Base training from Cyclist's training bible and Base building for cyclists

koger

Hello

I've been reading Base Building For Cyclists by Thomes Chapple and The Cyclist's Training Bible by Joe Friel. They both recommend to build a base consisting of long endurance rides, weight training and improving skills.

But I don't understand why I should forget all about anaerobic. Can somebody please explain me this, if it really is true. Maybe I overlooked something in the book or maybe the book is just "wrong"?

Here is my thinking, I've spend several month building a good anaerobic fitness, am I now to just through this away, and start all over again? Wouldn't it make more sense to change the focus to mainly endurance, but trying to maintain some of the anaerobic fitness?

What do you think, do you 100% forget about anaerobic until 2 months before the first race or do you do some short intervals during the base training too?

I've posted this question at http://bikeforums.net too, but wanted to know what you guys here think about this too. So my apologize if you already read it.

Kestrel12

In short the answer is no.

I am sure you will gets lots of responses on this from the power training gurus, but I started using friels training system about three years ago (minus the weights) and while I found my endurance level did increase it was at the expense of my ability to produce higher output in race situations. Subsequently this affected my race results and I rarely performed to the level I knew I was capable of.
Now I am generally better at sprints and short efforts over a couple of minutes, so this year I have used friels training hours system as a guide and customised the workouts myself. For me this means more anaerobic sessions from about week two and already this is showing positive results (won my first road race last week - first in 5 years).

So my advice, take a short break from your anaerobic work - say two weeks (chuck in the odd sprint if you like but nothing to lengthy) and then start building up the load.

Good luck

hammonjj

I also think that Friel's method assumes that you have taken a fairly long break from the bike after the racing season, increasing the need for more base miles to bring the aerobic engine back to peak fitness.

kennf

Many people now think the notion of building a "base" of long endurance miles is old-school and inefficient. There's lot's of threads on this. Riding for three or four hours at a steady slow pace does indeed make you more efficient at riding a slow steady pace. But most would advise you to incorporate higher intensity work, and sprints (as long as your knees are okay) even when you're just starting out. It's also a lot less boring.

NJK

I have seen research to suggest that long, lowish level training should be ceased when it no longer improves VO2max figures. As you say if you have a long lay off then long steady rides may be enough to create an initial overload.

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