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Base Building for Cyclists: A New Foundation for Endurance and Performance

Everything you ever wanted to know about base training




Every serious cyclist has heard the term “base training”. In general, people may think of base training as less intense type of training in beginning of a season before high intensity training. This book written by author Thomas Chapple dives deep into the "why" and "how" of the base training. The author quantifies and justifies the importance of base training specifically in terms of competitive cycling.

If the whole book had to be summarized into one sentence, it would be "you have to slow down to get faster".

One of the primary reason for base training is to train your body to burn fat at higher intensity. The author first try to explain the benefits of this concept by explaining the body "engine" and how it utilizes different types of energy sources - namely fat and carbohydrates. This is the basis of the book which is chapter 1. Rest of the book is mostly about how to train your body (base training) to achieve this goal. Following is a detail summary of Chapter 1 which is the crux of the book.

Chapter 1 : Energy Sources

An automobile uses gasoline to fuel the engine. What does cyclist’s muscle use as fuel? Answer is adenosine triphosphate (ATP). In simple terms, when muscle are not supplied with ATP, they don’t work. Human body uses sources such as carbohydrates (pasta), protein (steak), and fat consumed to convert to ATP during exercise.

During exercise, you have 2 basic ways to convert sources to fuel for muscles. They are aerobic and anaerobic. Unscientifically, think of aerobic as riding slow and able to maintain the effort for long time. Think of anaerobic as when you are breathing out of your eye balls and there's no way you can keep it up for long.

The point is that your body utilizes different sources to fuel the muscles during aerobic and anaerobic state. At slow paces (aerobic), body uses mostly fat. As pace increases, body prefers carbohydrates. Body has lots of fat and it burns slow and steady (even you skinny types). Body has limited carbohydrates and it burns intense but short. Do you see the dilemma? If you are in a 3 hour road race which includes slow pace, intense hilly effort and final all out sprint, your body will use both aerobic & anaerobic fuel systems. The goal is to utilize the limited source of fuel in an optimal way. In other words, if the peloton is going 25 mph and you are breathing out of your eye balls (anaerobic & burning limited carbohydrates) while others are chit chatting along & hardly breathing hard (aerobic and burning fat), it won't be long before you will be dropped.

The purpose of base training is to train the muscle to use less carbohydrate for given effort and use more fat to conserve carbohydrates for higher intensity effort. Muscles can be trained to use fat as energy even at moderately high intensities.

Here’s a quote from the author that summarizes the key points:

If you are trying to burn fat, you should avoid spending too much time training at high intensities that demand carbohydrates. This can teach the muscles to prefer carbohydrates over fat. There is clearly a place and time in training for high-intensity efforts; but by developing your base fitness first through easy to moderate efforts, you will establish a better capacity for burning fat; which means you’ll be sparing carbohydrates. By developing your utilization of fat, you begin to lay the foundation necessary to support those harder efforts that will allow you to raise your fitness ceiling. Even though there is a natural tendency toward carbohydrate burning as cycling intensity increases, you can still train in a way that will sustain fat-burning longer. Chapter 1 Page 7


Here are some more facts and points:

  • Muscles burn substance called adenosine triphosphate (ATP)
  • Body has 2 energy systems – aerobic and anaerobic.
  • Energy Source – carbohydrates, fats and proteins
  • At slow paces, body can burn mostly fat
  • As pace increases (demand on muscle increases), body prefers carbohydrate.
  • Carbohydrate burn like match – intense but short
  • Fats burn like log – steady but long
  • Carbohydrates stored within muscle and liver are called glycogen.
  • Carbohydrates moving around in blood are called glucose (blood sugar level).
  • Carbohydrate is needed to burn fat. Bonking is when body does not have enough Carbohydrate.
  • Body can be training to burn higher ratio of fat to Carbohydrate for given task/effort
  • Recommended diet during base training is Protein 25%, Carbohydrate 45-50%, healthy fat up to 30%. During build phase, increase carbohydrate consumption to 60%.

Carbohydrate Pro
  • Carbohydrates is powerful and quickly converted to fuel for muscle.
  • Source of high-quality nutrition
  • Helps immune system
Carbohydrate Con
  • Produces byproducts lactate which is correlated to level of burning sensation but may not be the actual cause.
  • Person can store between 1500 to 2000 calories of carbohydrates (glycogen & glucose) which is enough to support high-intensity effort for about 60 to 90 minutes
Fat Pro
  • Long lasting & abundant supply even in lean athletes. Average athlete has 60,000 to 100,000 calories of fat supply in the body.
Fat Con
  • Slower conversion from fat to energy to fuel muscles.
  • Cannot support faster & harder effort as efficient as carbo.
  • Requires more oxygen to convert fat than carbo to fuel.
  • Need carbo to convert fat to fuel
Here is the content outline of the book

Contents
Part I The Cyclist's Engine
Chapter 1: Energy Source
Chapter 2: Energy Delivery
Chapter 3: Weight and Health Management

Part II Diagnosing the Engine
Chapter 4: Fitness Assessment
Chapter 5: Training Zones
Chapter 6: Fitness Elements

Part III Planning our Training Year
Chapter 7: Measuring Training Load
Chapter 8: Training Plan
Chapter 9: Training Blocks
Chapter 10: Daily Training Logs

Part IV Building a Stronger Engine
Chapter 11: Endurance
Chapter 12: Strength
Chapter 13: Efficiency
Chapter 14: Training the Mind of Competition
Chapter 15: Advanced Fitness Element

Appendix A: Resources
Appendix B: Performance Testing Guidelines
Appendix C: Sample Base Training Plans

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