A lot of this depends on what your goals are, and what your schedule looks like. down here racing starts the end of January, so November for us looks a lot different from November in New England, for example.

That said if you follow a traditional approach to the base phase where you're not doing much intensity, you need to be going long, i.e. 4 hours or more. That's not practical for most people, particularly if you're talking about doing it on a trainer.

A good plan would be to try to get long rides on the weekend outdoors, and do some structured training 60-90 minutes on the trainer.

Early in base phase, you can spend your trainer time working on form doing Fast pedals (i.e. 120 rpm, in an easy gear, start at 3m inutes, set of 5, and work up to 10 minutes) You can also do muscle tension work on the trainer (biggest gear you got at 50-55rpm, again working up to 10 minute intervals)

After a couple of weeks of that, you can start doing tempo intervals ( 7/10th's perceived effort, or 85-90% of your threshold power) working up to 2x 30 minutes.

After a couple of weeks of that add in Steady states (8/10ths perceived effort, or 95-100% threshold power) as you get closer to your season.

Mix in rest days, and just endurance miles, between the interval days.

IMHO if you just sit on the trainer at a moderate endurance pace for 60 minues 5 times a week, you're going to pay for it in the spring.

Follow something along the lines of the outline above, and you can be stronger in the spring (i.e. higher threshold power) and ready to start doing short intense intervals to get in race shape.