As promised by the book's title, readers will almost certainly make significant gains in power, speed and endurance by putting these training techniques into practice. Lots of good advice and some eye-opening information on interval training, strength work, weight training and training schedules. The book concentrates a lot on training with a heart monitor - they're not expensive, but if you're buying this book with a view to following the advice (of course you are!), you'll definitely need to buy one.

The author does a great job of not just lecturing the reader with his own opinion, but rather offers the views of others and provides the supporting evidence. The only downside is that the reader could be left confused by the apparently conflicting advice. Furthermore, I never did get my head around some of the cycling technique explanations - adding some simple diagrams would have helped.

The most useful part of the book is near to the end, where the author explains in detail how to train and how to build a training schedule. That information is worth the outlay alone... I just wish this chapter went on for another 20 pages or so, because it stops just when it gets really interesting, which is the (rather harsh) reason for docking one star.

That said, the book is well written and even amusing. It doesn't get too technical, it doesn't go into kit selection and it doesn't get boring. Most importantly, if you're relatively new to racing / time trialling / mountain biking, then buying this book will change the way you train and yes, you'll perform better as a result.

If you are already strong roadie then maybe this book would be too basic for you, but you never know, at this price it might be worth a look anyway!