How do regular people find time to train seriously for cycling?

Time? Not a clue

Mechanical issues? Most are familiar with basic bike repair and have something like a spare tube and pump . Its also a lot easier to carry a cell phone while cycling than running (it seems).

Dark outside? Same as runners, use a headlamp. Just like with running, you get used to it. They also spend a lot of time on the trainer (google bike trainer if you haven't seen one) in the winter.

Training structure? Yes, very different. Some principles of endurance training are the same, but their workouts are a lot different than any runner's, even marathoners. For instance, a 100 mile ride once a week isn't uncommon and thats only a long ride to an amateur. Even marathoners don't typically do 25-30 mile runs.

Also, eating it once in a while (at least once or 2x a year or so) seems to be a given for cyclists, whereas for a runner, falling on the road could lead to a season ending injury.

Source: friends with triathletes

Rich sport. Like tennis, yachts, golf somewhat.

I think a lot of serious bikers use the home trainer during the week days. You can even use it while watching tv

Why don’t you ask this on letscycle?

Zwift is where it's at.

Changing a tire takes 10 minutes If you have done it a few times. Cycling with lights is fine. There are some strong ones out there. Most people cycle long and slow. I do only 1 hour most of the time but always intervals.

From what I've seen (I'm an amateur female racer with friends in the domestic elite scene), people who take cycling seriously don't have jobs that would generally be seen as prestigious or "serious"--some are grad students in second-tier program, some have chill RA/social media coordinator positions, that kind of thing. There are some exceptions, but honestly I think those people are incredibly talented and don't have much of a social life outside cycling.

So tl;dr--if you do literally nothing outside of work but bike, that leaves 6-8 hours per day to train, with another 8 to sleep. Is it worth it? Debatable...

Cycling as a serious pursuit is a HUGE time suck, worse than golf, worse than almost any other pastime. It's dangerous as h*ll to ride on the roads, it's dangerous at speed coming downhill, it's wildly expensive anymore.

I loved road cycling when I was younger but wavered when I learned how wildly time-inefficient it was compared to running. Later, especially when smart phones became omnipresent, it also became wildly dangerous to ride on roads in the US. Last, bikes themselves, and cycling gear, became crazily expensive and I was out.

Aside from those who commute in urban areas, or perhaps older people riding e-bikes on railt-trail conversions on Sunday afternoon, cycling is an expensive niche hobby for the t-and-HGH bro-types who are well-heeled with too much time on their hands. Cycling is amped up golf for spandex lovers.

A top age grouper or low end triathlon pro training 15-20 hours/week can get really good at cycling by dedicating 8-10 training hours to it. If you're just devoting yourself to cycling but aren't a pro, maybe something like 12-15 hours/week would put you in a good spot for amateur racing. Yes, it's time consuming, but people training like that aren't doing short rides that a runner might consider cross training (30-60min). Easier days become 1.5-2.5 hours (or more). Plus you're getting in a long ride on the weekend in the 3-5+ hour range. You can do it in 5ish rides, and manage to take a day or two off each week.

There definitely are some exceptions.

Just anecdotal...

The people I know who train relatively hard for triathlons or Ironmans: 1) don't have kids, or 2) don't have much of a social life...or they cancel family/friends plans often to train, or 3) Have no partner or have a partner that is also a triathlete that understands the obsession with training.

One particular guy I knew would often bike 6-8 hours every Sunday/Saturday with his friends (including beers or coffee after the ride). This was a married guy with two kids. I still get the stink eye from my wife when I run for 2 hours on Sunday at 6am, so I don't know how he pulled it off.

The ones that I worked with tried to ride to and from the office as much as they could. a 15-20 mile ride each way to and from the office doesn't really add that much commute time even when adjusting for showering once at work and getting changed again at the end of the day. You can easily put in 100-150 miles on the weekdays this way and then longer stuff or races on the weekends.

You can use an interval-heavy approach like that in the book Time Crunched Training Program by Carmichael. He acknowledges the limitation of the approach (due to low volume) but has decent plans based on something like 7-8 hours per week.

Thanks everybody, this is kind of what I suspected. Too bad though, I love running but when I do get out for a ride on the weekend, it's fun to be able to cover so much ground in comparatively little time. Plus it would be fun to get into all the gear. I'll stick with my plan of waiting until retirement to start cycling seriously, when I have more time and less cartilage.

When I was really training hard on the bike I was doing about 13-15hrs per week. About 8-10yrs over the weekend and weekdays get 1-2hrs per day either commuting or going out to do a short hilly session. As others mentioned, trainer in the winter or get really bundled up. As for darkness… you know bike lights exist right? There are some even brighter than car lights.

My weekends were basically ride all morning, veg the rest of the day, repeat. Could never get away with that now, unfortunately.

Kind of off topic, but does anyone know of any cycling forums similar to Letsrun out there? I'm a current collegiate runner but looking to get into cycling more when I graduate next year, but don't really have a good idea of where to start. Just got interested from watching the tour, giro, and vuelta the last couple of years.

I know about bike lights. Maybe I just need a better one but the few times I've tried to ride with it in the dark it always feels sketchy, like I could easily miss a big pothole or rock in the road and go down. I run in the early AM with a headlamp all winter but obviously I'm going a lot slower. Even then I do a lot less trail running. Also possible my low light vision is just bad.

You can actually get quite good at cycling on maybe 8-10 hours a week.

I won a number of time trials in the UK in the past and finished in the top 25 of the nationals before, on about 8 hours. Mostly on the turbo trainer. It's the most efficient way.

Road racing is a different ball game. You definitely need more time. But the standard time trial distance of 10 or 25 here in the UK is very similar to training for 5k and 10k.

In fact a lot of my running training I am doing now (having given up cycling) is very similar to what I did on the bike. And very Norway like.

But yeah road racing is different. You definitely need to dedicate quite a lot of time to that. Especially to get Cat1.

bikeforums.com is a decent forum. It's similar to Letsrun in some ways, not in others. There are knowledgeable people there.