Wanted to share my training journey over the last 6 months as I think it might help others in a similar position.
Starting point (September 2025):
What changed: I started using Paincave's structured plans and actually following them instead of just going out and riding hard every day. The biggest shift was adding more easy volume and reducing intensity frequency.
My weekly structure (roughly):
Key learnings:
Current numbers (March 2026):
Happy to answer questions about the specifics!
This is awesome progress Bjorn. 50W in 6 months is impressive at your level — the gains get harder to find above 3.5 W/kg.
The sleep point is so underrated. I saw a similar jump when I started prioritizing sleep and Paincave's recovery metrics helped me see the correlation clearly.
What did your sweet spot workouts look like specifically? Straight 2x20 or more varied structures?
Love this write-up. The "junk miles" trap is so real — I was stuck at 220W for months until I committed to truly easy recovery rides instead of always riding "moderate".
Question: did you do any dedicated sprint or neuromuscular work? Or was it purely aerobic development?
Inspirational post. Currently sitting at 275W and feeling stuck. Going to try dialing back the intensity and adding more Z2 volume.
What was your ramp rate during this period? I see Paincave suggests 3-8 CTL/week for cycling — where did you sit?
@Rob — My sweet spot sessions evolved over the 6 months:
Months 1-2: 3x12min at 88% FTP, 4min recovery Months 3-4: 2x20min at 90% FTP, 5min recovery Months 5-6: 1x30min at 88% + 1x20min at 92%, 5min recovery
The key was progressive overload — increasing duration before increasing intensity.
@Sarah — No dedicated sprint work, but my Sunday group rides provided plenty of neuromuscular stimulus (attacks, sprint points, etc). I think for most amateur cyclists, structured sprint training isn't necessary unless you're specifically targeting crits or short races.
@Jake — I averaged about 4-5 CTL/week ramp rate. There were a couple weeks where life got in the way and I dropped back, but the trend was consistently upward.
The key insight from Paincave's zone tracking was seeing that my Z3 time was way too high. Once I forced myself to ride truly easy on easy days (keeping power under 65% FTP), my hard days got harder — which is the whole point of polarized training.
You'll break through 275W, just be patient and trust the process.
This mirrors my experience almost exactly. Went from 195W to 240W (3.4 W/kg → 4.0 W/kg) in 5 months with a very similar approach.
The one thing I'd add: nutrition timing matters. Fueling properly during and after hard workouts (rather than training fasted all the time) accelerated my recovery significantly. I can do hard sessions on back-to-back days now when before I'd need 48 hours to recover.
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