Age doesn’t have to limit you but poor training will!
1️⃣ Recovery becomes a bigger limiter
You can still handle quality work, but absorbing it takes longer. Poor sleep, life stress and accumulated fatigue hit adaptation harder than they did in your 20s and 30s.
2️⃣ Intensity still works, but it has to be deliberate
VO2 max and high-intensity work still drive adaptation. Random hard riding does not. Easy days need to be genuinely easy, hard days need clear purpose.
3️⃣ Strength training becomes even more important
Maintaining muscle mass and force production matters more with age. Resistance training supports climbing, sprint repeatability and durability on the bike.
4️⃣ Fuelling costs more when neglected
Under-fuelling doesn’t just hurt session quality. It slows recovery, adds stress load and makes it harder to hold muscle and adapt consistently.
5️⃣ Injury prevention has to be built in
Reduced collagen turnover, stiffer tendons and long-term movement restrictions mean mobility, strength and load management become central to staying consistent.
The fundamentals don’t change. Aerobic development, progressive overload and consistency still drive performance. Your margin for error just gets smaller, so ex*****on matters more.
Riders over 40 can still make real gains. Aerobic adaptations stay trainable, and most experienced cyclists improve by training smarter, fuelling better and recovering harder.
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26/08/2026
Six months out is not early. It’s the only window where the slow adaptations are still available to you.
The aerobic changes that decide your season including mitochondrial density, capillarisation, improved fat oxidation at race intensity all respond to accumulated hours, not to intensity. They take 12–16 weeks of consistent, mostly sub-threshold work to move meaningfully, and they can’t be compressed. Start in January for a June A-race and you’re spending your base window doing build work, then wondering why your power falls apart in hour three.
What the six months actually buy you:
A real starting point. Testing before you train, not after. Critical power or FTP, a durability check (what your numbers look like after 2,000 kJ, not fresh), and an honest look at what limited you this year: usually repeatability or fatigue resistance, rarely peak power.
Sensible ramp rates. Load that climbs in steps you can absorb, with planned down weeks. Most self-coached seasons fail on the ramp, not the sessions.
Intensity in the right place. Roughly 80% of time easy enough to be genuinely easy, 20% hard enough to matter. The middle ground feels productive and adapts nothing.
General prep work that gets dropped later. Strength, position, fuelling practice at race intensity. All of it is easier now than in April.
A phase structure that lands. Base, Build, Peak, Perform — mapped backwards from race day so the taper arrives on time instead of by accident.
If this year didn’t go the way you wanted, the diagnosis matters more than the motivation. That conversation is worth having now.
Coaching spots for next season are limited.
Plan. Prepare. Perform.
The fastest way to improve your VO2 max. The Norwegian 4x4.
This session was developed and tested by exercise physiologist Jan Helgerud and colleagues at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Their research found that 4x4 minute intervals produced larger VO2 max gains than longer steady efforts or shorter high intensity work, and it has held up as one of the most replicated protocols in endurance science since.
The workout:
10 minute warm up
4 rounds of:
4 minutes hard, at 105 to 120% of FTP
3 minutes easy recovery, at 40 to 50% of FTP
5 minute cool down
Works on the turbo or out on the road. On the road it’s best suited to a climb with a consistent gradient.
Power gives you a clean target, but it’s a guide, not gospel. If you’re finishing round 1 feeling comfortable, you have started too easy, regardless of what the number says. By round 3 or 4 it should be genuinely uncomfortable.
Why 4 minutes specifically. It’s long enough to drive your oxygen uptake close to true VO2 max, but short enough to repeat with real quality across 4 rounds. Go much longer and quality drops off before you get there. Go much shorter and you never spend enough time at that top end to trigger the adaptation.
VO2 max is one of the strongest predictors of endurance performance, and it responds well to this kind of session even in athletes who have been training for years. Once or twice a week is enough. This isn’t a session to do every day.
Plan. Prepare. Perform.
22/08/2026
Good luck to Ace-YNR Performance today 🚀💪
In a matter of months we have put together a team of men and women from Scotland and across the UK. A performance mindset without the ego.
And today we enter our first National Championships.
If you want to join, we’re looking for riders who want to train hard and enjoy being part of a group.
Road races ✅
TTs ✅
Sportives ✅
Gravel ✅
CX ✅
Triathlon ✅
Thank you to our fellow sponsors Paul Wilson and Patrick Lamont | Professional Bike Fitter
12/08/2026
Eight months to the Sahara.
One of our athletes, a woman in her fifties, lines up for Marathon des Sables on 2 April 2027: 250km, six stages, everything she needs carried on her back.
She has always been fit. What she has never had is structure.
We built her plan backwards from race day. Base through to Perform.
Specificity is crucial. Controlled volume. Sand introduced now in short doses from a UK coastline. Back-to-back long days from November, because in a stage race day two is the real test.
Two strength sessions a week to assist with power production, durability and injury prevention.
Every week we review load, sleep, niggles and life, then adjust the next block. The plan follows her, not a template.
Plan. Prepare. Perform.
If you have a race that asks this much of you, get in touch.
10/08/2026
Your FTP isn’t fixed. The best way to raise your FTP and extend the time you can hold it for: specific threshold work.
This is a pure threshold block. 3 sessions, same system, stacked on purpose so the adaptations compound instead of competing for recovery.
🔹 Over-unders
Alternating just below and just above threshold repeatedly overloads your lactate shuttle system, the mechanism that clears and reuses lactate rather than letting it accumulate. Improve this and you can sustain higher power before your legs fill up.
🔹 Sustained threshold intervals (95-100% FTP)
Most riders can produce their FTP number for 5 minutes but fall apart holding it for 20. This session trains muscular and metabolic endurance at threshold specifically, which is what a proper FTP test is actually measuring, your ability to sustain, not just briefly produce.
🔹 Extended sub-threshold
Longer intervals at a slightly lower intensity build durability without the same fatigue cost as full threshold work. This is what lets your threshold hold up late in a race or long ride, when accumulated fatigue would otherwise drag your effective power down.
Why keep these together rather than mixing in VO2 work: each of these three sessions trains the same energy system from a different angle. Mixing in high-intensity VO2 work here would compete for the same recovery resources and blunt the adaptation from all three, per Rønnestad’s work on block periodisation. Save VO2 for its own block.
Seiler’s research on training intensity distribution backs the broader approach: targeted, well-placed intensity in the same zone, done consistently, beats scattergun hard days.
Run this over 7-10 days with real recovery between sessions, then gradually extend the interval durations over 4-5 weeks. Swipe through for the exact sets and structure.
Save this for your next block.
06/08/2026
Big skies, quiet roads, good company. Days like this are why we
ride. 🚴♀️
Plan. Prepare. Perform.
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