since I stopped cycling. For the past 7 years I've been doing 15 hours of training on average with couple week vacations every year. I've been racing nearly every available race that was reachable for me. I did UCI amateur road racing champs.

Then my daughter was born, then I switched jobs. Then I lost interest in riding same routes and training without any reward or purpose for that matter. What is it all for?

So I stopped. At first it was strange, then I learnt to let go and stop thinking about numbers going down. I started to say Yes more to the matters that I've been neglecting due to cycling.

I got into gym and weight lifting. I noticed that grit I've built from years of cycling transfers to pretty much any aspect of life, in this case, I'm pretty happy with my results at gym. I'm pushing weights I didn't even think of, and my upper body is not limp anymore compared to my legs. People notice and compliment me on gains. But I know that compared to cycling, this is pretty much nothing- its too easy.

So today, more than 12 months after my last interval session, I thought about starting to ride my bike more again. Tonight I will be taking it out from the basement and preparing for tomorrows ride. 2 hours on the road, nothing fancy, see how that feels.

I know I will never be as passionate or find time to do it like good old days, but maybe it is still possible to enjoy it without creating that mental toll that we sometimes put on ourselves in this beautiful sport.

I'm sure this has likely been discussed before, but I'm curious to the improvements (or decline if you've gone the other way) of athletes who've been time crunched and training 3-5 hours a week and have found the time to train 10-15 hours a week.

How much faster did you get? Improvements in durability? How much more seriously did you have to take recovery? Anything else that required attention?

Obviously everyones training response is different, but still curious.

29M, 65 kg. Last ~100 h of road riding (~90 days), mostly long mid-high Z2 rides plus 30-90 min sweet spot sessions. Almost no VO2 intervals. Roughly 35-40 h/month in summer, ~20 in winter for the past two years. Half the time the two years before that.

Bests: 1 min 480 W, 5 min 330 W, 20 min 290 W, FTP 275W ~4.25W/kg

Questions:
Does this look sensible for my numbers, or am I leaving something on the table?

I really struggle mentally with intervals above FTP. Is it worth adding VO2 or short anaerobic work, or can I just keep stacking base and sweet spot and expect gains forever?

How do your distributions compare, and what are your bests?

Would love to see your zone charts and power numbers. Curious how much variation there is between riders at similar levels.