Originally Posted by
cthenn
Join Strava, and like me, you'll constantly be amazed at the fitness level of A LOT of people. I'll come back from a 60+ miler with 5,000' of climbing, thinking "I done good", but upload to Strava, and cower in shame at the random people on my FlyBy's that are doing 80+ miles with 8,000' or more of climbing. Usually I'll see at least one 100+ mile rider. And a lot of these are hard efforts, not some soft pedal easy effort. Being in excellent shape doesn't mean you're in excellent cycling shape, or have the same kind of ability as others. I know this first hand!
If you are riding mostly road, and are trying to get better, consider a drop bar road bike. Then you'll get the sickness we all get...upgrade fever!
That's the thing - if you work at it, you can certainly improve. And what looks impressive or even insurmountable at one point in your life can turn out to be a piece of cake a year or 2 later.
There is a hill near where I live that I saw a guy climbing up - this was about 2 years ago. I was so impressed and wondered how ANYBODY could climb that hill. Today it's just a blip on the road for me.
I happened to run into Bobby Lea (our US Olympic cycling competitor) at a local bike shop. I told him how I marveled at how he could win a 30 mile training race on Thursday, and then hit the velodrome and win races on Friday night. I said that I didn't know how he did it.
His reply to me was, "Yeah, I don't know how I did it, either".
It all comes down to how much you want to train and work to improve, really.