Think the Tour de France or the Ironman Triathlon World Championships are decided in the Pyrenees Mountains or on the Kona lava fields? Think again! Those podium lineups are being decided today! Future fitness fates are being cast in the cold drizzle of long February bike rides and fleece-wrapped winter runs of Ironman training. Early-season base training is the crucial platform that supports peak performances down the road.
Having your best summer and fall race season depends significantly on base training for a triathlon in the winter and spring. That means now. This isn't a revelation, but notice how many of your peers are training accordingly. Most athletes I've seen are training at near race-intensity in these months. But although you may not find many mellow trainers out there, be assured — 2009's leaders in the Pyrenees and Kona are base-building right now. They are going slow today to have the freedom to go very fast later.
There’s no one-size-fits-all training formula, but most successful endurance athletes apply the same general sports science to their training: Each training session fulfills a specific contribution towards the larger fitness goals of building endurance, strength, and speed. The beginning of the training season is mostly devoted to endurance, or base- building (sustained, lower-intensity sessions), and later shifts priority to strength and speed building — hard training — as goal events approach.
Base effects
Successful athletes base-train because the returns are massive. In exchange for your earnest hours in the saddle and trails, you can expect some handsome returns for your cardiovascular and metabolic systems. Known adaptations to several weeks of base training include an increase in physical heart size, the amount of blood pumped per beat, total amount of blood pumped per minute, total blood volume, and capillary density. These plumbing adaptations maximize oxygen-rich blood delivery to working muscles. In fact, resting heart rates and blood pressures usually drop after sustained endurance training, because these heightened cardiovascular efficiencies lower the heart's usual workload.
Base-building builds aerobic fitness power by increasing the amount of work the body can perform without increasing lactic acid levels in blood (lactate thresholds continue to be driven up with more intense training, as well). The relative size of aerobic (slow-twitch) muscle fibers increases, and density of the cellular sites of oxygen-based energy production (mitochondria) becomes higher, as well. These chemical and structural changes are aerobic gold.
Base-builders are fat burners. The enhanced oxygen delivery adaptations mentioned above boost the ability of fat to fuel activity. Also, levels of fat-burning enzymes rise with base training. This means your body will spare its limited carbohydrate fuel stores and instead rely on unlimited fat stores. Carbohydrate depletion is your body’s primary limitation in endurance sport performance, and efficient fat-burning ability is critical in events lasting longer than a couple of hours. Comparing two athletes with equal fitness racing at an equal intensity, the athlete with the superior ability to use fat as fuel will outlast and outperform the other. Preserving carbohydrate stores means preserving performance at race-pace intensity. This is the ultimate advantage for any competing endurance athlete.
Basic nutrition
Your nutritional priorities during this phase should be to support your physical training. Base-building burns a great deal of fuel, and your job is to make sure your tank doesn’t run on empty. As your training volume goes up, so does your demand for carbohydrate. You likely will require 3–6 grams of carbohydrate per lb of body weight (7–13 grams per kg), depending on your training load. Your protein requirements will be around 0.6–0.8 grams per lb of body weight (1.3–1.8 per kg), and fat around 0.4 grams per lb (0.9 grams per kg). For more specific information, consult this detailed guide on nutrition during various periods of your training cycle:
http://www.ironmanpower.com/training/guide/Week_4.html.
Basic safety
The opposite of base-building is to jump immediately into hard training — an open invitation to injury and to completely missing your sport potential. How common are injuries from doing too much too fast? My answer is, "About as common as Lycra
® in your dresser." Base-building prepares your body to be able to safely strength- and speed-train later on. Endurance sports tend towards extremes, both in distances covered and hours involved: It is rough stuff on your body. Gradually strengthen your vulnerable connective tissue — ligaments and tendons — as well as the muscles that are required for your sport. Protect your neck. And protect your performance potential.
Armed and ready
Reinforce your commitment to base-training with some tools to keep on track: First, a heart-rate monitor provides you the numerical boundaries within which to keep your workouts. Base-building involves lower heart-rate values, but your specific target should be individualized. Do some homework to find yours, or seek a fitness professional if necessary.
Your other tool is your plan: Decide what your training session will entail, rather than allowing your peers to dictate it for you. Most of us know how an easy group ride or run can devolve into a lactic acid war of egos; consider training alone if you find yourself too inclined to go hard with your pals. Nobody cares who hammered everyone on the February group ride. Everybody cares who hammered everyone in the June race.
Base perspectives
Life has the tendency to get in the way of our training, and a few cushy months of uninterrupted base-building is sometimes impossible. That is not a sign of defeat, but rather a call to be flexible with yourself and your self-imposed expectations. The most successful athletes adapt their training to what life allows them to do, and they don’t look back when unpredictable disruptions occur. Along these lines, even minimal base-training is infinitely better than no base-training.
It’s easy to blow off base-training; it’s unglamorous, and requires immediate time commitments for a reward that seems far away. Many of your training buddies aren’t doing it. It requires a solid plan, long-term thinking, maturity, and confidence. Chances are, those are some of the very traits that attract you to endurance sports, because they’re traits that endurance races reward. If you have those fundamentals in hand, then give yourself the advantage of base-training.
References:
R: Wilmore, Jack and David Costill. 2004. Physiology of Sport and Exercise 3rd Edition Champaign: Human Kinetics Publishers.
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General, Carbs, Stamina, Skills
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