Slow down to speed up

In this article Brian writes about building base and while I agree with Brian that base building is very important to endurance athletes like Roadies. It's important to remember that the amount of base training and the weeks that you do it for relate very closely to the events that you are training for. For example at one end is the track sprinter. Even at world championship level aerobic fitness and base training is really not as important as the strength training these athletes do. The criterium racer, base is important but again, once established, developing power and speed will give far greater returns on training time. If you are a seasoned racer (three years or more) you'll find that your base training requirements will be less than a non-seasoned racer. Also, your base building requirements are going to be much less for a 70km road race that the likes of the Melbourne to Warrnambool (300km). Remember that while base training is very good it does reach a point of diminishing returns. The most common trend I see all the time in cyclist's HR data before they come on our program is that their previous training has far to much base training and not enough strength and speed work.