\”Those were the days\” sounds like looking back on the past with nostalgia. But was it always so much better in \”the good old days\”?

They say of tennis that you need out out-think your opponent, rather than outrun your opponent. This training sounds like it\’s aiming at something quite similar; and it sounds brutal to me.

Ride all those miles (kilometers, they say here), and ride a lot more with all those \”attacks\”? I guess that\’s one way to get strong, but not the method I\’d choose. Such a ride would have me feeling like #10 on this chart.

It sounds to me like the training mentality back then was a boot-camp style, All hard, All the time. Joe Friel would probably have a fit about that! When did those riders get to recover? Were they more prone to overuse injuries, and premature burnout, than today\’s serious cyclists?

We must remember that things change over time. What was \”normal\” in Fausto Coppi\’s day is now likely to be viewed as detrimental. Sixty or seventy years from now, serious cyclists may well be horrified by the way things are done in the present; and they\’ll be saying, Those Were the Days?!