Cycle Power

Have you rode with them, what they say and do may be two different things, my club says they ride that fast, just never when I ride with them!
Riding 25-28 is doable if you are drafting in a group, let others pull until you get stronger. Riding with others that are faster than you is a great way to build power, that and ride more. If you are riding 4-5 times a week than maybe do a few interval days, one tempo, one long ride. We all have been dropped on group rides,it makes us stronger.

nevergivin is right on. Ride with that club. Hang on as long as you can. Get dropped, come back next week and try to hang-on a little longer. If it's really fast for you, don't take any pulls... sit-in. As you get stronger, then maybe try to take some pulls. Riding with a fast club will help you build speed better than anything IMO.
They may be blowing a little smoke with their avg speed estimates, roadies are always a little elitist... but keep at it.

Edited by TaylorB 2009-09-01 11:38 PM

As others have implied... I'll go ahead and call BS on that speed, at least at any real distance. A sub-hour 40k is a significant achievement; a group of guys that are all capable of that... that's called a pro team.

Interval training is what makes you faster, same as in any other sport. Also sufficient rest/recovery between hard days - you know the old adage about guys that go to hard on their easy days, so they don't recover, then can't go fast on their hard days so everything ends up as a medium day, and they never get faster. I'm sure we've all fallen into that trap at some point.

Regardless of what speed your mates can actually generate or not, cycling speed is a funtion of 1) power (work over time),  2) aerodynamics (lower CdA via equipment and 3) Crr (tires rolling resistance).

Power which is the one variable we focus to improve via training and it has little to do with strenght, that is the maximal strenght you can produce when doing squat sets with 'x' weight because the % of strenght required to pedal at your sustainable 60 minute maximal power (also known as Threshold) is rather minimal when compared to the strenght you need to do one repetition with 50% of your maximal lift capacity.

If you want to become as fast as your friends at the local cycle club you need to imporve your cycling power and for that you DO NOT need to pump iron. You need to do specific training targeting your VO2max, treshold and tempor power and improve your endurance; for that yuo basically need to ride lots, ride hard, ride long, rest and repeat.

And if the group can't drop you any more,,,, find another group