8 February 2008  |  Misc

The LFD Ride

Ahhh, the LFD ride, my favorite. I haven’t really written much about the specifics of my training plan (don’t want to get too boring), but I think that Ben has a really great approach to winter training and “base miles.” There is an old school idea that in the winter you need to do lots of long slow miles at low intensity in order to build up to the race season. When I first started working with Ben he told me “traditional base miles are like training for a marathon by going for a 5 hour walk- they’re kind of pointless.” Instead, I do LFD rides (long fast distance, or long f****** distance, whichever you prefer…). On these rides I focus on maintaining a steady hard pace (usually right below tempo) for a long time (3-5 hours). They are hard, they’ll beat you down, but they definitely make you strong. Intuitively it makes sense- you can’t grow your aerobic base if you aren’t challenging that system. So there you have it- that’s what I’ll be doing for the next few weeks as I get ready for the first races of the season.