I agree with what you say but I would like to add something out of my own experience. I recently had to reduce the number of hours (from 15hrs to 9hrs) I ride my bike per week, and therefore I started doing more long SS intervals in less hours. My short power (and here by short I mean anything from 10 minutes to 2 hours) is better than ever.
However, this weekend I did a not too hard not too easy 3hrs 30 minute ride but I had not ridden more than 2 hours in a row for a month. While I felt really good during the ride the fact is after the ride in the afternoon/evening I was feeling much more tired than when I was doing 15hours per week and long rides regularly.
This is personally what I understand by “base”, the capacity to ride for hour after hour and day after day without tiring. Take any world tour cyclist and sure their FTPs are great but I am sure there are out there some amateurs that could match their race pace for a couple hours. However there is absoloutely no chance any could do 250 km or a Tour de France at that level.
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