ntnyln

There's some truth to this as you get faster and faster. When starting out, shallow and wide works, but as you develop and you want to go faster, your fitness needs to be deeper as well, because you will have to deeper and deeper. That doesn't mean it has to be excessive and your time available will dictate what you can and can't do, but generally speaking, most are in agreement that barring super genetics, you can get so far on <10 hrs/week with more intensity, but to jump to the next level, you will have to overload something and more intensity is usually not the answer, so volume and therefore time comes in. The sweet spot for most non pro's and people with jobs/school is probably 15ish hours/week.

N=1, but we used last year to add a ton of volume, going from 10ish hours per week to about 15+ and I was recently doing some practice on our 40k TT course for the first time since I won there in 2019. I averaged 272 watts @ 170 bpm for the race and the training run with no warm up or anything (It was supposed to be my warm up) was 267 watts @ 147 bpm. The only way I got there, was adding volume and including a lot more endurance riding along with the intensity, to build a deeper pool of fitness.