After 12+ years of tri racing and another decade of running -

every minute counts! Even if you're not winning in any awards!

FTP is barely better than it was 7 years ago, maybe at best 15 watts on a good day, most of the time equal. Yet I now average 6 minutes legit faster than my 2.5 yr old prior self on every Oly course I've done in the past 2 years, and went from just having a top 20% bike split to being in the top 5 overall bike splits in these local (yet still quite competitive Norcal tris) in every race in the last 2 years. Even had the fastest one outright last year. So it's a huge improvement. My bike time improvement was the biggest factor in my USAT improvement for sure.

And does it feel good to kick my old self's behind - hell yes!!

In all seriousness though, even in these local races, the arms race on bike and now run gear is so fierce that if you're not using a TT bike with good aero optimization (race wheels, aero helmet,etc.) you almost have to put out pro-level watts to keep up with the guys in front if you are using a nonoptimized entry level road bike equivalent. And even if the run, if you're not using some sort of running supershoe, you're giving up 1-3 minutes against a well trained competitor who's using them effectively. Add these together and it's nearly impossible for even a highly trained AGer without the right gear to compete effectively (that would be my not-that-much younger self, who I now crush timewise, but am about equal fitnesswise.)

Again, I hate to say it, but money was a huge factor in my improvement, possibly THE major factor, as I trained pretty hard beforehand, and have barely increased my training volume in comparison.