Fitness gains

There are no silver bullets.

As I have aged I have swapped intensity for volume.

and it’s always a moving feast as your body adapts to the induced training stress which means constant tweaking to keep the gains heading the right way.

Bit of a "shaggy dog story" here...

After the pandemic restrictions were lifted, British Triathlon funded "restart" initiatives for all registered clubs. We organised a session with a track running coach - former elite level Decathlete - which saw us doing all sorts of drills and was great fun. But at the start of it the coach said that he wouldn't be remotely offended if we ignored everything he said and carried on doing what we were doing in terms of training and technique. As we were all middle-aged "mid-packers" he said the most important thing was that we simply kept active in whatever sport we'd chosen, and that enjoyment was the key, however we found enjoyment.

So my suggestion would be to set yourself some specific objectives. "Determine the sweetspot of what level of fitness I can live with" is very vague! e.g. do you want to smash it up on a short local climb? or a long local climb? or 10 mile TT? (or 25 mile TT?) Or do you want to be able to ride consistently for a couple of weeks on hols in the Alps?

Once you've decided what you want to do (presumably because that's what you'd enjoy) you can tailor a programme to achieve that as best you can based on available hours. Some things may be unrealistic e.g. crit racing competitively if your schedule doesn't allow you to do regular chain gangs, but where there's a will, there's usually a way!

And your objectives don't have to be constant. In the last 7 years, I've targeted a Half Ironman, sprint triathlons, Olympic triathlons, a half marathon, a 10 mile road race, TTs, the Fred Whitton / Marmotte and now 25-30 minute Zwift races. I am completely delusional and convince myself I'll do really well, encounter reality and find another target with which to delude myself!

And another shorter one...

Joe Friel's book "Fast after 50" emphasises that if you want to go quickly as an older athlete, you have to train in a particular way. But in the early stages of the book he highlights that you don't have to go quickly. If you're happy going slowly (or medium paced or whatever) then that's fine, because as an older athlete, just doing stuff is great from the health aspect. I don't know how old you are, but the same philosophy applies, I think. At any age, the benefits from doing and enjoying your exercise are huge.

In the vein of the above my targets are to be fit enough for a cycling holiday in the European mountains and keep my weight low enough to make that achievable and relatively enjoyable.

To do this I have a simple philosophy. When the weather is bad it is an hard indoor training session or recce of aforementioned mountains. If the weather is good then it is a longer recreational cycle for fun outdoors and speed is forgotten about.

my social media keep bombarding me with ads by coaches with great reviews from clients boasting how they went from 2 to 3 W/kg in 10-weeks… you never hear from those who went from 4 to 5 W/kg using their plans… I wonder why 😂😂

Obviously…

The thing is that if you have 2W/kg threshold, you don’t need to spend much to improve… virtually anything you do will get to massive gains… even just sitting on a sofa and going on a diet will do the job. Easy money… 😁

The real snake oil salesmen are the "Triathlon coaches" who promise to coach you to knock 15 seconds off your 100m swimming pace. Maybe by teaching a breaststroker to do front crawl or by advising someone to increase their swimming from once a year before a race, to once a week throughout the year, but if someone is doing a lot of swimming already, such gains are highly unlikely.

Also off-topic: My kids are both qualified swimming teachers and one is also a coach. They both advise me to stick to cycling!