January & feeling good...

Training & training program comes in all shapes & varieties. Stick with the the commonalities & you'll see they all boils down to some kind of easy "base" related workouts and then progresses up to intense race level effort intervals. Each program has it's own verbage, theory and related real life facts to back up why it works. Some are real structured, others (maybe alot) are done on the fly.
The point is most people that study the stuff will say the body taps into different energy stores based on the demand of the moment and that by placing stress over time on each level the body systems will adapt and with any luck you should get faster. Cavet to all that is.... you gotta have rest in between -- cuz as it's said "beatin' yourself up never gets you stronger, it's how you rest and recover that builds you back up". That fact so often is lost with the intense athlete/performer. Which leads to it's own set of problems and disfunctions. Now, knowing the balance that's the key to any program. Don't train enough, you don't tap into your full genetic potential, train too much or too long and likewise your body never recovers enough to reach it's full potential. If you're going to fall on one side other the determine which one you can better live with and let each season give you better insight on how to stay in the middle.
Some people will train on heart rate, in cycling we're lucky enough to have devices to measure power output, and I've even heard of people training in terms of miles per hour (no offense but -- dinasoraus in that thought process. 10mph into a strong headwind is harder than 25mph with a hurricane force tail wind -- so how one can consistantly train that way, I'm not sure).
I, for one, am fortunate enough to train with a power output device & use heart rate for additional guidance. The power device is called a PowerTap there are others on the market this is just the one I started with and it's worked well.
When I really got into cycling, racing & training must have been '04 and one big point that had eluded me in my years of competative endurance sports in high school & college was the importance of year round training. I'd go into cross country or a track season & work out during the season and not do much inbetween. So I never really built on any previous season efforts. Unwittingly I was always starting over from scratch each season.
What a change it makes when you look at things from a 12 month perspective instead of 12 week perspective. Now, training year round can be misleading. I'll be the first to clarify it doesn't mean doing only one thing all year, but it does mean staying in reasonable cardiovascular & muscular endurance shape. You have times of greater effort and times of lesser efforts but the main part is not to ever get into couch potato season and not let too much time elapse to lose what gains your body has made. Read up on it sometime it's interesting to see how long some benefits stay and how fast others are lost.
This season seems to far be the best mid winter biking condition I find myself since '04. I likely faulted just over the side of overtraining last year and it's taken battling a half dozen colds and taking two extended recovery periods (2-3 weeks) this fall & winter to come back to full strength. Now, along with my base training a few mild intervals get tossed in and the efforts (as measured with the PowerTap) are pleasantly surprising. I'll try & toss out specifics in later entries. Hence the "January & feeling good...." subject matter. I'm feelin pretty optimistic for upcoming season(s) -- May/June, a break, then Aug thru Iceman.
It's not so much how good one does against everyone else, rather how you can do against your potential. Vastly talented individuals can take crappy training programs and still do amazingly well, while others can take nutrition, training & recovery to it's utmost and not necessarily have the same placings & results. However, never count out the guy/gal that's the least naturally talented but the most dedicated hard working one in the bunch. I'll happily put my money on that guy/gal ever single time if not for the result then the passion they put forth.