Originally Posted by ratebeer
I have to say now that I've misunderstood Friel as well. I picked up his book, read around a bit and instead of buying it, decided I should just speed through it and take a few notes right there in the bookstore. There wasn't much there and when you see complexities painted over in a few broad strokes, it's a good indication that it's time to move on to richer reading.
I don't disagree that there are deeper sources than Friel, but I think when you say there wasn't much there, that you're already discounting his contribution. I don't know if you were training seriously before his book came out, but at that time the state of the art in the popular press was something along the lines of Lemond's general outline where you more or less followed the same weekly plan all year and most riders weren't even as structured as that. There was some information about periodization, but it was all pretty vague and not something a lay person could build a training program around. Friel's book was the first presentation to allow a rider to go step by step from a yearly training plan down to planned daily workouts. Now, this has become so widespread that many people take the information for granted and don't realize the impact Friel has had.