Ok, now for a more thoughtful answer (and on a Friday!). Last night's insomnia reading (let's talk about "older" ), was Joel Friel's Cyclist's Training Bible. He feels that anyone just taking up cycling with the dream of racing needs to spend a year just riding. Their bodies need to adapt to the motion and stresses, etc., of cycling before they start to train for racing. That was very badly paraphrased, but I think it is the same thing Denise is saying. It takes experience and muscle memory and a whole bunch of other things to become competitively fast. If those 25 year olds have been training since juniors, you have a long way to go, baby. Just don't give up. Do some reading, get a coach, train smart.