How I Became an Above Average Cyclist

After training with a cycling coach for over 2 years, I can finally say I’m (slightly) above average. More importantly, I’ve built the fitness to do some cool stuff on the bike.

Road Cycling Academy https://mitchboyer.bcns.ai/rca
They did not sponsor this video, I’m just really pleased with my results!

Thanks to @MarkLewisfitness for the inspiration and for roasting my dog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gVM2QLKGcs

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So 3 years ago I was bald I was out of shape and I spent way too much money on an expensive hobby today only one of those things is true in addition to draining my bank account riding a bike has sent me around the world it’s helped

Me make new friends and improved my self-confidence but let’s be honest none of that matters if you’re not getting faster on the bike this is the story of how I became an above average cyclist let’s start by defining average like a lot of 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 bunch of weight and I gained a new obsession I’m I’m going to cycle for the rest of my life eventually I ran out of

Gcn videos to watch and I found Mark Lewis in his video about becoming above average who wants to be down here and this end is just far too hard this is obviously the middle you want to be here above average be better than most Mark’s philosophy intrigued me especially since

I had recently discovered that I was below average am I doing a copyright right every sport has a key metric it’s something the practitioners obsess over while their spouses they don’t care baseball players care about their batting average gim Bros talk about how much they can bench and cyclists have an

FTP functional threshold power is the amount of power you can sustain on a bike for about an hour tour to France Pros can have an FTP above 400 watts my first FTP was 234 Watts weighing 180 lb at the time were 82 kilos I could produce 2.85 watts per kilogram of body

Weight that’s well below the 5.5 to 6 watts per kilogram per kilogram per kilogram you can tell I’m an American the 5.5 to 6 watts per kg that the pros produce this chart from intervals. IU shows how my power compared to 35,000 other men in my age group as you can see

See I was on the left side of the bell curve below average in that moment my secret Daydreams of being an Undiscovered Talent who would have been in the tour to France if only I had started when I was younger were crushed because I was normal but maybe if I tried really

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 that was actually a pretty decent option for a beginner cyclist but and it’s a big butt the I cannot lie the power data that comes out

Of a pelaton bike is notoriously inaccurate my pelaton power was so inflated that for a brief moment I honestly believe my FTP had miraculously grown to 3177 watts in just a few weeks in reality it was 254 I learned this because once I saw the pelaton was

Inaccurate I put a set of a power meter pedals on my bike and I did a traditional 20-minute FTP test where you ride as hard as you can for 20 minutes and your FTP is estimated by calculating 95% of your 20-minute average power but having tasted and lost the sweet nectar

Of a 300 wat FTP I vowed that one day I would return to the promised land so 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 Road cycling Academy cam Nichols cam literally changed my life

And for once on YouTube that statement is not hyperbole I’m not talking about something amorphous like oh it made me a happier person or I feel more confident on the bike although both of those things are true now cam did something in my first 12 weeks of training that

Changed the direction of my life this is what my power curve looked like when I started training with cam a power curve is a really great tool for seeing what kind of Rider you are on the y- AIS you have power and on the x-axis time the

Curve plus your best power output for a given time so from 1 second to however many minutes or hours your Longest Ride is the left side of the curve is your top end this includes your Sprint and your V2 Max basically really hard efforts that are anerobic on the other

Side you have endurance Powers this includes the infamous zone two which in a lot of training plans is where you spend the majority of your time these efforts are mostly 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 clear lactate faster than it accumulates if you keep writing above that point you’re going to feel the burn in your muscles like it’s going to continue to increase until your body finally says no this is what my power

Curve looked like after just a few months of training with Cam and the RCA the curve lifted and lengthened that’s what she the first eight weeks were spent building my base endurance the right side of the curve this was basically a lot of long Zone 2

Rides there is a reason why it’s called base training it’s because it’s the literal Foundation of your Fitness the last four weeks of the initial training added intensity work two times a week and that is what lifted up the left side of my power curve and this change in my

Power profile specifically lifting my power for efforts under 90 seconds is what changed my life oh man that’s way steeper in person shortly after wrapping up my training with Cam I was brainstorming video ideas and discovered that three of the steepest streets 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 ride all three in one afternoon you might already know how that went I want to barf as you can see from the power curve on that ride I was riding at my limit just

To get up those Hills that video riding up the steepest streets in La would go on to be my first cycling video with over a 100,000 views fascinating looking looking at his channel like he’s got a niche here he’s got another video where he was riding up another Steep Street

And it’s got half a million views and there’s a one where he’s going up one in San Francisco and it’s had like 34 of a million views you’re like holy hell I mean fa that’s a lot of for cycling YouTube you to crack half a meal is

Um that’s pretty amazing isn’t it have you watched the video why would I why would I watch a guy riding up a hill if Cam hadn’t prescribed those intensity rides and lifted my power for those shorter efforts I don’t think I could have made it up those steep streets the physical potential was

Obviously there so maybe theoretically I could have but mentally I can tell you right now I would not have been able to get up those streets I probably would have abandoned the whole video before finishing the First Street and maybe I wouldn’t even be doing YouTube fulltime now the mental

Grit that I gained and I’m still gaining from training has carried me up some of the steepest streets in the world including the Guinness World Record holder Baldwin Street in New Zealand guys oh my God around this time C decided he had enough of me and dumped me gently into

The arms of his new head coach Ryan Thomas who’s your favorite uh student my favorite student it’s a hard one cim Nichols the boss the road cycling Academy was growing and Ryan a former Continental Pro started leading the training and coaching so cam could focus on the business and YouTube you would

Think I would continue working on my top end with Ryan since that is where my strengths as a riter are I’m not the strongest up there 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 stuck in your head and it puts everything else in your life on hold if the steepest street made a good video why not the longest street This Is The Loneliest Road in America 340 M across the Nevada desert for some

Weird reason I don’t totally understand I did a complete 180 and decided I wanted to try Ultra endurance cycling I think it’s because I’d been watching a lot of vegan cyclist videos where he rides through the night and it looks really like intense and cool and I

Wanted to see if I could do it so over the summer Ryan helped me build a base Fitness so that I could ride for 24 hours straight in preparation my weekend rides Grew From 2 or 3 hours long to 5 or 6 and I even ended up doing like a

10-hour ride up through Santa Barbara is really beautiful we made it I’m shattered oh cramp and then I got sick right after so that wasn’t so beautiful but I digress you can see my power curve didn’t really move up but it did get stretched out 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 properly plan and it was too busy on the road to safely ride through the night without giving my wife a heart attack but maybe subconsciously

I did that on purpose I don’t know if I’m being smart or weak went to sleep for a few hours and then try to do the rest of the right tomorrow like okay yeah this is a thing and I don’t want to do it ever again glad to say goodbye to

It Ultra endurance is not my thing but that doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned longer rides riding up the death Road in Bolivia for example was a 7-hour ride still long but not 15 hours long each week even now I usually have two or three Zone 2 rides even when I’m

Focusing on different parts of my power curve I’m not normally up this early today we’re going on a ride I haven’t done since my first year of riding road bikes we’re going to Mount Wilson I’ve got a 4H hour uh base training ride today so I figured this would be a good

Opportunity to try that ride out again at the time it was the most epic ride I had ever done I think it was like 63 Mi and 6,500 ft of climbing took me 5 and 1/ half hours I’m not super fast so I’m curious to see how it feels now made it

Up got up here under 3 hours from my door which I think is much much faster if you want to continue to build your Fitness you have to continue to build your base otherwise the whole thing will crumble like a foundation if I’m making it sound like I know what I’m talking

About that’s only thanks to cam and Ryan one of the best parts about being coached in my opinion is having access to Ryan and his knowledge because he has so much knowledge the way we work with RCA is it’s a lot of Education when people come on often often they don’t

Have a great idea of how to train and what they’re doing it for and why they’re doing certain efforts so that educational aspect I love that as well so a l all get all these questions all the time and people say I don’t want to bother you but I I love answering that

And I love teaching people for example you’re trying to do steep streets there’s no one else that I coach is trying to do steep streets I’ve asked him questions about every aspect of training from sprinting to nutrition and more and I’m sure I will bother him with

Thousands of more questions I also tend to be pretty hard on myself when things don’t go exactly to plan or I fail an interval and it’s nice to have Ryan during those moments too when people say like oh I failed this session I failed that effort it’s like that’s fine like

We can do it again next week you obviously want to push yourself in every interval this is what you want to do and how you improve but if you have a bad session think about a a block of training you may have a 100 sessions one session that’s like one% % of your

Training then you think about one interval in that session it’s like 0.1% of your training it doesn’t mean that much it’s getting six weeks of hard training in consistently then that’s that’s your biggest benefit or 8 weeks or 12 weeks whatever that period is my mind is constantly full like I’m working

On story ideas or planning and producing videos or just catching up on my bookkeeping or all of my personal responsibilities it’s really nice to know I have someone else who knows more than me designing and adjusting my trend training like it’s one less thing that I

Have to worry about and he helps me balance my training out as well usually it’s because I’m putting a last second like new ride on the calendar for a video and poor Ryan has to rework the entire plan that he worked on the most valuable thing are the times when my

Schedule’s really tight and I don’t have a lot of time to train because Ryan figures out how to get the most out of the little time that I do have toward the end of 20122 coming one year into training with the RCA I came to my senses and I started training for a

Steep streets again but this time in addition to training my Sprint and my V2 Max Ryan added threshold training which not only lifted up the middle of my curve it helped me gain more confidence in my strength as a cyclist and the mental side of things is

Huge back in April of that year I rode up Alto whff for an hour at threshold which at the time was like around 265 watts and I did it with my dog on my back all in an attempt to steal a world record from Mark Lewis and his dog Nixon

Set a few months earlier we beat the record I argue it doesn’t qualify cuz I’ve eaten burgers that weigh more than that thing I never expected someone to rock up with something they stole from Paris Hilton’s handbag was my mistake I’m really proud of that video it has like a a fun plot

Twist but the experience riding at threshold for an hour was brutal especially being new to training and I think it kind of scarred me so when Ryan started prescribing threshold repeats later in the year I was secretly terrified but I trusted him and I did the workout I just

Finished a workout of threshold repeats four of them back to back for 10 minutes for 5 minute rest for a lot of people that’s not a lot for me that’s a lot like I would not have been able to do that like 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 like 10minute intervals at 270 watts to 4 12 minute intervals at 290 Watts it was really exciting to see progress so quickly and a 300 watt FTP seemed like

It was just around the corner all my other zones were lifting up too for a few weeks I was hitting a new personal best on my Sprint every single 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 puke in April and May that year I traveled around the world shooting cycling videos which is the craziest sentence I have ever uttered what an awesome experience and I even got to meet Cam and Ryan in person while I was

In Australia and I went for a ride with Cam where he tried to kill me coin land got your M yep training was basically on hold until I returned and I was looking forward to it I just knew I was going to blast through 300 watts as soon as I got Home my death Road video has more details but but basically after Bolivia I was exhausted physically mentally emotionally even after a full recovery week where I didn’t touch the bike I just didn’t have the heart to train and not I didn’t even have the heart to ride

My bike like for 2 months from miday to Mid July I barely touched it looking back at my training I’m bummed that I didn’t keep going especially because right before all of this I was in Bolivia basically at 12,000 ft or like 3600 m above above sea level for a week

So I imagine like the adaptations I would have had when I got home I probably would have had a huge boost in performance but that’s not how last summer went down by mid July my fitness was at the lowest it had been in almost 2 years without Ryan I would have been

Really worried but he reassured me I could rebuild my fitness and that it would come back faster than before rather than forcing me to continue training he encouraged me to take the time I needed before jumping back in and because of that when I did start

Training again I was ready to give 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 ride which Ryan incorporated into my training my only regret is that

I didn’t do it earlier because not only has the group ride been fun and helped to keep things fresh chasing other people people on the bike has helped me push myself even further on October 1st I hit 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 these videos up and I did play it off as a joke in that group rides video and if you’ve been watching my channel you know I have a goal of one day getting a 300 watt FTP

But that 299 watt FTP stung my power meter has an accuracy of plus or minus 1% so technically that missing watt was within the margin of error but if you think about it it could also go the other way and my FTP would be even lower

So I think a lot of people can relate though CU I hear when you talk to people about their goals I want to get over 300 I want to hit over 300 it’s a marker where everyone wants to hit that was at the beginning of October and as you can

See on the chart my fitness continued to go up up a 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 from 1 to 5 minutes and they’re all V2 Max or above if I had tried to do

That race in 2022 I would have failed but this year 2023 with all the training and peing at the right time I was able to compete in the license category which is the second fastest category right below the pros and I finished in the front half of the pack which I believe

By definition is above average right but how do we know what about the numbers what about that 300 wat FTP well just after the dirty dozen I hit an alltime 15minute power like personal best of 337 Watts it wasn’t a traditional FTP test but essentially like if you researchers

For example when they do they just look back at people’s power data they look at their Peak power for 6 month period and then Analyze That doesn’t matter where you get them because it’s it’s essentially what you’re able to do that’s your capacity so 303 Yeah what it says it is and that effort I would say probably even might be a touch higher in fact intervals. IU estimated my Peak FTP this season 316 Watts yeah yeah nice even with my big gap this summer and all of the curveballs I threw Ryan by changing

Training plans over and over again just for YouTube videos you can’t argue with the results the pink line is from my Baseline tests when I started training with the road cycling Academy and the purple line is this season 2 years later the RCA helped me become above average

And they did that while helping me build my confidence getting me fit enough 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 I still want to get faster I forgot to talk about my hair um

I started taking finasteride and got most of it back uh not all of it I’m still receding it’s still kind of thin on the top so you know Dr Gary if you want to hit me up for a collab hair transplant I’m down