"Ride lots." -- Eddy Merckx

Find a group that is faster and hang on until they drop you then come back the next week and do it again. It's tricky to find the right group, not so fast that you can't hang on, but fsat enough that you have to work. I also use strava to race against myself. I even have a few private segments that are just for me. On Cyclinks advice I picked a stretch that takes me 8min to complete on a good day. Go easy out hit it hard on that stretch then cool down and repeat. He said eventually you try to get it down closer to 5 minutes. I'm not there yet, but I do see improvement.

One year ago I was lucky to hang on to a group that was averaging 16 mph. Today I lead a group ride in the morning and we averaged over 22 mph. You have to push yourself beyond your limits every day. The more you do that, the faster you get each day. It just takes time.

What does your week look like now? Add structure to your rides.

Here is a basic structure and I can go into more details of what to do, but need to know what you do now.

Monday - Recover
Tuesday - Sprints
Wed - Long Endurance
Thur - Intervals/Hills
Friday - recover
Sat - Group ride that you can stay with for most of the ride, but usually get dropped by the end.
Sun- Endurance pace group ride.

I'm slowly increasing mileage ... of course last week killed my training a bit with being sick. However this is what my normal week looks like

Monday - Rest
Tuesday - Easy Recovery ride
Wednesday - Short length Brisk (as hard as I can go) Wednesday evening Spin workout
Thursday - Medium length - Pace
Friday - Easy Recovery ride
Saturday - Medium length - Pace
Sunday - Long length

I am finding that I'm increasing a little on speed, although that isn't necessarily what I'm concentrating on.

I've always been relatively fast but with poor endurance. Over the winter I followed a heart rate zone training plan using a Spinning bike and it made a huge difference when spring came around.

This is worth a read http://www.bikeradar.com/fitness/article/heart-rate-monitor-training-for-cyclists-28838/

The low zone training is deadly dull but really pays benefits in being able to maintain speed at a lower heart rate.

The other big factor was losing weight! Bit pointless buying an expensive light weight bike when you are carrying 20+ pounds of fat. :laugh:

I also want to increase my velocity. I have been given advice from colleagues and agree that joining a group is probably the best way to achieve this. I have also been advised that timing regarding joining a group is also important. February and March is best in the UK as many are still on the turbo trainers in the garage at that stage and others are just starting to build up there speed following the winter break. If you leave it much longer than this the average speed of the group will have built up and that could have a negative affect on your motivation.

I haven't shared this advice with anyone on this group before, but the logic appears sound. That said, others may disagree.

Sounds pretty much spot on in terms of when to start - if you look on the local teams websites, they'll probably have a calendar of club rides - what you want to be doing is joining before what they sometimes refer to as "reliability runs" - which are probably the last of the long steady distance rides, before the quick lads start trying to rip each others legs off... Sadly, around here, most of the clubs bar one seem to be heavily into the racing side of things and the concept of "no man left behind" rides is completely alien to them - hence why I seem to be stuck in "billy-no-mates land" - I can do 70-80 mile rides at around 16mph, provided it's not too hilly a terrain, but anything longer on my own and I get slightly concerned in case I have an off, or a major mechanical and find myself stranded 60-70 miles from home. I know I've got my credit card and a phone, but a 70mile taxi-ride isn't going to come cheap... And 16mph is probably slow enough to see me dropped fairly unceremoniously...

...something that helped me a lot was not trying to "kill it" each ride. I tried to ride consecutive days, with a "fast/hard" ride (sometimes, but not every ride) followed by slower "recover" ride. I really tried to ride 6 days with 1 day to rest and start again.

Yep - it took me a while to work it out, and it's partly what works for the individual, but if I do anything more than 3 consecutive days of "training" then i'm usually into "junk miles" territory...

Best thing I did was get hold of a power meter (albeit one of those Powercal "pseudo meter" belts) and start taking notice of the TSS (training stress score) figures from my ride. After about a year of use, I now realise that, no longer being a young "racing snake" I take a while to recover - and basically I can "absorb" a TSS of about 0.6 per day... I keep a running total of the TSS from each ride and as soon as I hit 2.0 I have a day off the bike - each day off the bike counts as a TSS of -2.5 (again, this has pretty much been worked out using trial and error)

Works a bit like this

2/9 - 30 miles Z2-3 (Steady riding) - TSS 0.75
3/9 - 32 miles Z3-4 (Tempo, Windy) - TSS 1.15 Running Total - 1.30 (0.75 + 1.15 - 0.6) (the 0.6 being overnight recovery 2/9 to 3/9)
4/9 - 34 miles z2-3 with hilly section z4-5 - TSS 2.25 Running Total - 1.8 (1.30+1.55 - 0.6) - time for a day off
5/9 - day off - running total 0.0 (2.25 - 2.5) - nb counter doesn't go -ve
6/9 - 18 miles z2-3 (mtb, raining) - TSS 0.54
7/9 - 26 miles z2-3 Steady ride - TSS 0.68 Running Total - 0.62 (0.54+0.68 - 0.6 )
8/9 - 79 miles z3-4 (Tempo, Long Flat ride) - TSS 2.64 Running total 2.66 (2.64+0.62-0.6) - rest day time again
9/9 day off - running total 0.14 (2.64-2.5)
...

and so on... okay, it's a bit obsessive (allright - a LOT obsessive) but it works for me!

Another little trick is to take your resting pulse on waking. Any unexplained rise in the RHR can be an indication of overtraining - if not sure, take an easier session and see if it improves next morning.