Why Do We Need Cycling Endurance Training? Does it really help FTP and VO2Max?

This was a great Cat 4 Question emailed in. We've all heard the analogies about pyramids and foundations, but let's look at what is really going on, and then HOW it affects your FTP and VO2Max.

To be brief, yes, riding endurance will help you with those really hard efforts.

Here's his question:

Why does base, or endurance cycling, matter? All through athletics the answer I get has always been an analogy about building a house or a pyramid; something to the effect of, “the wider the base the higher the peak.”

I think I gleaned the answer from a 5 second trainer road podcast statement, “the harder an adaptation is to gain, the longer it takes to lose.” I take this to imply that aerobic adaptations take the longest to improve, but will be kept the longest. This in combination with a Stephen Seiler statement that almost all efforts over 60s are primarily aerobic leads me to believe: Base is important because almost every effort requires some combination of the aerobic and anaerobic systems with the former being the primary contributor. Therefore building a large base is critical to overall long term improvement in almost all levels of performance.

If I’m right - great, it would be nice to hear this stated plainly somewhere. Then maybe people will stop skipping endurance rides! If I am wrong - great! I am glad I asked. 12 years in endurance sport and I have always received an analogy as an answer, absent an explanation.

Here is my answer, but full reply in the video:

If you go back and look at physiological adaptation of training (this chart is not 100% accurate) from zone 1-7, some highlighted areas that zone 2-3 hit are:

increased mitochondrial enzymes
increased muscle glycogen storage
increased lactate threshold
interconversion of fast twitch muscle fibers from long rides

Enhanced capillarization in the muscles: They help to connect your arteries and veins in addition to facilitating the exchange of certain elements between your blood and tissues.

Development of slow-twitch muscles fibers

Trains body to more efficiently use fat as primary fuel source.

Ultimately, these endurance rides contribute to improved aerobic capacity (vo2max), lactate threshold and muscular endurance

Reduced VLamax (maximal lactate building rate). The higher your vlamax, the sooner you experience build up of blood lactate accumulation,and therefore fatigue sooner at a lower % of vo2max than a similar cyclist with a lower vlamax

Threshold riding achieves this at a greater effect, but we can only do some much FTP work, plus it's way more fatiguing. So you can get a lot of quality, insanely good endurance quality!, and a low cost to the rider.

THAT SAID, to get the greatest effect, the rider really needs to progress from 3 to 4h rides, optimally hitting 5 and 6….can utilize high torque to stimulate this

So who cares? Why base?

Almost every effort has a LARGE component of aerobic work. Take a look at a power file from a savage pro/1 RR...it will be very hard to handle those watts if you haven't really trained your body for a long time.

Why do people skip the endurance rides or easy aerobic work? These types of rides are hard to measure in terms of metrics, like putting a value on biologic durability. These will surely be figured out down the road, but for now, it is intangible and hard to put an exact WHY to it.

Which is why I believe so many people just pass on it. They don't spend the time on something that they can't read about and grasp tangibly or in terms of metrics.

Lastly, some things to consider:

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Have a great week and good luck with your training!