y’all ride a lot. I looked back at my history and I’ve averaged about 250 to at most low 300 hours per year over last decade. At my 4.5 w/kg peak in my 20s I was training ~15 hours a week as a triathlete, but the riding part of that was still less than 10 hours.
I turn 40 this year, so I expect a lot will continue to change with age as I can tolerate less intensity and need to add volume as a result, but given there’s some big numbers out there I’m throwing out an n=1 counterpoint.
LV ~5ish hours a week allows me to hit 4 w/kg at 6K feet of elevation, so I suppose a bit over if I used a sea level equivalent, but requires high adherence to plan. If I start adding in extra sessions to increase volume, I’ve gotten slower in the last 2-3 years rather than faster. I think that’s just tripping the age threshold of how much intensity I can recover from.
I think I could break through my ceiling proper volume and less intensity, but ain’t gonna happen for at least another decade given age of kids and other commitments.
The biggest change for me as a cyclist was when I stopped doing tri’s, but kept my volume pretty consistent.
I had raced on the road for ~20 years before taking up triathlon and was a decent, mid-pack Cat. 3. At the time, I thought 150 miles was a “big” week.
Once I started moving up to half and full distance tri’s, I learned a lot about scheduling volume out of sheer necessity.
When I stopped tri’s in 2018, I kept my volume but put it all on the bike and my fitness took off. It was noticeable and all my riding buddies were asking what changed.
Volume remains the single, best way to increase your fitness, especially if you are a newbie.
I did nothing special activity wise until I was around 26 and then I started cycling to work and that gradually morphed to include leisure. When I was around 32 I bought my first roadbike and joined a club shortly after then another club around 35. It would have been interesting to see what my FTP was in my late 30s, although I never had a PM. Although other than volume I’d been doing nothing specific so it maybe wasn’t that high. That volume did give me a good base I think for when I did start structured training at circa 40 and got a PM a year later. I forget the numbers/ dates but I think I topped out at circa 5w/kg. Then bang! Everyone (including me) wrongly thought it was overtraining but it was actually bowel cancer which I stupidly pressed on against for a year. On hindsight (that wonderful thing ) the signs were there, just not frequent enough to trigger alarm bells (sore or swollen stomachs and tiredness). A simple Bloodtest for iron a year later put the docs on the track to finding the cancer, if I had done that at the start it probably could have been a simple procedure and not a major op. When I was back on the bike again and 3kg lighter (the tumour/ removed colon) without muscle loss, I was around 4w/kg and once chemo was finished I had the motivation to push it briefly up to 5w/kg (lockdown helped with adding regular volume). Now at 48, I’ve kinda lost my motivation for pushing too hard or through harsh conditions (the nerve damage from the chemo makes the latter too unpleasant) and have ended up at circa 4w/kg. It probably would have fallen sooner but I still do a reasonable volume of cycling, IME that (volume) is what it takes to get to 4w/kg.
That’s your threshold and will be specific to you. There will be people older than you who will handle more intensity just fine. We are all on different trajectories.
My problem is I’m in meetings where I’m expected to talk for 90% of the day so I couldn’t swing it. I can get in an occasional ride if there’s an employee all hands webcast or something but that’s like once a quarter.
My equivalent of this is that I have a standing desk and walking pad / treadmill setup so I typically walk 15-20k steps a day while working. I should have mentioned that in my ‘I’ve lost 15 pounds over the last few months’ comments above as it’s probably been a big component. I don’t know if it has any tangential benefit on aerobic base, but I think it might.
On the weight side I’m 6’even and was 175 before, 160 now. So wasn’t particularly big before, but I was ~7% bodyfat in my triathlon days vs closer to 20% when I was at 175.
Yeah, talking and video meetings definitely don’t work unless it’s with my coach, but nobody else really would want to talk to me while I’m on the bike. But they way I look at it (for me anyways) is I have to make time to answer emails, clean out my inbox, etc.
I’ll frequently start work 6-7 AM, work through the morning then block 2 hours on my calendar 11-1 and get a recovery / endurance ride in while I clean out the inbox, and leave myself time for a quick shower and lunch and back for the afternoon.
If I have to ride tempo or higher, using the computer starts to become too much of a pain for me, so I’ll check in quickly, but generally then I’m starting to watch a movie, listen to a podcast, music, etc. - while just monitoring my phone and keeping the time blocked because I started work early.
Again, I’ve got the “No Kids” cheat code going for me…
Yeah obviously the walking treadmill doesn’t have the specificity of the bike but I take video meetings while walking all day and just have to explain to people very occasionally why I’m slowly bobbing along in the frame. It was a little awkward at first, but people get over it. On the bike work zoom would be a whole other level ha.
There’s also an extremely high overlap in this thread with people who regularly post in the Leadville thread. It’s generally accepted (and generally true in my experience) that 4 W/Kg is the threshold to have a realistic chance at sub-9 at LT100, so people who do that event have a high fixation in meeting this particular metric and are really interested in the best way to get there.
I did 10-15hr pre-direct drive trainers and pre work from home and no idea how I did it. Now with the awesome trainers and working from home, volume in theory is simple. Except now I also have kids and a wife, lol. Still managing 8-12hr weeks but kind of sacrificing quality on other parts of life to do it.
At 4.3w/kg now but have been as high as 4.7w/kg. Similar watts just 15lbs heavier these days. 1000s of hours of hard training to get there. There is no shortcut without genetics.
This is one of Nate’s charts. It shows that 4 watts/kg is not a slam dunk. It’s easier for 20 year olds, and more and more unlikely north of 50.
I was around 4 watts/kg when I was in my late 20s. It took training 8-10 hours per week and racing twice a week for 5+ years. And I figure that I have slightly above average athletic genetics. I was never the slow kid in school, in cross country, or on the swim team nor was I one of the best - always just pretty good.
It’s good data, but possibly a little misleading without the context of the raw numbers (beyond the percentages). While the “kids” in their late 20’s and early 30’s are usually on the top step of the podium at many of the races I attend, it’s not unusual to have 40+ and 50+ guys holding a lot of high positions. As a point of reference, there were more 40+ and 50+ guys going under 8 hours at leadville last year than 20+ and 30+ (not counting the pro field). Yeah, there were many more masters at the event, but even just looking at percentages - there were a higher percentage men in the 40+ category going under 8 hours compared to percentage of men in the 30+. I don’t do road races much anymore, so this is gravel and marathon XC where I see this (so maybe the young guns are all racing road or XCO these days). The percentages are informative, but I’d speculate that the ~2% of 50+ guys over 4 w/KG could be a decent sized number. There is also probably some heavy population bias here where you have a very different profile for young athletes using TR vs. the profile of older athletes. As a young rider starting out with limited funds for coaching, TR seems like a really good fit and I’d bet a lot of these young riders are full of piss and vinegar ready to train. TR is also a good fit for older athletes, but I’d bet a good percentage of the older population TR is a little less focused on crushing themselves with training for races, etc., maybe a little more focused on getting back some of the fitness from their youth (ie smaller percentage wanting to race competitively). That’s all just speculation, I just know by looking at race results from the events I go to that the percentage of fast finishers based on age group doesn’t align with the TR FTP breakdown shown above.
)
) the signs were there, just not frequent enough to trigger alarm bells (sore or swollen stomachs and tiredness). A simple Bloodtest for iron a year later put the docs on the track to finding the cancer, if I had done that at the start it probably could have been a simple procedure and not a major op. When I was back on the bike again and 3kg lighter (the tumour/ removed colon) without muscle loss, I was around 4w/kg and once chemo was finished I had the motivation to push it briefly up to 5w/kg (lockdown helped with adding regular volume). Now at 48, I’ve kinda lost my motivation for pushing too hard or through harsh conditions (the nerve damage from the chemo makes the latter too unpleasant) and have ended up at circa 4w/kg. It probably would have fallen sooner but I still do a reasonable volume of cycling, IME that (volume) is what it takes to get to 4w/kg.
