Springtime Base Training

I now have almost 900 miles for the year. Given the late arrival of spring in NE Wisconsin along with a bunch of questionable weather days, I am pleased with that total at this point. Included in there are some long rides--102 miles to Shawano, the 91 miles around Winnebago and an 85 mile ride this weekend. So base training and endurance building are proceeding.

And that is what makes training right now hard. One of the most important rules for training is to build your endurance base first. It is so tempting right now to start doing speed work (and by that, I mean training to get faster, not the speed work that improves pedaling speed and efficiency). I've read an article on Joe Friel's blog about how important intervals are at improving Time Trial times. I have a book on riding faster that strongly advocates intervals. There is a monthly time trial starting outside of Oshkosh. You do the group ride and want to be in the "fast" group. And you remember what it was like to go out and do a ride and average 20 mph. And oh so much do I want to work on going faster.

And I will, in time. But for now my goal must be and will continue to be base building. I have long events I am preparing for. I need that strong endurance base. I am getting much closer now, but I need to work through the next couple of weeks to finish building my endurance base. By that time, I'll probably have about 1300 miles. And then I need to take a recovery week and let my body digest all of the training I've done so I can move on to the next step and start doing some faster rides. But I need to finish the endurance base first.

How many base miles are enough? I think that depends on a lot of factors, like what are your goals for the season, how well did you maintain your fitness over the winter and how consistent you have been in building your endurance base. Joe Friel advocates a 12 week base program consisting of three distinct base periods, each one consisting of 3 harder weeks and one recovery week. I think that is a great plan and I've used this type of approach before very successfully.

Unfortunately, spring got here late in Wisconsin, so I feel like I'm trying to catch up a little. While I didn't start riding outside until mid-March, I did have something of a base built up from the CompuTrainer. An old rule of thumb is 1000 base miles. For me, that seems to be pretty accurate. Personally, I'm going to do more than that this year because all of my goals are focused on long distance, endurance type events. So I feel like I need a little bit bigger base.

I should note that once the base period is over, that doesn't mean you stop doing endurance rides. It just means that you mix in more types of training. But you always maintain and enhance that endurance base.

From what I have seen, a lot of riders neglect base training. Doing group rides 3-4 times a week will certainly get you fast--to a point. But it will also put you on a plateau without the necessary base training to reach higher peaks. Would I like to be faster now--Sure. But I also remind myself, I'll be ready to go fast when its important for me to go fast. And this is the way for me to get there.