before i shit post i figured id add some value as i think i have a lot of thoughts on this topic;
a year round coach makes sense to someone new to riding. just because your event is in july, doesnt mean you cant build the foundation for gains in january. maybe the old salty vet does, but the dude who just got into this and is attempting his first 100 mile mtb race, it's easy to get too excited on that new years resolution bucket list and dig a hole.
for someone starting out, the answer is always just to ride more, do more hours. if you are doing 5 hours a week, do 6. sometimes you ride hard, sometimes you ride easy, whatever the crew is doing, you do. you will get faster. eventually you hit a wall, either mentally/physically and need to adjust. you need to push through this and decide if riding bikes is more of a priority. you adjust that plan of attack.
so you found a way to get over that physical/mental wall, "finding" more hours to ride by waking up early, sacrificing sleep, or cut out hanging out with your homies at the bar on a tuesday, riding to and from the group ride, something. you have found new friends at the local group ride that do 8-10 hours a week.
you are now maximized your hours, totally focused on getting faster, eating better, blah blah blah. you do this for a long time. you still see gains for a year or two. but they stop. you realize you need to do structured things. interval workouts, sometimes you do them with the group. but you also realize you need to ride easy sometimes. some friends get this, and some still want to do the 3 hour hammerfest on saturday. you have to decide between trying to get faster, or be social.
its nice to have someone motivated like you that you can talk into a hard ride, or a easier ride. this makes the hours/time go by.
but then the gains stop again. wtf.
what do i do now? you can wing it by using a canned plan, some advice from the internet, using ai, or your buddy who "knows everything" but does he really? he just told you to do a 3 hour ride on just water. just because hes faster doesnt mean its right. who do you trust? how serious about fitness are you here?
you didnt even talk about the racing you want to do now that you are all in bike boy now. when do you lay on the fatigue heavy, and when to dial it back. sure, some trial and error you can figure it out, but how do you know the balance between being too fresh or fatigued for a event? maybe it takes 2 years to dial that in.
preparing for a 100 mile race or a crit, you need to do different things. its easy enough to think that for a 100 mile gravel race you need to be able to ride forever, but do you do 30/30s still? if im doing a crit, do i need to be able to ride for 5 hours still?
some people like figuring stuff out on their own and i totally get that. they love doing the research, listening to the latest trends in science/fitness, see what the pros do and give it a go. thats cool.
or if you buy into someones philosophy, work with someone that you connect with and see where it goes. you are tapping into someones knowledge of (hopefully multiple) years of doing this and can make sure you are making the most of the time you have. they can notice the red flags, prioritize your goals, work around work/family/life etc. sure, you can drag and drop workouts in a canned plan, but is that honestly the best approach? who knows. just because you have 10 hours to ride and you just wing it, you may be faster if you are doing only 6 but very structured and focused efforts.
that last paragraph reminds me of a cx season i did. i was dead set on having a killer cross season in a 2/3/4 race. I was also getting married and going on a honeymoon trip in the beginning of september right before the first big race of the year. #greatplanning. i was paranoid that a week off the bike was going to kill me. how can i get faster by not doing anything for a week? we worked around that 10 days and i raced the next weekend and was on fire. someone else may have been on the cruise ship doing bike workouts, running 5ks, stressed about not being prepared. but in the end, a combination of:
-the placebo of someone telling me it will be okay because they've done this before
-me feeling confident about it being okay because of said someone
-planning for this in advance
put me in a better place. so the value of having that accountability coach goes beyond the workouts, its the added confidence that helps you sleep well at night that you are doing everything "right".
now to change gears, my biggest hang up that i cant get over is that there is a point where you have maximized your hours, follow a coach/plan 100%, eat right, sleep 8 hours aw eek and you are not getting better. this is me. i only had 10 hours a week that i had to devote to cycling. following the structure that everyone says to do, i hit a ceiling and couldnt break through it, for maybe 5 years or so? i could adjust my power curve to be more of a sprinter, punchier, but that 20 minute gauge of fitness never changed more than 3-5 watts over a year. for me,
i dont think a cycling coach is magically going to be able to make me faster. sure we can navigate a season of whatever im doing and prepare to be 1000% fit and ready to go on race day, but thats it.
i wrote all of that to say this;
i think that there is no silver bullet to keep "getting faster" if you cannot add more stress to your body. if you can only do a set amount of hours, eat well, sleep well, follow a good plan (you cant do workouts everyday), at some point that is as good as it gets. and you have to live with it.
