# How much intensity during base training?



## brady1 (Aug 18, 2011)

Last year I was getting back into structured training after a layoff of a couple years. I pretty much followed Friel's Training Bible plan in rebuilding my base and in planning my intervasl work later in the year.

This year I'm hesitant to cut out all threshold/interval work for several weeks while repeating the Prep, Base1, etc. periods. Granted, I don't want to overload my body, just worried about losing any fitness gained this year.

How often/intense would you recommend harder efforts throughout the winter?


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## Alex_Simmons/RST (Jan 12, 2008)

Anything up to and including threshold work _is_ base, so do that as often as you feel you can manage. Much depends on your individual circumstances.

And doing a little training at all levels is just fine. It's when you start to do dedicated blocks of supra-threshold work that you need to be a little more careful about when and how much.


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## ABdan (Aug 10, 2012)

My base miles are all Z2 and 3 until Januaryish and then we start doing some threshold specific work. That being said, just riding at those lower intensities, I always feel by the time I start doing threshold work that I'm about 95% of the way to where I was the previous year. 

This also greatly depends on how many hours you are doing. If you are training 6 hours a week then doing true base miles in the Friel sense might not be the best bet.


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## brady1 (Aug 18, 2011)

Alex_Simmons/RST said:


> Anything up to and including threshold work _is_ base, so do that as often as you feel you can manage.


I've never heard it put that succinctly; makes perfect sense.

I was thinking off adding an occasional 10-12 min effort with a smattering of shorter 3-5 min efforts, probably on hills. Or perhaps some random light sprints to keep the legs loose; nothing too intense 

Are these fine to add in to spice up an otherwise all Zone 2 ride for several hours?


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## brady1 (Aug 18, 2011)

ABdan said:


> My base miles are all Z2 and 3 until Januaryish and then we start doing some threshold specific work. That being said, just riding at those lower intensities, I always feel by the time I start doing threshold work that I'm about 95% of the way to where I was the previous year.
> 
> This also greatly depends on how many hours you are doing. If you are training 6 hours a week then doing true base miles in the Friel sense might not be the best bet.


If you're doing all Z2 and Z3 until January, when do you start that?

My weekly hours average around 10 or so. My heaviest week this year was 15 hours.
With that said, my Base 1 may be a little shorter than last year.

There is talk of a local KOM competition in November that I want to be competitive for. So I'll probably end the season after that and start base; which should have me starting tempo efforts by January.


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## JasonLopez (Aug 19, 2012)

"It never get's easier, you just go faster."

"Do you think I want to ride up mountains, like it's easy? It's ****ing hard to be doing this."

Whenever I think about the question of intensity I think of what the pro's have said. Jen's Voigt has some words of wisdom, you should read them. You can almost always go harder than you are. As long as you are not injuring yourself in doing so keep going.


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## plx (Mar 28, 2011)

brady1 said:


> If you're doing all Z2 and Z3 until January, when do you start that?
> 
> My weekly hours average around 10 or so. My heaviest week this year was 15 hours.
> With that said, my Base 1 may be a little shorter than last year.
> ...


when you start base you should already be doing some tempo, i mean it's fine to do most z2 but you need some tempo too because 10 hours is not a whole lot of hours to be spending all in z2


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