JeffOYB

I hear ya. i think this is at the heart of the Masters training conundrum. Less than 7 hrs/wk = HIIT. And, yes, LSD seems to need to be 2-4 hrs. At least in the lore.

What I think might be cool is I suspect there's room here for Secret Recipes. How to get most bang for the buck on 5-7 hrs.

My advice might be to make one of those sessions Motorpacing. ...But that's only if you are actually road/crit racing. Find a friend w a moped. Or get one and recruit a friend to ride it in front of you. THAT IS A MASSIVE HOUR OF GAIN. ...For those pinning on numbers.

Another angle for me has been to lateral over to CYCLOCROSS. There's a sport that likes shorter workouts. Tho to get better results as you move up you need the Real Racer legs.

Naysayers to contrary, I'm thinking weights are indeed actually key in this sort of hours wasteland.

Another big trick involving luck of circumstance is if you live near a VELODROME. Another super top secret recipe to any kind of bike racing success. An hour on the track playing reindeer games is gold. But it might be that getting yourself a beater fixie if you don't live near a track could also be a very very high ROI for one of your weekly hours.

Lastly, body weight -- anything you can do to stay skinny as you lose muscle in your elder years is huge. Even in my younger Masters years I figured out that fitness+10lbs overweight was suffering death compared to raceweight and fewer hours.