Life in the slower lane

There is a lot of high-intensity bias in fitness journalism. Many people will advocate the faster sessions like hill repetitions, speed intervals and time trials. These workouts are seen as being more interesting than slower, steadier sessions such as recovery and aerobic base workouts. The last thing people in my position want to do is bore our readers, so more often than not we overlook the vanilla low-intensity workouts and write about the sexy high-intensity ones.

In the aggregate this bias gives athletes the impression that high-intensity workouts are more important. This is unfortunate, because the opposite is true. Low- to moderate-intensity swimming, cycling and running are the foundation of the most effective triathlon training programs. The world’s best triathletes spend most of their training time working at very comfortable effort levels.

Many of the world's best athletes use the steady base run, ride or swim as the cornerstone to their training routine. Also the high intensity interval sessions require a certain amount of base level that you can only attain though steady state exercise. Moreover the high intensity sessions will take a lot out of your body and put a large stress on your recovery system meaning that they cannot be performed frequently. 

I have learnt the hard way not to neglect my base sessions- so yes while the speed sessions are necessary- don't forget to plod along every now and again!