like anything you need to break it down into smaller pieces, perform those with excellence, and slowly build up. I’ve taken two very different approaches:
- lots of hard riding, starting out long, then short and fast, then long and fast. During this time I could hold ftp for about an hour, and was doing 160km rides above 80%
- lots of 2+ hour endurance riding and a little HIIT, where I was pushing my ability to recover
I fit that into 7-8 hours/week average, starting at age fifty four. For myself, there are two options that have worked: either a) if you only have 30-90 minutes then a lot of hard riding and slowly pushing out duration of what I can do at ~90% ftp, or b) building a strong endurance foundation of 2+ hour rides and slowly raising the floor to 75%.