Looking for more gains.

In a nutshell, you should focus on building your sustainable power and laying a base for high end crit specific workouts as next season approaches. Off season is the perfect time to work on this stuff as it's hard to build base or increase sustainable power during race season while you're either prepping for races or recovering from them.

Search these boards and the web in general for info on SST (Sweet Spot Training), FTP, Threshold intervals like the classic 2x20s, Tempo, etc. Read Charles Howe's excellent primer on race training stemming from the approaches pioneered by Arthur Lydiard here: http://velodynamics2.webs.com/rcgtp1.pdf

You don't need a power meter or any other expensive tools to use these methods, the key thing is to go out and do the sustained fairly intense efforts, not 'make ya puke' minute long intervals this time of year but good solid 12 to 30 minute sustained Threshold intervals to build sustainable power along with longer Tempo and perhaps some higher end Endurance level rides all designed to increase fitness and to build a solid foundation for race specific work.

Good luck,
-Dave

parkerjiff said:

I'm quite new to the road bike scene but have started training for next seasons crit races and am looking to continue throughout the winter.
Im on the bike about four days a week and have about 1200 miles on the bike altogether. Every two weeks I have been performing a personal diagnostic on myself to look for improvement. The diagnostic consists of a 20 mile ride. Have been raising my average slowly but am currently at 19.6 mph for the 20 miles. Any suggestions to help prepare for the next season and wanted to see what if anyone could give me a descent idea on how good/bad my performance would be comparing now to what it should be for a crit race. THANKS FOR YOUR REPLIES.

Thanks Dave! Great advice.

Also you cant really do a test twice a month to see if youve gotten better because whenever you go out thw weather, wind speed, humidity, temperature will all most likely be different.

Just keep training. You can accomplish anything you want.