Sorry if this has been asked a 1,000 times before.
Thinking of giving the Fred Whitton another go in 2026. 180km, 3,500m. Probably 7 or 8 hours.
Just ran through plan builder and realised how intense TR base periods are. Threshold from week one. VO2 from week 6. I don’t see any base being built here at all.
Would I be better to DIY my own base season (Nov and Dec) before going back to TR in Jan?
This could look like:
Monday - 1hr sweet spot
Wednesday - 1hr sweet spot
Friday - 3-4hr zone 2
Saturday - 3-4hr zone 2
You did something “wrong” or set up your calendar incorrectly; i have an event here in the US around the same time as you and i have plenty of base in my TR calendar. The Fred is 29 weeks away from today; I would bet that maybe you need to start from scratch when setting up your plan.
I’d put a Threshold or VO2 in on Wednesday. For off/base season you should have at least one interval session a week, and think about throwing 3 or 5 30 second efforts at the end of your Z2 sessions to wake up the mitochondria.
I guess it depends on your definition of “base” but Threshold and VO2 can have their place in the winter season depending on your goals. IMO, “base” is anything that improves you aerobically which is basically anything VO2 and under.
If this is the direction you want to go my one comment would be that you would quickly hit a point where you can’t fit a proper progressive SS workout into a 1 hour workout. So after the first week or two to ‘get back into it’ I’d change the Monday workout to Threshold. I’d also change the Wednesday to Z2 and the Friday to SS. Having the longer SS workout would allow you a proper progression out to 90+ minutes of TiZ.
Edit: I realize that is more than one comment but oh well.
You could look at this from another point of view, you could follow the TR plan as it is for now and use it as a sort of reverse periodisation, especially useful if you are in the UK and we are just heading into shorter days and wet, cold and windy winter. Use the intensity to raise FTP and then after the New Year start to think about getting some longer hillier rides in at the weekend to prepare yourself.
I’d maybe choose a General Fitness option in PlanBuilder, maybe FTP or improve Climbing, and then after a few months of that, start a new plan but choose either endurance or Gran Fondo. Your PL will likely have increased and that way you won’t have to worry about if you are doing things right. I’d also add a couple of strength sessions in each week, nothing too elaborate, a few basic exercises done well to improve stability and core strength will pay divindends in the last few hours of the Fred when the stupid tough climbs come along.
FWIW, if you have access to Joe Friel’s Cyclist Training Bible, he advocates for events such as sportives/Gran Fondos lasting longer than (I think) four hours this sort of approach.
I’m on the team of following General Base most of the time. Unless you’re spending enough hours training at low intensity, you’ll almost always be better served with some intensity.
Base training doesn’t have to stay below Threshold. As @mwglow15 said, it pretty much all builds aerobic fitness, and it’s not likely that you’ll completely lose all of your base aerobic fitness during your offseason. It’s more likely that you’ll lose your top-end punch first.
If you have the time to feed your body lots and lots of easy riding stimulus, you could go that route. If you don’t, you should replace some of that volume with intensity, or you’ll likely start to go backward during the offseason. The workouts we prescribe in General Base are unique to Base training and usually aren’t the same as the ones in Build or Specialty phases, so they’re designed to promote the building of strong aerobic function.
Traditional base isn’t the best way forward for 99% of athletes, and I think if we had a better view of what even the pros were doing, we’d see changes happening there as well.
I think I remember Neal Henderson saying something about how we don’t build tall buildings with giant bases like the pyramids anymore, and how we can build skyscrapers much taller and narrower by using modern construction techniques and burying bigger foundations in the ground. He was referring to base training and how more well-rounded types of stress signals can build aerobic fitness much better and more quickly than just using tons of easy volume.
Maybe I’m a sucker for metaphors, but it stuck with me.
