Is the only reason not to do higher intensity during base that it might hinder your ability to do a large enough volume of training to develop a good aerobic base?

ie if I'm doing shorter sessions during the week due to time constraints, should I stick to z2, or add in tempo? Volume during weekdays is low enough that I can recover by the next day either way.

My base period is almost all tempo, since it's mostly rides under 90 minutes. It's pretty steady at tempo, with not very many jumps or sections above tempo. I'll ride endurance on longer rides, or if I get tired from too much tempo. One note though: I have started taking a rest week between base blocks, even though I don't feel tired -- and it really helps.

if you don't have time to ride >15 or so hrs/week, than you should absolutely incorporate tempo into your base, like myself and many other rides do.

+1

My base 1 and 2 both had tempo work in it in increasing amounts. Base 3 included sub-threshold (SST) work too. It all depends on who's plans you follow. I follow Friel and this was it. Also did several cycles of Base 3 before moving to Build 1.
Around here, if you just stay in Z2, you'll never get up the hills anyway. I like to think of it as going 'mostly easy' in the beginning. YMMV.

Yep.

so hard to rid the world of Friel's crap. There was a discussion on the wattage forum regarding the same thing. He basically observe what works for pros, figure that for average joe with only 10 hours as opposed to 25 hrs to train, you just shrink everything proportionally.

As other posters have already said: big time misconception. You don't do a ton of tempo when you ride 25/hrs a week b/c you won't be able to recover from all that effort. Much different story when you have less than 15 hours to train. In other words you can't just proportionally shrink pros' schedule and give it to the average person.

I have no interest in arguing over the details of Friel's methods and whether or not they are crap, but his book does recommend tempo work as part of a rider's base period. If you think the last third of base is too late to add tempo, that's a more specific complaint.

I otherwise agree that Z3 is a valuable use of training time during the base period. Less time means you have to get the training stress some other way.

There has been some research recently saying that intense endurance athletes would benefit by more intense base training. The research, which I read about about a year ago in the NY Times, basically said that once you have a solid base, to build on that, you kind of need to spend more time doing tempo than just Z2 rides.

on my long rides i believe in doing higher end z2 (e.x. 70-75% of ftp) rather than 60-70% of my ftp. The only exception is when im putting in 20+ hours of riding, and know that if i do doo much work ill burn out.

Only because I'm out of shape (well, round's a shape)

just motorin' along


motor motor motor

haha, so true. I'm finding this out in this, my 2nd year of base training. Ride tempo everywhere during base. Low tempo or hi tempo. If you're going out for 5 hours, then yea, Z2 is where you'll be, but other than that, ride tempo.

i don't think friel's ideas are crap, i just think people need to tailor their training plans to fit there hours. Obviously if you ride 10 hours a week w/ your longest ride being 2 hours, then z3/z4 are necessary! If you ride say 15-20 hours a week, its a whole different ball game (not just one 15-20 hour week, but three in a row), you would burn out quickly on a big diet of tempo, or t least higher end tempo.