I've spent a long time on rides in the past few days, but the only tough day was Friday. This is very interesting. I found that recovery is great as long as I wasn't on a tough day and I felt good the next day. This is what my training looks like since my last post:

"e" refers to a long journey, "uh" refers to a difficult day for the upper body, and "LH" refers to a difficult day for the upper body. During the "UH" period, I did 50 minutes of arm cycles and training through the resistance band, as well as some weight "core" training. The rest are easy to ride. I was a little dry on Saturday after a tough trip on Friday so I was happy to go easily on Saturday and by Sunday (yesterday) I recovered well. I will continue to do this for a month and then decide how to do it.

This training violates classic basic training programs such as Dr. Phil Maffeone or Arthur Lydiard, who recommends avoiding any anaerobic work in basic training. They believe that anaerobic activity actually interferes with the physiological improvements of aerobic training. The latest authors are less obvious than this, and just suggest reducing anaerobic activity during the basic period. Following Maffeone and Lydiard both had great success, so I don't want them to gently refute their attention. So I used Google's Gemini AI in "Depth" mode to investigate. I asked this question: "In exercise physiology, linear periodic approaches suggest long-term basic training, where only aerobic training is performed (e.g., no more than the first lactate threshold). Some authors (e.g., Lydiard and Maffeone) show that any anaerobic training during the basic period, any anaerobic training during the basic period will interfere with effective adaptability. The research report it generates is here. I also generated a verbal podcast summary of the report here. The latest science seems to support doing a small amount of anaerobic work to keep you “high-end” during basic times. Based on this, I am more confident to continue my current schedule.