Training Progress - Base Training

The purpose of base training is simple... to make physiological adaptations to your body to allow you to build your fitness later in the season. Without this you will basically reach a 'burn-out' point before the big day.

The physiological adaptations that you are looking to gain are processes within the aerobic energy system. The ability to process energy, the transporting of oxygen and the removal of lactic.

Traditionally, this was achieved by clocking up lots of slow miles. Winter miles. This however requires lots of time... over 15 hours a week to be exact. Each ride also needs to be long... not 15 x 1 hours rides... more like 5 x 3 hour rides. I for one simply do not have the weekday hours available to achieve this.

Thankfully there are also other ways of achieving this with less that 10 hours a week. It's called the Sweet Spot. This is approx 90% of your FTP power output. It's high enough to cause the adaptations of threshold work but low enough training stress to allow you to train on consecutive days. Another way of achieving this is fasted training sessions. Most of the adaptations in longer rides occur when your energy stores are depleted. By depleting them before hand, you can get similar adaptations in less time.

I'm now coming to an end of the 12 week sweet spot training plan with Trainerroad. I'm taking an early recovery in week 10 to prepare for a training camp in Majorca... I say training camp... I actually mean a holiday whereby I leave the Mrs to go cycling.

I will be raising my Training Stress Balance (form/recovery) to a high 15... That way I can inflict a large amount of training stress whilst I am away with less risk of 'over training' and becoming ill. The following week will be a rest week to recover fully before starting the build plan.

The plan is to do a mixture of long rides (to get to some of the famous climbs) and shorter rides at Sweet Spot... basically achieving both types of 'base training' in one hit... a large hit. The weeks TSS will total a massive 1300! A little higher than the 650-700 I'm currently at.

Doing a large 'block' of training like this is great for teaching your body to withstand a large amount of training stress. Once it has been completed and the necessary recovery/adaptations take place, I should be able to up my weekly training load. The build phase I am planning on will give me a peak weekly TSS of 800 and will take my CTL to over 100. 

A higher CTL isn't always good... Pro's don't necessarily train with that high of a training load. It's about finding what works best for you to give you the optimum gains. I'm purely doing this to trial how I respond to it... I figure, IF I withstand a higher training load, I can train more often or for longer resulting in more gains. All I know is... what ever I'm doing at the moment seems to be working... so i'll just carry on until something changes.