Quote Originally Posted by Whip View Post
The trick is to keep chasing - don't give up. It took me a long time to listen to my husband who sounded like a broken record "ride with faster people, ride with faster people" but doing exactly that brought me from a 11-13 average to being able to do 21-24 in race and 15-19 on my own. It was really hard for me to get there, but it was so worth it.

Of course, if you do this kind of training, recovery is even more important - one or two monster efforts a week and then ride slow. A lot of coaches say that one of the biggest mistakes cyclists make is not going hard enough on hard days and not going easy enough on easy days.
Wow, what impressive improvement. I hover around the 13 mph average, so this gives me a lot of hope.

A question: Is this kind of speed improvement compatible with training for longer distances with weekly loooong rides, or to see this kind of improvement, would I need to do it when I'm really not trying to increase my long rides much (to get in the recovery)?