Excellent advices from the above posters. This is my first year racing(time trial and starting track racing in a few weeks), 3rd season of riding and what I found to work for me to get faster was to actually race. About 2mos ago when my race season started I was averaging 20mph and now I'm doing 22mph. Hill repeats definetly helped a bunch on my strength and using a hrm can definitely help you monitor your effort while riding. I should mention that I'm riding a fixed gear so train accordingly and have fun doing it!