It's the recovery time. It's the mental energy. 12 hours of cycling probably takes you closer to 20 hours when you add up all the admin around it. And 20 hours takes a toll on your personal life. It takes a toll on your relationship. On 12 hours a week, our Saturdays look like this. So, I'd leave at 8:00 a.m. I'd get home at maybe 1:00 p.m., shower, eat a massive lunch, nap till 3, wake up foggy, flick around Netflix, can't find nothing to watch, try to maybe be human for a few hours at dinnertime, but most of the time fail. On a 6-hour training week, I ride from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., and then I have an entire day with Sarah, energy intact, present, actually able to do the things that don't involve compression socks for the rest of the day. And here's what makes this a little bit complicated. I'm still racing at category 1 level. I'm still pinning on numbers. I'm still finishing races. How is this possible? Modika and Pandela's dtraining research from 2001 explains exactly how it is possible. Athletes with more than 10 years of consistent training maintain higher baselines. They have what researchers call structural adaptations that persist. My 15 years of training volume, built a foundation that 6 hours can partially maintain. I'm living off a training bank account that I built this bank account when I was cycling for my entire life, stacking in those 12 to 15 hour weeks. But I'm not making deposits into that account anymore. Now it's strictly withdrawals. What I can't do anymore, like respond to accelerations, race effectively over 90 minutes, stage races, absolutely forget it. I'm a 1-hour specialist now, whether I like it or not. Watch any Cat One race and you'll spot us. We look like everyone else, but we're lurking in the background. the former 12 to 15 hour a week guys now surviving on six-hour weeks. We're the ones who have good economy. We know how to surf the wheels in the first hour, but then we mysteriously start missing turns and disappearing when the race gets hard later on after 90 minutes. A quick word from today's sponsor. A few years ago, I came out of my local coffee shop after a long winter spin to find my cafe lock on the ground sliced clean in half. My Pride and Joy bike, it was gone. Just like that, a small fortune in kit. And frankly, part of my identity as a cyclist, it disappeared in seconds. If you've ever had that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, even imagining your bike getting stolen, wrecked, or damaged mid-travel, you know it's not just a possession. It's your freedom. It's your fitness. It's your sanity on tough weeks. That's where Bickmo comes in. Whether it's theft, damage, crashes, racing, or travel, BMO's got your back. Their in-house claims team makes the process fast and painless. And here's the kicker. With 50% off multibike cover, you can protect all your bikes and even your family or your mates's bike under the same policy. No nonsense, no surprises. But isn't just about covering bikes. They actually care about the future of cycling itself. And that's why I've partnered with them. If you ensure your bike with today, they'll donate £10 toward trashfree trails to help clean up and protect our shared cycling spaces. So head on over to bickmo bikmmo.com and use the code roadman to get covered, save money, and support our wild spaces. All that information is in the description below. Every World Tour coach I've interviewed says the same thing. The head of performance at Bora Red Bull was bluntly honest. There's no way around volume for building capacity. 6 hours maintains, 12 hours builds, 20 hours plus, now you're talking about world tour level riders. But then he said something else. The best training program is the one you can sustain for life. Not just physically, but emotionally, socially. A cat one racer who's miserable is worse than a cat 2 rider who absolutely loves the sport. And the science backs this up.