Base Mile Optimization

Now that I'm back to riding base miles I've been spending some time thinking about what makes a good base ride.  I typically think about long 'slow' rides; slow isn't quite right because a steady base ride can be done at a good pace.  You should think of it as a steady pace that you can hold for a long time.

Having a powermeter really allows me to look closer at that definition.  The long steady pace your targeting during base miles is typically referred to as Zone 2.  For my zone 2 workouts I like to target 200 +/- 10 watts.  Based on this description, the definition of a good base ride is maximizing the time spent in the target power zone (2), and minimizing time spend out of that zone.

It's easy to do on a trainer.  You pedal at the target zone, no stopping, no coasting, no hills.  Basically you end up with a 100% efficient base mile ride.  See below, no time spent not pedaling and the overwhelming majority of the time is spent in the target zone.

Now when you take that ride outdoors and you have traffic, hills (up and down), lights, pedestrians and other interruptions.  You start to loose that good base ride.  During a recent 2 hour ride I was sad to see that I had over 20 minutes of not pedaling.  According to my good base mile definition my two hour ride was really only 1:38, which isn't as exciting.  

 So, how do you fix that?  Theirs not much you can do about lights, cars and pedestrians other than select a route without them.  Since I live at the foothills of the mountains most of my rides have hills.  So, to minimize the riding time lost spend coasting down hills I apply my brakes and pedal against them to keep my watts up.  It's not so exciting to be pedaling down hills with your brakes on but in the end, your ride will be better.  Below is the same two hour route as the one above, this time the time spent not pedaling was reduced by about 8 minutes.  I know, 8 minutes, but in a time crunched world were it's hard to get bike time in the first place..... I don't want to give up those 8 minutes.  Hopefully I'll get better at this and my time spend riding base miles will be maximized.

 This also shows that riding the trainer can be a great way to get in quality base miles, as long as you can mentally stand the drone for hours.  Which is challenging.