It seems to me that with the advent of power meters and a better understanding of the human body that times are changing and what we traditionally refer to as base is also changing. In the early days of training, you would find many riders who would go with the mantra of "ride lots", as time moved on, riders adopted a periodized training system (read: Friel style) and, now, it seems that many riders are moving towards an L4/SST style of training. The most cutting edge seems to be favoring block training over the old school three weeks on, one week off.
My question (and hopefully an interesting discussion topic), now that we have so much more knowledge of what works/doesn't, how should a rider who trains ~13-18 hours a week (what I consider to be someone with ample time and motivation to race "well"😉 structure their training during the base period? I think we all can agree that as you get closer to your racing season or goal events that you need to have your workouts more closely resemble the kind of racing you will be doing, but what about the season's "ground work", when, traditionally, your mostly looking at just putting in the miles?
James
Note: I'm not sure I conveyed this well in my initial post, but this is more of a thought exercise than anything else. I only chose a rider in the 13-18 hour a week range because then we aren't worrying about someone who is overly time constrained (family, social life, etc), but can put in "optimal" training hours.
Also, because I'm sure this will come up, assume the rider is reasonably well rounded and, like most American bike racers, races the standard diet of crits, road races (60+ miles) and a few stages races throughout the year (3-4 days).