Barry's book attempts to describe cycling as a fitness activity for beginners through racers. It begins with equipment selection for total newbies but also contains sections about physiology, nutrition, goal setting and training programs.

The strength of the book is the discussion of workout types (base building, endurance, hill training, speed training, cross training and others) and training programs containing these building blocks.

The weakness of the book is that it's pretty broad and not too deep.

I wish the author would have talked a bit more about using commuting mileage in a training program (I ride my bike to work so my course and mileage are relatively inflexible... so what do you do with that? And how do you handle the scenario when you ride 2x/day, not 1x/day after work?). I also wish he would have spent time with cross-training during the season (how can I use mountain biking to train for road cycling events?).

All in all, a good overview that I'll keep on my cycling and fitness bookshelf, but not the primary book I'd recommend to others in this field.