distance vs time

[Eden]

All of my training (and I have a coach) has been time/hr based. (If I had a power meter it would be time/power based).

This is my understanding of off season base training.

If you are a beginner you want to keep your base mileage pretty easy - a lot of people feel frustrated that they can't go faster during base building - but keep most of your riding in Zones 1/2 (hr zones that is) A little zone 3 won't hurt you, but definitely try to stay out of 4 & 5. Rides generally from 1/2 hour to 3 hours, with the longer rides being once to twice a week.

If you already have a season of that kind of base building behind you, add more Zone 3, some Zone 4, but still try to stay out of 5. There will be more hours in this phase, but since I don't have my full training plan yet, I'm not sure how much longer the individual rides will be - If I recall right, we added about 100 more hours to my training year. We are going to have a team weekend workout (which will be part of my training plan) that I know will be getting up to 70-80 mile training rides, so that makes me think that I'll be looking at 3 1/2 to 4 hours rides towards the end.

(note that I'm not trainining for a century, I'm training to race and for the most part our races are around 60 miles, so we don't do a lot of rides over race length - if you are training for century riding, Ironman, or randoneurring you might want to up the saddle time more towards the end of your base phase, but still taking it easy)

[RoadRaven]

As always, Eden puts it so well... cheers, Eden

[Jiffer]

I believe both are equally important, again, depending on what you are training for. As stated, longer rides are typically more about getting in the miles and pacing yourself reasonably to finish the miles. Shorter rides can a good time to go for it and finish the ride as quickly as possible. Both types of rides build your riding skills over all.

[Eden]

I believe both are equally important, again, depending on what you are training for. As stated, longer rides are typically more about getting in the miles and pacing yourself reasonably to finish the miles. Shorter rides can a good time to go for it and finish the ride as quickly as possible. Both types of rides build your riding skills over all.

Certainly rides of all types have their place- but its a question of when you do these kinds of rides. The question was about base building and in the off season when you are putting in base miles you want to avoid hard riding. Short rides are still in. Some of my base season rides are as short as 1/2 hour or 45 min (usually a basement spin.... weather and darkness).
A little bit of hard riding isn't going to kill you, or hurt your training that much, but you should try to not do it regularly. Base training isn't really about learning how to pace yourself or just about finishing miles. You're trying during this time to build up your endurance, train your metabolism, and build up all sorts of nice little blood vessels to feed your muscles that I've heard zone 5 stuff breaks down. No one is saying never do a hard fast ride, just save the hard rides for later when you are in a build phase.

Yes - a lot of people, especially enthusiatic beginners can find base training to be frustrating and boring, but it does make a big difference when it comes to the next year. You see people who ride really hard all winter really fizzle early in the race season. Yeah, they do great the first couple of races, then nothing..

Now if you are just riding to ride, and you aren't training for any specific event/reason, then you might not have a reason to periodize - so sure ride how you feel.

[RoadRaven]

Yep, I was going to respond with something similar Eden


TriChef refers to base training and that is long steady miles on the bike. The specific training that Jiffer refers to should ideally come after your base has been built.

TC, I suggest you also look in these books - "Cyclists Training Bible" or "The Female Cyclist".
Both have a good explaination of base training and time periods for your base, to your build up and peaks as well as "down-time".