I agree. If you want something structured, make your own structured plan for what you want to accomplish. What are your goals? Do you want to ride a century, maybe a half century to start? Do you want to ride faster?

My suggestion would be to look on Active.com for organized rides in your area. You might start with a 25 mile one, or jump up to a 50 miler. Or you might find a 25 mile one in a month or so and a 50 miler a month or two later. Use those to work your way up in mileage. It's great to have a goal in mind like that and set your training plan around that.

At first I'd focus on distance. Add longer and longer rides each week until you reach about 75% of the distance of the event ... or more if you want, but it's not necessary to complete the event. You don't have to do EVERY ride longer. You need recovery rides and rides that are not as taxing on you in between.

How many times a week can you ride? What days of the week work best for you? You might plan every Saturday to do your "long ride" for the week, where you add a couple of miles each week. During the week, you might do two or three 5 to 8 mile rides, as you are already used to doing. Eventually, you might make your week day rides 10 to 15 miles, once it seems easier to do so.

Lets say your ultimate goal is 50 miles. You train to do it, in no specific time. Just get it done and enjoy it. Then maybe you sign up for another 50 miler and you want to do it faster. Then you start doing more workouts geared toward speed. You might do intervals. You might start timing yourself on your slower rides, or "portions" of your shorter rides. If you want to get better at hills, you might do hill repeats, or find routes that make you climb. But even if you don't do any training rides specifically intended for speed, you'll get faster just by being on your bike and getting more miles in.

All the while, you are balancing these week day rides with longer weekend rides (assuming your long ride is on the weekend).

Listen to your body. If you just did a long ride, and it was harder than usual because there was more climbing than usual, or there was a lot of wind or you went faster than ever and now your muscles are especially sore .... take it easy the next day. Either don't ride, or do a recovery ride. Recovery rides are meant to be ridden easy ... and they are meant to help you "recover". You spin your legs and instead of making your muscles ache even more, it should help your muscles heal faster.

I have done several centuries and am at a point where I am really working on my speed and my climbing. I always have been working on those things, but it's getting easier to do that since I don't have to worry about just making it through a hundred miles. Because of all my base miles, it's easier to accomplish the distance and I can focus my efforts on other things. I don't know what your ultimate goals are, but if you're curious what my training schedule is like, here it is. (This may be WAY more info than you wanted, but I'm on a roll!)

First of all, since I have been riding for 3 1/2 years, I have developed a lot of "base miles" ... my body doesn't need as much conditioning to prepare for another 100 mile ride. I did a 65 mile ride in Palm Springs in February. This was sort of a training ride for the Solvang century that I did in March, with 4,500 feet of climbing. I did and relatively flat 95 mile club ride a couple of weeks later (kind of spur of the moment with some club members ... first time I did almost 100 miles "spur of the moment"!) I'm planning to do a century with 6,000 feet of climbing in 4 weeks. It's sort of a "training ride" for an even more difficult century with 8,500 feet a few weeks later. This is the one I want to do my best at. I did it last year and want to see how much better I can do it. So, all these other rides are sort of training for that.

I have a friend I do most of my rides with. We ride two or three times during the week together, typically riding 20-25 miles. For those rides, we might be doing the first as a "recovery" ride, because we just did a bigger ride over the weekend. I might do intervals on one. A lactaid threshold ride. Or just "how fast can we possibly do this route?!" and kill it.

I am trying to incorporate a weekly ride with my club into my training. A Tuesday night ride where there's some decent climbing and everyone pushes themselves as much as they can. I used to feel like a "wanna be" on this ride, but I can hang better now ... with the "slow" group. Used to not even hang with them! So, this is it's own kind of training ride. It's about 20 miles, but pushing it the whole time, so it's like a lactaid threshold workout.

If it's the day before a big ride, I will ride moderate to easy, to save my legs for the big ride. (The days we do our week day rides vary based on my friend's changing work schedule, so it's not set in stone.)

Sometimes on a Saturday we'll do the 32 mile club ride, that has a pretty hard climbing section. And then do our "long ride" on Sunday. However, instead, tomorrow we're doing a 40 mile ride with 4500 feet of climbing. A couple of weeks before our next century we'll do that same ride with an additional 20 miles ... so 60. Plus the day before that, we're doing another club ride, of which I'm not sure the distance yet, but back to back, they will be good training for a 100 miles with a lot of climbing.

I hope I haven't overwhelmed you. Just giving you a glimpse of what "one person's" goals and training schedule are like. You may never aspire to do the kinds of rides I do ... or you might go on to do more difficult rides. Or you might become a racer! (I'm doing my first race next month, actually.)

Whatever you do, have fun!