Enjoying Base Training – BionicOldGuy

I’ve spent the last few days mostly doing long brisk rides, but the only hard day was Friday. This is enjoyable. I’ve found as long as I don’t do a hard day with intervals, recovery is great, I feel fine by the next day. Here’s what my training looked like since my last post:

“E” means a brisk long ride, “UH” means upper-body hard day, and “LH” means upper-body hard day. On “UH” days I did 50 minutes of arm-cycling and training with resistance bands, plus some body-weight “core” training. The rest was easy biking. I was a bit wiped on Saturday after Friday’s hard ride so it was nice to go easy on Saturday, and I had recovered well by Sunday (yesterday). I will keep going this way for a month and decide how to proceed after that.

This training violates classic base training protocols like that of Dr. Phil Maffetone or Arthur Lydiard who recommended avoiding any anaerobic efforts during base training. They believe the anaerobic activity will actually interfere with the physiological improvements from the aerobic training. More recent authors are less adamant than that, just recommending cutting back on anaerobic activity during the base period. Athletes following both Maffetone and Lydiard have had tremendous success, so I didn’t want the dismiss their concern lightly. So I investigated this using Google’s Gemini AI in “deep research” mode. I asked this question “In exercise physiology, the linear periodized approach recommends a long period of base training in which exclusively aerobic training is done (for example not exceeding the first lactate threshold). Some authors like Lydiard and Maffetone suggest that any anaerobic training during the base period will interfere with the aerobic adaptations. Is there evidence to support that claim?”. The research report it generated is here. I also generated a verbal podcast summary of that report which is here. The latest science seems to support doing a small amount of anaerobic work to maintain your “high end” during the base period. Based on this I feel more confident to continue with my current schedule.