Training Advice

You might say there are two basic schools of thought - ancient and modern.
Modern:
In a nutshell this is the Peter Keen/Chris Boardman approach. It involves lots of measuring, gym work, turbos etc. It works (see olympic results). However, it is expensive and doesn't sound much fun.
Ancient:
Just do lots of miles. Then do some more: every mile pays a dividend.
Historically far more races have been won with the old method than the modern technique, but this may not always be true in the future. However, I hope the reason anyone reads this forum is because they actually like riding their bikes, and this seems to fit in better with the traditional way of doing things.
Just a few suggestions to help with all those miles.

• Join a club. If you find one that suits you it will change your life.
  
• Be flexible about the discipline you want to take part in. Track has been on the TV a lot recently, but its not suitable for all. If climbing is your strongest suit you won't be able to show it off on the velodrome. Everyone should aim to do some road racing, but if you can only measure improvement by going from DNF to FMB, you won't find it very encouraging. For this reason I suggest everyone should do some time trialling. Virtually all the big names in British cyclesport,from Leon Meredith to Boardman himself have had an involvement with time trialling; the improvement in your personal bests give you something concrete to put in your training diary (you'llneed one of those).
  -I'd say for most people 5000 miles per year would be a absolute minimum for racing fitness.
  That's quite enough for one post.