How I Became an Above Average Cyclist

so 3 years ago I was bald, out of shape and spent too much money on an expensive hobby, today only one of those things is true, besides draining my bank account, cycling has sent me around the world, it has helped me . I made new friends and improved my self-confidence, but let's be honest, none of that matters if you're not faster on the bike. This is the story of how I

became

an above

average

cyclist

. Let's start by defining

average

like many people in 2020. I bought my first gravelroad bike because there was nothing else to do and I was tired of being inside all day.

I quickly lost a lot of weight and gained a new obsession. I'm going to ride a bike for the rest of my life. In life I finally ran out of gcn videos to watch and found Mark Lewis in his video about being above average who wants to be down here and this ending is too hard obviously this is the middle you want to be here , above average, be better. That most Mark's philosophy intrigued me especially because I recently discovered that he was below average Am I making a copyright? Every sport has a key metric. It's something practitioners obsess over while their spouses don't care.

Baseball players worry about their batting average. The Gim Bros talk about how much they can bench press and the

cyclist

s have a functional FTP threshold. Horsepower is the amount of power you can sustain on a bike for about an hour of riding to France. Professionals can have an FTP greater than 400 watts. My first FTP weighed 234 watts. 180 pounds at that time weighed 82 kilos. It could produce 2.85 watts per kilogram of body weight, which is well below the 5.5 to 6 watts per kilogram per kilogram. You can tell I'm American, the 5.5 to 6 watts per kg that the professionals produce this graph from intervals.

IU shows how my power compares to 35,000 other men in my age group, as you can see I was on the left side of the bell curve, below average at the time, my secret dreams of being a talent didn't I found out that I would have been on the tour for France, if only I had started when I was younger I would be crushed because I was normal, but maybe if I tried really hard and started training I could still be special. The first thing I tried was Pelaton, they have a 6-e power training program which was actually a pretty decent option for a beginner cyclist, but, and it's a big butt, I can't lie, the power data that comes out of a Pelaton bicycle are notoriously inaccurate.

My Pelaton power was so inflated that for a brief moment, I honestly think my FTP was miraculously there. I grew to 3177 watts in just a few weeks, it was actually 254. I learned this because once I saw that the pelaton was inaccurate, I put a set of power meter pedals on my bike and did a traditional 20 minute FTP test on the one you ride. as strong as you can for 20 minutes and your FTP is estimated by calculating 95% of your 20 minute average power, but after having tried and lost the sweet nectar of a 300 watt FTP, I swore that one day I would return to earth fiancee. no more pelaton, it was time to get a real coach in December 2021.

I started training with your favorite YouTuber and the founder of the Road Cycling Academy. Nichols cam literally changed my life, and for once on YouTube, that statement isn't hyperbole. IM not talking. about something amorphous like oh, he made me a happier person or I feel more confident on the bike, although both are true now. Cam did something in my first 12 weeks of training that changed the direction of my life. This is my power curve. It seemed like when I started training with a camera, a power curve is a really great tool to see what type of rider you are in the AIS and you have power and in the x-axis time the curve plus your best power output for a given time . so from 1 second to the number of minutes or hours, your longest run is the left side of the curve, it's your top end, this includes your Sprint and your V2 Max, basically very hard efforts that are aerobic, in the On the other hand you have endurance powers, this includes the infamous zone two, which in many training plans is where you spend most of your time, these efforts are mainly aerobic and in the middle is your threshold.

This range generally includes both your FTP and your LT or lactate threshold, which is the point at which your muscles can no longer eliminate lactate faster than it accumulates. If you keep writing above that point, you'll feel the burn in your muscles like it's going to keep increasing until your body finally says no, that's what my power curve looked like. After just a few months of training with Cam and RCA, the curve rose and lengthened. That's what happened over the first eight weeks building my base resistance on the right side of the curve. This was basically a bunch of long runs in Zone 2.

There's a reason. Why it's called core training is because it's the literal foundation of your fitness. The last four weeks of initial training added intensity work twice a week and that's what elevated the left side of my power curve and this change in my power profile specifically. increasing my power for sub 90 second efforts is what changed my life oh man that's a lot steeper in person shortly after finishing my workout with Cam I was thinking about video ideas and discovered that three of the streets steepest slopes in the world were just a few blocks from where I live thinking that one street wasn't enough for a captivating video.

I naively set out to do all three in one afternoon, perhaps you already know how it was. I want to throw up, as you can see from the power curve on that ride. Riding at my limit just to get up those hills, that video riding up the steepest streets in Los Angeles would become my first cycling video with over 100,000 views. It's fascinating to look at your channel as if you have a niche. Here's another video where he was going up another Steep street and it has half a million views and there's one where he's going up one in San Francisco and it's had like 34 million views, you're like hell, I mean, that's a lot to go on bike.

YouTube, to eat half a meal is, um, that's pretty amazing, right? Haven't you seen the video? efforts I don't think I would have been able to climb those steep streets, the physical potential was obviously there so maybe theoretically I could have done it, but mentally I can tell you right now that I wouldn't have been able to climb those streets. I probably would have. I abandoned all video before finishing First Street and might not even be doing YouTube full time now that the mental grit I gained and continue to gain from training has taken me to some of the steepest streets in the world, including Guinness.

World record holder Baldwin Street in New Zealand, guys, oh my goodness, around this time C decided he had had enough of me and gently threw me into the arms of his new head coach Ryan Thomas, who is his favorite student, my favorite student, it's difficult cim Nichols. The boss, the Road Cycling Academy was growing and Ryan, a former Continental pro, began leading training and coaching so Cam could focus on the business and YouTube. You would think I would continue to work at my top level with Ryan since that is where my strengths are as The writers I am not the strongest up there but that is where I am the strongest for me if that makes sense but let me tell you about the life of a YouTuber, sometimes you get an idea for a video in your head and it puts everything else in your life on hold if the steepest street was a good video why not the longest street This is the America's loneliest road 340M through the Nevada desert for some strange reason I don't quite understand I did a complete 180 and decided I wanted to try ultra-endurance cycling.

I think it's because I had been watching a lot of videos of vegan cyclists where he rides at night and looks really intense and cool, and I wanted to see if I could do it during the summer, Ryan helped me develop basic fitness to being able to ride for 24 hours straight in preparation for my weekend rides. They grew from 2 or 3 hours to 5 or 6 and I even ended up doing a 10 hour ride around Santa Barbara. Really beautiful, we did it. I'm gutted, oh cramp, and then I got sick right after, so it wasn't that beautiful, but I digress.

You can see that my power curve didn't really go up, but it did stretch. You can also see. I didn't last 24 hours, the furthest point on my power curve is like 15 hours, that's because I took a break in the middle of the night. I didn't plan properly and was too busy on the road to travel safely at night. without giving my wife a heart attack, but maybe subconsciously I did it on purpose, I don't know if I'm being smart or weak, I went to sleep for a few hours and then I try to do the rest of the right thing tomorrow like, okay , Yes this.

It's one thing and I don't want to do it again, I'm glad to say goodbye. Ultra endurance isn't my thing, but that doesn't mean I've abandoned the longer rides on the Death Highway in Bolivia, for example, it was a 7. The one-hour ride is still long, but it's not 15 hours a day. week, even now. I typically do two or three runs in Zone 2, even as I focus on different parts of my power curve. I usually don't get up this early today, let's continue. a ride I haven't done since my first year of road biking. Let's go to Mount Wilson.

I have a 4 hour basic training ride today, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to try that ride again in At the time it was the most epic ride I had ever done. I think it was about 63 Mi and 6500 feet of ascent took me 5 and a half hours. I'm not super fast so I'm curious to see how it feels now. It got here in less than 3 hours from my door, which I think is much faster. If you want to continue developing your fitness, you have to continue building your base, otherwise everything will collapse as a base if I succeed.

It sounds like I know what I'm talking about, that's only thanks to Cam and Ryan. In my opinion one of the best parts of receiving training is having access to Ryan and his knowledge because he has a lot of knowledge, the way we work with RCA is a lot of education, when people come they often don't have a great idea of how to train and what they are doing it for and why they are making certain efforts, so I love that educational aspect too. I get all these questions all the time and people say, I don't want to bother you, but I love answering that and I love teaching people, like, you're trying to do steep streets, there's no one else I train who's trying to do that. make steep streets. streets I've asked him questions about every aspect of training, from sprinting to nutrition and more, and I'm sure I'll bother him with thousands more questions.

I also tend to be pretty hard on myself when things don't go exactly as planned. or fail on an interval and it's also nice to have Ryan during those moments where people say, oh, I failed this session, I failed on that effort, okay, we can do it again next week, obviously you want to push yourself on each This interval is what you want to do and how you improve, but if you have a bad session, think of a training block, you can have 100 sessions, a session that is like one%% of your training, then think of an interval in that session, it's like 0.1% of your training doesn't mean much, it's six weeks of training hard consistently, so that's your biggest benefit or 8 weeks or 12 weeks, whatever that period is, my mind is constantly full like I was working on story ideas. or planning and producing videos or just catching up on my accounting or all my personal responsibilities.

It's really nice to know that I have someone else who knows more than me designing and adjusting my trend training like it's one less thing I have to worry about and He also helps me balance my training. Usually it's because I'm putting a fresh last second on the schedule for a video and poor Ryan has to rework the whole plan he worked on. The most valuable thing are the times when my schedule is very tight and I don't have much time to train because Ryan figures out how to make the most of the little time I have Towards the end of 20122, after a year of training with the RCA, I reached my senses and started training for steep streets again, but this time, in addition to training my Sprint and my V2 Max, Ryan added a threshold training that not only raised the middle of my curve, but helped me gain more confidence on my strength as a cyclist and the mental side of things is huge in April of that year I went up to High whff for an hour at the threshold which at the time was around 265 watts and I did it with my dog ​​on my back, all in an attempt to steal a world.

Mark Lewis's record and his dog's Nixonset a few months earlier, we broke the record. I maintain that it doesn't qualify because I've eaten hamburgers that weigh more than that thing. I never expected someone to rock something they stole from Paris Hilton. The bag was my mistake. I'm very proud of that video. It has a fun plot twist, but the experience of riding threshold for an hour was brutal, especially being new to training, and I think it scared me a little, so when Ryan started prescribing threshold reps. Later in the year I was secretly terrified, but I trusted him and did the training.

I just finished a threshold workout, I repeat four of them in a row for 10 minutes with a 5 minute rest for a lot of people, that's not a lot for me. It's very much like I couldn't do that 2 years ago, after just a few weeks my power was increasing and this was while the threshold efforts were getting longer. I went from four 10 minute intervals at 270 watts to 4 12 minute intervals. at 290 Watts it was really exciting to see the progress so fast and a 300 Watt FTP seemed to be just around the corner in all my other zones. I was lifting weights for a few weeks as well.

I was hitting a new personal best on my Sprint every Sprint workout and my V2 Max was getting more robust. I was able to do repeats on all the steep streets that used to make me throw up in April and In May of that year I traveled around the world recording cycling videos, which is the craziest phrase I've ever uttered. What an incredible experience. I even met Cam and Ryan in person while I was in Australia and went for a walk with Cam where he tried to kill me with coins, I got your M, yeah the training was basically on hold until I got back and I was looking forward to it.

I just knew I was going to blast 300 watts as soon as I got home. The video of my death road has more details, but basically after Bolivia I was physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted, even after a full recovery week where I didn't touch the bike, I just didn't have the heart to train and I didn't even have the heart to ride a bike like before. 2 months from noon to mid-July I barely touched it looking back on my training. I'm bummed I didn't continue, especially since right before all this I was in Bolivia basically at 12,000 feet or like 3600 m above sea level. for a week, so I imagine the adaptations I would have had when I got home would probably have had a big increase in my performance, but that's not how it went down last summer.

In mid-July my fitness was at the lowest it had been in almost 2 years without Ryan I would have been very worried but he assured me that I could regain my fitness and that I would be back faster than before, rather than forcing me to continue training, he encouraged me to take the time I needed before training again and because when I started training again I was ready to give it my all, it didn't happen overnight, but by September my threshold was almost back to where it was in May, just under 300 watts. Also, during that time I joined a local group which Ryan incorporated into my training, my only regret is not doing it sooner because the group ride has not only been fun and has helped me keep things fresh, chase to other people on the bike has helped me push myself even harder on October 1st. a new 20 minute personal best of 315 watts during an FTP test which gave me an FTP of 299 watts.

I like a little drama to help spice up these videos and I played it off as a joke in that group ride video and yes I've been watching my channel, you know, I have a goal to one day get a 300 watt FTP, but that 299 watt FTP stung my power meter is accurate to plus or minus 1%, so technically the missing watt was within the margin of error, but if you think about it, it could also be the other way around and my FTP would be even lower, so I think a lot of people can relate through CU.

I listen when you talk to people about their goals. I want to exceed 300. I want to reach. over 300 is a marker where everyone wants to reach that was early October and as you can see from the graph my fitness continued to increase by a pretty good amount. I was training for The Dirty Dozen race in Pittsburgh. Ryan timed the build. perfectly the race included 13 intense efforts of 1 to 5 minutes and all are V2 Max or higher if I had tried to do that race in 2022 I would have failed but this year 2023 with all the training and urinating at the right time I was able to compete in the license category , which is the second fastest category just below the pros and I finished in the front half of the group, which I think by definition is above average, but how do we know what's going on with the numbers, what's going on with those 300? wat FTP well, right after the dirty dozen, I hit an all-time wattage of 15 minutes, like my personal best, 337 watts.

It wasn't a traditional FTP test, but essentially, if the researchers, for example, when they do it, they just look back at the energy data of the people they look at. its maximum potency over a period of 6 months and then analyze. That doesn't matter where you get them because that's essentially what you can do, that's your ability, so 303 yeah, what you're saying is and that effort, I would say you probably even could. be a touch higher at intervals in fact. IU estimated my max FTP this season at 316 watts, yeah well even with my big gap this summer and all the curveballs I threw at Ryan by changing training plans over and over again just for YouTube videos, you can't discuss the results, the pink line. is from my benchmark tests when I started training with the Road Cycling Academy and the purple line is this season, 2 years later the RCA helped me get above average and they did it while helping me build my confidence, getting in shape to do amazing rides and maybe the best thing is that on those rides I've met new friends, so I guess what I'm saying is that I still want to be faster.

I forgot to talk about my hair. I started taking finasteride and got most of it back, uh, no. all of this I'm still going back, it's still a little thin on top, so you know Dr. Gary, if he wants to ask me for a collaborative hair transplant, I'm down.