Building base

[Elegant Degenerate]

I'm looking to get a bit more of an organised approach to my training after several years of riding (to varying degrees), and am looking at long term improvements.

Right now I have a reasonable level of fitness (looking at roughly 10 hrs on the bike a week, sometimes more). I am fairly comfortable with long rides, but after doing some reading on the subject, it looks like I've been riding far to consistently over 80% max heart rate.

Do I want to ride exclusively below LT for a period of month(s) before I look to add higher end work?

What is the best way to do base training? and how long do you do it before working on other areas?

...(I'm working on a higher cadence too, but that's another story)

 

[tubularglue]

this helps immensely.

not kidding

 

[Tapeworm]

"Base building" is a misnomer, there is nothing to stop you, and some people advocate, getting stuck into intervals of various intensity. Of course you will not be starting at 500watts for 5mins, but slowly ramping intervals over a period of time. You do not need to do 3 months of 5 hour ride to build a "base".

 

[mountaindew]

http://www.biketechreview.com/performance/supply/47-base-a-new-definition

 

[Tapeworm]

An old link... and one of my favourites! Thanks for posting.

 

[Elegant Degenerate]

hmm, yep. Thanks. Interesting reading. I did think that spending months below 80% seemed counter-intuitive.

... Now to work out a new training program.

 

[ihavenolimbs]

Do I want to ride exclusively below LT for a period of month(s) before I look to add higher end work?

What is the best way to do base training? and how long do you do it before working on other areas?

Answer to the first question is "no", though most elite cyclists do actually spend >90% of their training well below LT.

The goal of base-training is to: build enough endurance so that you'll be comfortable completing your race distances, and to get to about 90% of your peak fitness without becoming mentally stale. If you start out too early with structured, interval sessions then you may (almost certainly will) hurt your enthusiasm for hard training sessions, like intervals, later in your cycling season.

As long as your base training is enjoyable, you're recovering well, and you are seeing gradual improvement, then it's probably working OK. The length of the base training period depends on when your first really-important race is. Traditionally it takes about two months, after finishing base-training, to peak?

There is too much variability between us all to say what'd work the best for you personally. Here are a few points that I've found (through training and reading):

1/ Ride regularly. I find it much better to do 12 hours spread over 6 rides, in a week, than spread over 3 or 4 rides. It's common for rowers and runners to train twice a day (or more). Maybe we should be too?

2/ Most people have about a 50:50 ratio of fast-twitch (FT) and slow-twitch (ST) muscle fibres. (Though I'm more like 20:80 .)

3/ FT muscle fibres can produce a lot of power anaerobically (means "without oxygen"), but their aerobic performance ain't that flash (initially). Endurance properties of FT (i.e. threshold power) improve quickly with moderate to high intensity training though. But junk miles won't help much at all. (Some people claim FT can change to ST in humans, with a lot of long rides, most others say they don't.)

4/ ST fibres are very fatigue resistant but only improve relatively slowly, intensity is less important than training volume. This is why elite cyclists ride so many kms, they're maximising the performance of their ST fibres. Being able to race using more of their ST fibres, and less of their FT fibres, will leave the FTs fresher for when the selections are being made, and at the finish. But even ST doesn't benefit much from junk miles though. Generally, riding at >60% VO2max is recommended (maybe >50% initially, but should be more than 60% by the end of base training).

5/ If your training time available is less-than-ideal then you will need more intensity, to get the desired training load.

Since I'm mostly slow-twitch, I need quite a large volume of weekly training. The more I ride, the faster I get. I've tried training like the guy in the following article, for two seasons, and it didn't work that well for me:
http://www.biketechreview.com/performance/supply/47-base-a-new-definition

He can max-out his heart-rate (HR) whenever he likes. When I'm really fit, I can't. I can't go anaerobic for long enough to get my HR all the way from threshold (~175 bpm) to max (204 bpm). In races and competitive group-rides (and running) I can get within 10 bpm, but never in training, unless I'm unfit (since lower VO2max).

Ideally you'd train like a pro, 600+ km/week. But if you have a similar physiology to the guy in the link, you could probably get very close to your biological peak with not many hours/week. I doubt that he'd see much year-on-year improvement though.

 

[Tapeworm]

I'd argue a couple of points you made.

1) you are not training the "muscles" per se. There is far more "training" going in the realm of your bodies ability to remove metabolites -neovascularization, capillarization etc. For aerobic activities its more about improving the biochemistry than your biomechanics. As mentioned in the article low intensity exercise doesn't tax, and consequently improve, this as much as higher intensity.

2) largely this is the point of the article that you CAN make year to year improvements using shorter intervals. This is not really that new, Coggan has been advocating the 2x20 intervals for many years as the "best bang for buck". That is not to say longer intervals shouldn't be used, its just these are highly effective. Improvement is largely due to genetics but I have seen many improve with these style of shorter intervals... though they do have to be done right.

3) as mentioned many times before, the reasons you have mentioned show why HR sucks for training. All about the watts. My HR can be 30 beats below or higher than my "max". I really don't care. RPE and power are far better gauges.

4) there is a lot of fluff in relation to benefits of training for long periods of time. Some are true others are in the "old school" logic with no real scientific basis for their implementation.

 

[ihavenolimbs]

I'd argue a couple of points you made.

1) you are not training the "muscles" per se. There is far more "training" going in the realm of your bodies ability to remove metabolites -neovascularization, capillarization etc. For aerobic activities its more about improving the biochemistry than your biomechanics. As mentioned in the article low intensity exercise doesn't tax, and consequently improve, this as much as higher intensity.

Typically, central systems respond to training more quickly than peripheral systems. If your base-training is focused on improving your peripheral systems, as these take more time, then the other systems should be able keep pace with these changes quite easily.

Looking at the graph on the page in the following article (about the middle), ST muscle fibre hormonal-response appears to be quite insensitive to intensity. But can you ride for longer at 60% VO2max or 100%? Hence more net training load on the slow-twitch (ST) when using lower intensities and much longer time, which are fairly rugged and need it anyway.

http://www.endurancecorner.com/Intervals_for_Base

This is why I focused on muscle fibres. (I didn't mention whether the changes were due to myoglobin, mitochondrial, capillarisation, or whatever.) The point is that muscles, esp. ST, take a long time to train. Since base training is early season, there is no point targeting systems that gain (and lose) fitness very quickly. The cardiovascular system, for example, gains fitness very quickly, but these gains have a decay half-life of about 6 days.

So save VO2max intervals for later (if at all). If you do them early season, and then get sick and have a lay-off, you'll have to do 'em again.

Since VO2max responds quickly to training (and quickly maxes out), and I'm mostly ST muscle, training the ST is #1 priority in base-training for me.

For people that are heavily VO2max-limited and very anaerobic, like the BTR guy, then they'll probably have different priorities.

 

[CoachFergie]

For people that are heavily VO2max-limited and very anaerobic, like the BTR guy, then they'll probably have different priorities.

The BTR guy is doing Ironman and is using the stripped down approach with great success.