Whether you’re a new or seasoned runner, base-building is a key component of your training cycle. Consider these five reasons not to overlook the importance of building your base.
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The Importance of Building Your Base
Improves your aerobic efficiency — Base building is essentially about time on your feet to slowly and consistently increase your mileage without a focus on hitting paces. As you build your mileage base, you can improve both your VO2max (the capacity to take in and utilize oxygen) and your running economy (your efficiency at utilizing oxygen).
Allows your muscles to adapt — As you build your mileage base, you challenge your musculoskeletal system to better handle the stresses of running before moving into phases of harder training. With low running intensity, your muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones, and fascia have time to adapt – in other words, it helps to prevent injuries.
Provides an opportunity to focus on form — As you slowly build (or rebuild) your mileage, base building provides the opportunity to focus on your running form without the distraction of hitting particular paces in your workouts
Improves your recovery — As you improve your aerobic efficiency, your capillary network expands allowing for more blood supply to the muscles, which helps to speed your recovery.
Allows you to adapt mentally — If you are new to running or returning to running after a break, building your base not only allows your body to adapt, it also gives you the opportunity to mentally adapt gradually to a heavier training load.
Do you take time to build your base or do you dive right into your next training cycle?
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While I try to (somewhat) maintain my base through the off-season, I do like the building aspect if my mileage decreases. It’s nice to run just for the joy of it, without the pressure of “training.”
It is nice to have the “run for the sake of running” phase!
I feel like I’m always maintaining a base. Then if I’m running a race, I’ll drop in some higher volume runs. I don’t feel like i do much ‘training’ anymore!
You do such a good job of keeping your mileage up. Dealing with my on-again, off-again hip issues has left me in re-build mode on a couple of occasions over the past 2 years.
In the last couple of years, it feels like all I’ve done is rebuild my base — over and over and over again. It’s a bit frustrating, but yup, so important.
Yeah thanks to my hip I’ve definitely spent a fair amount of time rebuilding lately.
I totally agree. It’s the main reason I never take time off. I continue the weekday short runs and a weekend long run. The long run base is 8-10 miles. And if I have a long race I’ll add in a longer one. This has worked for me to keep a base and not get injured or run down.
It’s great that you’ve found a plan that works for you! I’d really like to get back to consistent 8-mile long runs then ramping up to a half marathon wouldn’t feel too dramatic.
yes! I totally agree. Keeping up my base over the summer made a huge difference for me this fall. As you say, helps to prevent injury and makes it way easier to up your miles for a race
It definitely paid off nicely for you 🙂
Yes, I feel like I’m rebuilding my base right now! I’m definitely taking this time to focus on form and I think it’ll help me a lot later on.
If you’re a beginning runner or coming back from a layoff, it’s really important to build your base so your muscles and tendons have a chance to adapt. Great post!
I’m right there with you on taking the time to build my base. Here’s hoping with both can stay injury-free!
I try to always keep a base going but I agree with all of these points for sure!
I bet your streak added nicely to your base!
Yes, without a good base it is difficult to achieve something in running. So right now I plan to focus on creating it so that I can run better
runforgod recently posted…FINDING MY STRENGTH ON THE RUN: RUNNER’S WORLD HALF MARATHON RECAP
Good luck with your base building!
Agree