WHY YOU DON'T NEED TO DO 'BASE' TRAINING

Winter is a glorious season. Lava snow covers the slopes and peaks of Mount Sufferlandria, reflecting the glow from the occasional volcanic eruption. Turbo trainers are dusted off, paincaves spruced up, and talk turns to that age-old winter tradition: Base Training.

TIME TO DO LSD, RIGHT?

Conventional wisdom holds that winter is the season of base training, also known as LSD: Long Steady Distance. This means countless hours riding at a steady mellow pace for weeks on end in order to lay a ‘foundation’ for the more intense training sessions in the spring. Without all those base miles, the thinking goes, your body can’t possibly handle all that intensity later on. But is that true?

Fortunately for the time-crunched athlete, the supposed benefits of high-volume, low-intensity training is more about tradition and less about science. Don’t get us wrong: doing long, steady base miles can improve your overall fitness if you have plenty of time to spend in the saddle, but for those of us that don't have 20+ hours a week to train, it's not the best way to structure your winter training.

THE MYTH OF CREATING A ‘BASE’

The problem with the traditional “base phase” of many training plans is the time commitment required to see any real benefits. To see any substantive return from Long Slow Distance rides you need to dedicate a minimum of 16 hours a week, with some weeks requiring upwards of 25 hours of training.

While that might be an option for Sufferlandrian monks and full-time professional cyclists, chances are you’re not able to get out and train that much. For you, LSD riding is a waste of time -- time you don’t have.

Numerous studies have shown (see reference at the end of the article) that when athletes with a fixed amount of training time switch from training that includes high-intensity efforts to only low-intensity training, they actually see a decrease in critical metrics like VO2 max (your body's maximum ability to utilize oxygen). Training only works when your body is subjected to a new stress that it hasn’t encountered before. Training stress triggers adaptation and improvements in fitness. Only when you present your body with a different challenge will it make changes to become stronger and more efficient. If you’re a seasoned Sufferlandrian with a few years of riding under your belt, then doing a few 10 hour weeks of nothing but Long Slow Distance rides will only de-train you. You’re riding a lot, but you’re getting  slower. If you’re going to keep your title of Sufferlandrian Speed Demon come spring, you can’t afford that.

Many unfortunate souls have convinced themselves that doing low-intensity, high volume weekends during the winter is enough to get those benefits from LSD riding. Sorry to break it to you, but that's not going to work. For LSD riding to really work you need to be hitting those big days at least five times a week. So hitting your weekends hard and riding once or twice during the week for an hour isn't going to cut it.