 - 4.0w/kg (280w), estimated with a cp20 of 299w, 3 months after starting to ride seriously (but unstructured).
SEP 2019 - 4.2w/kg (295w), estimated with a cp20 of 315w, end of seasonNOV 2019 - 3.4w/kg (245w), test done by coach - begin of disappointing structured training
DEC 2019 - 3.8w/kg (275w), test done on zwift - begin of serious structured training
MAR 2020 - 4.3w/kg (300w), test done by coach, CP60 of 309w, CP20 of 330w
MAY 2020 - 4.5w/kg (315w), CP20 of 340w
JUN 2020 - 4.6w/kg (320w), CP20 of 346w
SEP 2020 - 4.9w/kg (336w), CP20 of 354w (reached 68kg consistently)
Last race i got a sweet 373w (5.5w/kg) @ 20min which puts me at 350w FTP (5.14w/kg)
Sadly, to put things in perspective, this was a oneshot uphill race of around 20-30min and this effort didn’t even put me in the top10.
What i did:
- Volume is key, weekly average around 15hours. monday complete rest, tuesday/wednesday intervals, thursday endurance with sweetspot efforts. friday rest, saturday/sunday long rides (4-6h) with efforts on climbs. Plenty of >1000tss weeks
- I work with a zone system that puts zone 2 pretty high up at 70-80% of FTP. I found that this thing helped me a lot in putting power down on flats. I now average around 250/270 NP for long rides of 4+ hours
- Live in a mountainous area so that you can get those steady efforts at threshold. Do some of them on a flat.
- I didn’t, but next year i will, get an early all-in (20+ hours) training camp thingy if you want to get your weight down. I did that too late in the season but since I had no racing it ended up working well. It’s easy to keep the weight down once you’re there.
- Be obsessed by cycling
Now wondering where to go next
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Thank you for sharing !
Did you do that structure all year long ? How did you base look like if different ?
So until May I mostly did sweetspot and threshold intervals. 4 days a week on the trainer plus long rides outside.
Living in a mountainous area it is very easy to structure work with sweetspot/threshold on long hills, rest on the downhill, zone 2 on the flats in-between hills. This is really the bread and butter of my training.
From May I started doing some VO2 weeks alternated with more classic pyramidal weeks. I think I might have a lot to gain from VO2 work because I responded quite quickly and I’ve never focused too much on that side of training. Also lack of racing this year, being my first serious year, meant losing a lot of potential gains.
The volume was mostly the same. I didn’t do the classic recovery week structure. I seem to be able to handle well large volume of work (very important to eat lots of carbs).
I’ve had only 3/4 times during this year of 2 consecutive non-training days.
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Your progression is really impressive, in just 1 year. Did you also incorporate strength training at some point ?
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