I need to get faster on the bike. How

When you ride, how hard are you riding? 

There's nothing magical about getting faster...get a good position, ride, ride hard, ride some more.  I asked a similar question to a Cat 1 friend of mine and he had a similar response.  He suggested I try to hang with the faster group on group rides (we normally break up into A's, B's & C's).  If you get dropped...that's ok...try to hang a little longer next time.  Any riding is good for you but if you want to get faster you're going to have to add volume and intensity.  If you're sucking someone's wheel in a group ride, you'll get some volume in but, unless you're working hard to stay on the whell in front of you, you're not working hard enough to get measureably faster. 

You're weight is a factor to the extent you're riding hills....good going down, not good going up.  On the flats, your weight is not a factor (pure power output is).  Good for you to be working on it though...it will pay dividends in all 3 disciplines.

Weight is actually probably not a big factor for most HIM courses that aren't dominated by hills since it's the power:aero ratio more than power:weight for speed out of the mountains. 

Gotta ride more, and harder. Regularly.

Ride with people faster than you.

getting fast on the bike requires a huge time commitment.  lots of  (time in the saddle).

and then we can talk about intensity and consistency.

But first- ride more.  ride hard.

That's triathlon's dirty little secret.  it favors strong cyclists.

Nothing about what I'm about to type is meant to be offensive so don't take it that way.  I'm just being a realist.  How tall are you?

1. As mentioned... ride more and sometimes ride hard.  Know when to suffer but more importantly when to recover (which is far more important than people think... probably more important than the suffering part).

2. Statements that your weight isn't a factor unless you're riding hills is simply not accurate.  Your weight is always a factor.  It factors into your overall conditioning.  It factors into presenting a larger area that causes more aero drag.  Yes, watts/kg matters less on a flat vs hilly course but watts/kg still matters and matters a lot.  Guys at the pointy end of IM or 70.3 racing have very high watts/kg numbers no matter the topography of the course.

3. Do you want to be competitive on just the bike or overall?  Overall competitive means the weight has to come off.  The run is not kind to the extra baggage.  You want to be as lean as possible.  More weight requires more energy, more heat dissipation issues, more strain on your ticker, and more pounding on your body.

Riding more can come in several ways. Usually figuring out how to ride several times a week, every week for a good period of time works well/best. Think at least several months for a block. And within these rides, work on making 2-3 of them hard. Not necessarily every second, but include a good deal of hard riding in them. You can learn more specifics about this along the way, but figure out how to get the rides in first. And key in on fitting in the hard ones so that you can ride them hard. Additional less intense riding doesn't not matter, but it tends to be more flexible in how it can be fit in.

I feel your pain as the bike leg has kept me off of a couple podiums.  I saw pleasing gains this summer by riding at a higher intensity more often (more extended riding in the "worthless" Z3) and adding a workout of repeats on a long hill near home.  In one month, I saw my avg speed increase by 1mph.  Not trying to act as a coach, just sharing what worked for me.  Good luck!

Fyi, Z3 isn't "worthless", but you could do even better by figuring how to get up into Z4 more often then you have. Given equal time, you develop more from the Z4 work than the Z3 and it's likely you'll be able to race harder/better as well since you'll be more used to it.

Not to take this topic off the rails but I'm moving more towards the polarized training approach for next season.  All the training is either high Z1 or high Z4/low Z5.  80% low, 20% high.  Theory is the easy allows you to recover so that you can hit the hard workouts.  There is no Z3/threshold/sweet spot stuff, except for some specificity training closer to race day.

I have used the threshold/sweet spot training philosophy for a number of years and saw great results.  Two things happened this year: 1) I plateaued and 2) I wasn't recovering properly which put me in a fatigue rut that I'm still dealing with.  I need to change it up and I like the stuff I've been reading regarding the polarized approach, which is far more popular in Europe and Africa than in North America.

I personally don't feel Z3 is worthless; the italics/quotes were meant to show sarcasm because it is often portrayed as such on this site.  The original plan I was following had a fair amount of Z2 work.  I have transitioned a large portion of that to Z3.  I'm not sure where you read how often I get into Z4, however I am there much more than you gathered.  I live in a river bottom so any work I do involves significant climbing out (all Z4 uphill).  In addition, the long hill I mentioned is about 1.6mi.  This takes me 6.5-7min to climb, all of which is in Z4/5.  For those workouts, I was doing the climb 4 times (in addition to pre- and post-hill riding) and I am looking to up it to 5 or 6 next summer.  Again, not coaching, just sharing what worked for me so far.

Trainerroad with Sufferefest will definitely accelerate your progress.  Even following a training plan on Trainerroad would help a ton.  

Were your logs up to date? I had taken a look, hope that wasn't too intrusive, but was curious what had been done. I'm not necessarily coaching either, but also sharing what I've seen and experienced. For most age groupers, they'll be riding a few times a week and total a few hours. Say 3-5? 1-1.5 hrs at a time, maybe a little longer on a weekend ride? Especially during a more bike focused section of training, they'll want to push it up into Z4. Not just for little bits either, but trying to total ~20-40 minutes or so of Z4 work. Don't worry about the Z3 so much. Try to establish how to get this in a few times a week, and week after week. Occasionally get some shorter and harder Z5 intervals in there too. This is challenging to do, but the closer someone can get to doing this the more they'll gain.

As you saw, my logs are bare-bones.  I do not usually put the fine details in (such as how much/often I'm in Z4 during a ride).  Mileage-wise, the logs are correct.  Prior to my last race (9/6) I was riding 2.5-4hrs/wk.  My hill repeat workout put me in Z4/5 for 26-28min.  I believe I did that for 4 weeks up to my Oly.  It made a difference in my avg mph over that time.  My longest race to date--and the foreseeable future--is Olympic distance. 

This still seems very relevant. I've had some success and struggles using both. I've had similar plateaus with threshold and sweet spot, even with keeping up at 90-93% for the low end of SS. And have also had trouble really implementing the more polarized approach at Seiler's points. Think I had the bike work figured ok, but not the totality of training. Namely figuring out swimming as I was pushing that too. Did improve a little more and had some more race ready sharpness, but had enough trouble hitting 100% or more that I didn't gain as much as expected.

There was a newer thread on ST regarding this, within the past few months. Not the gigantic one from awhile back. Andrew Coggan weighed in on it a few times with some adjustments that seemed to fit close to what I had been thinking already. Will try to find it sometime soon if you haven't seen it already.

Yes, that looks like a good workout! And going back to my original point, and maybe clarifying it some more, is to credit workouts like that more. I'm sure that one did help, I do ones very similar to it. And I'm also saying to try figuring out how to work up at that level twice a week and possibly a 3rd instead of once with sometimes twice. Doesn't have to be that same workout, but as able, maybe larger intervals that total up in that 20-40 minute range up in Z4.

Since there is already one good workout in there, another option for the additional would be finding a section for doing bigger Z4 intervals/tempos. Well as best as can be found in keeping up with downhills that sound likely to be in there. For the more occasional very hard interval set, find a hill that's a few minutes shorter (or just stop sooner) and peak HR up in Z5 every time. Pretty much feels like you'll turn inside out with these.

I really hope this coming across as how to keep on going with the progress. Why it has happened and how to keep it going. That's the kind of thing the OP was looking for. Biking takes work and generally when we're looking at lower weekly hours dedicated to it, the more of it that's hard the better.

I've read the later and earlier threads on ST.  The larger thread from earlier this year really peaked my interest in this training philosophy.  I'm in my mid-40's now (move up to M45-49 in 2015) and I really need to think about recovery.  I really shelled myself the last 18 months (trained for five Ironman races) and I just wasn't doing enough easy to recover well and it bit me in the arse this year.

I'm hoping to snag a 70.3 WC slot next year and doing three early season 70.3's in which I will train using the polarized method.  Puerto Rico in March and NOLA and Texas in April.  I'll see how it works for me.  I'm also doing Syracuse 70.3 in June so I can adjust if I'm not seeing results from the early races.