Base Training

[RoadRaven]

I do a good amount of base, but I do it during the winter. Once race season rolls around I'm usually in a build-recover cycle.

Hey there Eden
Winter would have my preference, but as I work fulltime and don't want to ride at night and dislike too much time on a stationary trainer, my hours are always lower during winter. Add into that that during winter I am supporting my partner in his build toward the National Championship, and I just can't - I need to organise children, meals etc etc because he is just too tired on his own build 500-700km weeks at times).

If things were ideal, and I could peak when I wanted, I would be peaking for the Summer TT series.

However, there are 3 events in late Summer/Autumn I want to peak for, so doing a spring/summer base build up might work ok.

So there's my little tidbits on my understanding of base training. It sounds like you are going for it aggressively, so you'll probably get great results.

Thanks for all that Jiffer. It confrms where I am at I think.

I started biking at 38yrs of age in 2003, with 303km for the year
In 2005 I did 2530km
In 2006, I did 3718km
Last year I managed to rack up 4583km

Together with what I have done this year, I now have a foundation of 14,471kms. However, since I April 2006, I have raced almost every Saturday, so this new approach to "doing base" is truly a "new" approach.

In a way, I am even beginning to look forward to not racing for a while.

Selene Yeager's book, "Every woman's guide to Cycling," addresses building your training plan

I've seen you mention it in a couple of threads and have made a note to investigate it more. At the moment I use Gale Bernhardt's book "The Female cyclist:Gearing Up A Level, Its based on Joe Friel's "Cyclists Training Bible". Both of these might be worth you investigating as well (while I investigate yours )