Within the past two days I've heard two different riders with much more experience than me tell me to just take it easy over the winter and concentrate on base miles. They say this will make me faster in the spring. I just don't know if I believe this. I can't see how all of a sudden riding easier than I'm accustomed to riding for 3 or 4 months will make me faster in the spring. I understand the mental aspects that one can burn out from riding all year, but I don't know if I believe the part about taking 3 months off (riding slow) to make you faster in the spring.

I was planning on taking a break from riding over the holidays and during a two week winter vacation to serve as mental and physical restoration.

What's the opinion of the 41?

It worked for me; I had my biggest gains ever riding mostly easy for 10-16 hours a week. These are long rides, ranging from 3-6 hours. I'm not sure why it works, but it does.

Its also good to take a 2-5 week break to repair the muscles if you've been riding all year.

Base miles work if you do enough of them like furiousferet said 10-16 hours a week and long rides. If you don't feel like doing that amount of time on the trainer or in the cold like myself, I do 45-60 minutes 3 times during the week on the trainer concentrating on muscle tension in November December and speed drills in January February. Weekends I XC ski or hike both days for at least 2 hours.

They are telling you to ride to an aerobic heart rate and stay there without going anerobic. This will make you faster.

To be clear, base on it's own isn't going to make you faster. It provides a foundation that allows you to do the hard work required to get faster. You still have to do the hard work and higher intensity intervals though.

Periodization is critical to getting faster. The foundational work in building up a base is what builds longer lasting peaks in the season and essential if your race calendar is anything over 40 racing days a year and/or includes stage races.

Some of the time crunched methodology can build to a short lived peak which is great if you aren't racing much. But if you are in the day in day out grind of elite riding, you need miles in the bank.

There's a thread on this in the 33 with different viewpoints. The concept is that you build a broader aerobic base over the winter, then decrease volume and increase intensity based on your priority races/events. The aerobic base gives you a better foundation for the intensity later on. Riding more slowly =/= taking time off. You're riding at your normal endurance pace, the pace you hold when you go out for a solo 3-4 hour ride.

For context: I just finished my first (ever) block of base. The riding durations during those three weeks were 18:30, 16:30 and 13:30. The next block will be similar. This isn't all JRA; one of the long days each week includes 3-4x20 minute intervals at just under FTP. After that block, I'll be going to gradually shorter, more intense workouts. My first race is mid-February, my first priority race is March 9, so my base period is completed two months before my first race and three months before my priority race.

The point is to build aerobic capacity and it was probably mentioned to him for a reason.

It was mentioned in the context that I need to stop training so hard during the winter months, not that I specifically need to increase aerobic capacity - this is why I raised the question. It just doesn't make common sense to me to ride with less effort for quite a while (3 or 4 months) to increase my total power/speed.

If you are new to racing & going to be a Cat 5 with shorter duration events, would you still want such an extensive base? I guess I'm just looking to maximize the benefits from my rides. I don't want to have substantially more base than needed when I could possibly be using the training hours to increase my power. I don't mind the longer rides at base level - it's really about maximizing the training hours to produce the best results come spring.

Mike - It depends on your situation, and what "shorter" means. I started racing last year and had to quit halfway through, so I'm still a Cat 5 myself. My situation is a bit unusual too, since my first "A" race this year is a 105 mile road race; it's the same distance for all categories. Even the "local" (MS and LA) monthly weekend stage races have a road race stage, with the shortest being ~40 miles for Cat 5. I might need more miles than someone in southern CA or the Northeast, where most races are crits, but I'm still on the steep part of the learning curve myself. You might want to check out the thread in the Road Bike Racing ("33") forum, where more experienced racers have weighed in.

Presumably you'll be racing Cat 4 next season and looking for enough points to get to Cat 3. You won't have more base than you need. You'll have plenty of time before race season starts to add in the higher intensity training. If you start with too much intensity now you'll burn out in the middle of your race season.

Winter riding = active rest period (easy rides/spinning) to rejuvenate yourself, mentally and physically, especially if you rode hard or raced throughout the spring/summer/early fall. If that's how you rode and intend to do so again come next spring/summer, do not underestimate the value of REST during winter.

Quote:

They say this will make me faster in the spring.

Depending on what you're doing, but it will make you stay in shape.

Some pros right now are doing either track or cyclocross.

RULE #9
// If you are out riding in bad weather, it means you are a badass. Period.
Fair-weather riding is a luxury reserved for Sunday afternoons and wide boulevards. Those who ride in foul weather – be it cold, wet, or inordinately hot – are members of a special club of riders who, on the morning of a big ride, pull back the curtain to check the weather and, upon seeing rain falling from the skies, allow a wry smile to spread across their face. This is a rider who loves the work.

It will help prevent burnout.

It's good to cross-train. Take up cross-country skiing, hiking, snowshoeing ...

Your friends are correct. If you really want to get faster and be a better racer, you need to spend more time building your base.

Think about a building. For a small house, you only need a small foundation - sometimes its nothing more than a few cinder block stacks. But for a skyscraper, you need a huge foundation, often deep within the ground. Strength and speed operate the same way. As your base grows, so does your ability to go faster longer and to put out higher speeds with greater frequency. Futhermore, the dips between your power will lessen.

Would you rather produce 200W totally aerobically, or 250W totally aerobically?

When you ride hard, you're going anaerobic to some degree, so you're not training your body to produce power purely aerobically.

You should do the long miles if you can. Like ferret says, 10-16 hours/week of it with long rides. That's great if you live somewhere that you can do it. But cutting back on intensity if you can't do big miles doesn't work at all. If you're doing base, you want to be in almost the same state of general tiredness you were in during the summer, but doing more hours and mileage than you were doing. IME "resting" won't give you gains the next season. Quite the contrary. Long miles will. This isn't slow riding either, just keeping the effort down, mostly below the level of leg pain. Mostly zone 2 like a double century effort.

I can't do the long miles in winter, so I mix it up: roller drills and Z3 intervals, skiing and snowshoeing, weights, spin class, and one longish, hardish ride/week. So I'm still getting ~10 hours/week on a good week, though more time and miles would certainly be better. The good thing about mixing it up is injury prevention: making sure that there's muscle balance and flexibility throughout the body.

periodization, on the physical side works, if you;re already at a high level realtive to what your body and genetics allow. If you're just another avg rider, not terribly fit, not terribly strong, not riding big miles - it means hardly nuttin.
Psychologically however, it means a bunch. It's the rare bird that can go hard for long periods and not have a letdown - Merckx being a top example of this bird. One sees the 'letdown' often in Pro sports, especially those with long, hard seasons, like Hockey, B-Ball and cycling. Most of us just can;t keep that focus and bring the energy to EVERY competition for months on end; so some sort of diversion helps. I like skiing, and add some surfing in winter (when we actually get the best/largest swells) recently back playin hockey - all makes a good mix.
But I still do hard days in the bike in winter, and make the easy days for sure easy. I climb a little less, suck wheel a little more, splash around in the mud on my MTB on those infrequent wet days we have...
Burnout can happen, without your intent, so pay attention to the signs and it's easier to take an easy day in the off-season than later on... Otherwise, if there's chances for big gains to be made, don't get to an obvious backslide.

Google, low heart rate training, Dr. Maffetone and Dave Scott. You will find some interesting reading on base training.

Surfing would be awesome for cross training!
Its far too cold to surf in the winter up here, & its barely warm enough in the summer months.
I often say we're spoiled on the W.Coast of Canada.
Oh to have winters like some of you guys/gals!

I still ride year round regardless of the weather.
You do what you love!

You sound like me. First winter and confused on what to do so i don't burnout.
I bought a winter training book after a good recommendation by some racing guys i know. The book recommneds Sub-threshold riding for atleast 8 weeks in winter before starting VO2MAX intervals in week 9 which would be around Feb 14'.

what does this mean? 18:30, 16:30, 18 high intensity, 30 low intensity?

Nope, that's how much total time I rode that week. 18:30 = eighteen hours and thirty minutes, etc.