June 28, 2004
Summer Base Miles
My teammate, "Big Jon" Atkins, laughingly referred to my starting over now as building those "summer base miles", and he figures I should be rolling good by the time the racing season is over.
Traditionally bike racers log at least a thousand miles of easy (Zones 1 & 2) saddle time each winter, this is for base aerobic fitness and is the foundation prior to the hard intervals and sprint workouts done during the build phase as they prepare for the racing season.
Today I continued to ride with the governor on around the GTC TT course, but tried to be as efficient and fast as possible within my restrictions. Riding low and narrow for aerodynamic advantages, using optimum cadence and pedaling techniques and picking the fastest lines through turns. This is what I call a "Zone 1 Time Trial", but today I was a little bit aggressive and instead of averaging 132 BPM, I averaged 133 BPM -- let's call that Zone 1.1!
The primary difference between this and last Monday's same workout, was this time I did a brief warm-up before starting, and switched to a 21x11 cassette.
