Turning 42 this year, 173 cm (5’8"), 63-65kg depending on the day. Started riding in 2019 and training later that year. Since 2020, average 400-450 hrs/year, though I only follow structured training for 3-4 months of the year, and just ride remainder of the year.
Took 4-6 months to reach and break 4wkg, peaking at 4.4-4.5wkg indoors and slightly higher outdoors. Finished off-season in November last year at around 3.75wkg and currently around 4.2wkg. I am noticing a slight a decline over last couple years based on my indoor power numbers, but I do wonder if any part of that is due to trainer wear or just aging. Outdoor power and indoor power measured with outdoor PMs seem largely unaffected, and read 8-10% higher.
Volume doesn’t directly raise your FTP. It builds a lot of stamina though, which you can use to train specifically for FTP if that’s what you want to do at some point.
The last 0.4 is within reach. Lay on the SST and threshold workouts. You’ll have to give up the long rides during this period though, so there’s always a tradeoff.
Assuming you’ve built a high volume base, there is no reason long rides and SS/threshold workouts can’t coexist (including working the intervals into your long rides). It’s actually a really common way to train for folks who aren’t time constrained. You can’t do hard stuff every day, but that’s true whether you are also doing long rides or not.
I’ve hovered between ~4.5 W/kg in my late 20s to around 3.5 W/Kg last year as I gained some weight and lacked consistency due to job and kid demands.
My FTP hasn’t changed much over the last 10-15 years. I’ll always get to around the same spot after 2-3 months of consistent training, but in a real shocker I can’t eat like I did in my 20s as at 40. Who’d have thought.
Getting back close again so far this year, at 3.9 now using altitude FTP (non-adjusted). Doing TR low volume (non-masters) plan. I’m masters age, but find 3 intensity rides a week is totally doable on LV plan for me at least. The last year or two I struggled holding my early spring form through summer as I added more volume, so plan to change to masters plan or generally reduce intensity and add volume here starting in a month or two.
For weight, I’ve lost about ~15 pounds since end of last year with some diet changes that I don’t feel have been too obtrusive. I did a combination of food logging via MyFitnessPal to identify the worst offenders in my diet as well as Dry January to understand how alcohol affected my diet and sleep. I’ve resumed having the occasional beer, but am more mindful of it and drink sparingly. Lastly, while I know meal replacement drinks are somewhat controversial due to being highly processed, I’ve had really good results with replacing breakfast with Huel Black. High protein in the morning seems to curve other cravings later for me. YMMV.
Not necessarily, you can create your own smoothie recipes easily, with organic fresh or frozen ingredients from known sources. I have been on breakfast smoothies for last 5 years, no sudden cravings, plus yearly blood samples have been always ok.
+1. It’s been about 4 years since I’ve made it to my target race weight. Still holding out hope that this is the year…
Honestly, I think it’s as much about fighting off complacency as I age as it is about physiological changes. I get within ~5lbs of my target and then often lose the drive/discipline to drop those really difficult final pounds of extra fat.
Agreed there, I meant the processed replacement shakes (huel, Soylent, ka’chava) are more controversial since they have a lot of ultra processed ingredients. My body comp and blood test values have improved using them, but I don’t pretend that it’s “clean” food in the ideal sense of eating whole unprocessed foods. I don’t have time for anything else in the morning besides grab and go so I accept the compromise.
You are lucky to be on the right side of the bell curve distribution. I rode regularly with Kent Bostick, former Olympian and World Champion. He was a regular on our Saturday group ride. He’s 13 years older than me and I could barely hold his wheel while he was taking a pull at the front at over 300 watts.
This is an interesting thread and food for thought. I’m primarily a runner (marathons/ultras) and put in a lot of time there, but tend to hop on the trainer here and there mainly as a low impact stimulus or after a race while I’m recovering.
I’m looking to add more cycling and maybe do some gravel races next year, especially as I get older I assume I won’t be able to keep up the running volume/intensity.
For context, I did a total of 8 hours on the bike ALL YEAR in 2023. I took an FTP ramp test on 12/27 with a 3.6 w/kg which I was happy with. I’ve been doing some structured bike workouts 1-2x per week in 2024 (24 total hours, so 2-3 hrs per week) on top of running, and was able to hit a 20 minute power this morning of 320W (~304 FTP for 3.95 w/kg).
I’m happy with that progress on such small bike volume in 2.5 months, which leads me to think I should probably put more time into the training come Autumn/Winter (after my running season) to see what I can push it up to.
I’m not sure this is accurate. I think there’s quite a lot of research about Z2 building mitochondrial density, which is a key factor in FTP. There’s certainly a lot of ‘anecdata’ about riders significantly increasing their volume, doing very little in the way of structured work, and seeing improvements in ramp test and 20m power.
The best coach I know repeatedly states that a consistent 15 hours in the saddle a week at pretty low intensity would make the vast majority of amateurs a lot faster, and my own personal experience chimes with that.
I respectfully disagree. I just crossed 4 w/kg on almost entirely endurance rides, with what can only be described as zone 2. My calendar is stacked with weeks of .68-.78 rides. Volume is literally all you need for ftp. It’s not the only thing that works, but it does work.
On a side note I always thought the right thing to do as a cyclist was to promote your ‘best’ number. Weigh nearly 90kg? Express your power in watts. :D. 40k tter? use ftp. Randonneur? talk in hundreds of kms. 65kg and climb mountains talk about 15 minute w/kg. 1500 watts on a sprint at the end of a hard two hour race, or maybe it’s 17w/kg for 15 seconds?
Find the thing that makes you proud, and talk it up. Isn’t that the cyclists way?
I’ve done high volume training and while my overall fitness did improve, it wasn’t an adequate substitute for threshold training. In 1-2 hour races where I’d need to hold threshold for extended periods of time, my results suffered.
On the flip side, back to back centuries or gravel races on Sat/Sun were no problem.
All this reminds me of a funny story told about a former British Olympic coach.
At some point a few years ago he basically stopped coaching weekend warriors, as he got fed up with their inconsistency and obsession with the magic interval session. So now whenever anyone asks him to coach them, he sets them a task first, on the understanding that if they pass it, he’ll coach them, and if they don’t, he won’t.
The task is this: over the next 2 weeks, ride for a total of at least 20 hours, and ride on at least 12 days. Make sure your HR never spends more than a few minutes at over 75% of max.
Barely anybody makes the cut.
And the kicker is, if someone does pass, their first month of coaching is… exactly the same again
It’s told as a bit of a joke, but the moral is very clear.
My goal events this year are a 200km gravel race and a 185km mountainous road event. I’ve learned the hard way that intensity just doesn’t build the fitness I need for those type of events. If I was looking at setting a PB in a 10 or 25 mile TT, I might be more inclined to agree with you, as I do think the muscular endurance needed there is somewhat specific. But for general aerobic fitness, I think ‘the most volume you can tolerate and fit into your life’ is likely to yield the best results for most.
It think there’s way more totally range in terms of genetic potential than this conversation acknowledges. That is, I bet if you took a random slice of 100 people (let’s make them non-obese for this fantasy exercise) and actually put them though a year of structured training, perhaps only 20% would end up above 4 w/kg.
If you’re on the low end of the bell curve in terms of natural VO2 max etc., endurance workouts are just no fun and you’re almost certain to have avoided them your whole life. I’d bet the majority of folks on here have some youth athletic background, and probably stuck with that (and voluntarily keep it up as adults) because they are gifted with relatively solid metabolic fitness.
Point is I think there’s a lot of natural selection in the TR pool and cause/effect are hard to separate. If you have been doing structured training for a year you may well be around 4 w/kg, but also if you drew the short straw genetically you’re less likely to stick to structured training in the first place, or to have run track or swam or whatever as a youth, or to even want to go out and exercise as a hobby at all.
Long Z2 rides are effective for that exact reason - they are much easier to recover from for a given training stress volume compared to higher intensity work. It’s fairly accepted training practice that most folks can’t handle more than 2-3 days of intensity per week and at that point added training stress would typically be prescribed as Z2 work. Whether I’m doing 400 tss per week or 900 tss, I’m still limited to 2-3 hard sessions. If you want to increase training stress, long rides are the most manageable way to do it (ie - easiest to absorb and recover from). Clearly, there are people who benefit from piling on a bunch of Z2 work (ie - long rides) in addition to their hard interval sessions. If this wasn’t the case, why would anyone train more than 6-8 hours per week (since your argument seems to be that they can’t recover from the long rides on top of their hard rides)?
