Maybe you watched my video on periodization, you just came from there and now you're here or you're trying to figure out what is base building. What are people talking about when they say I need to have my base under me? Well, I'm Jesse Funk and on today's episode of Runner's High, I'm going to tell you what base building is and what you should be doing in this particular period.
So, base building is really the meat and potatoes of the periodization schedule. This is where we kind of build as it's often referred to as our base, the foundation of our fitness as runners where we figure out this is what we're going to build off of for the rest of the season and then get faster. So, in the base phase, either base one or base two, you’re often and almost exclusively, depending on how far along you are fitness-wise, but almost exclusively going to be doing long miles; LSD, long, slow distance.
So, this is the time when you go out, you put in miles, you're building your miles up, you're really working on your aerobic capacity. This can be a little bit maddening if you're used to racing at a high level because you will not maintain the speed that you had last season, during base building. You will maintain some speed, you're not going to lose all of your fitness, but those kind of nice, high fast-moving muscles won't be in quite the same shape. But the point of this base building, this period, is to increase your aerobic capacity so that later on down the line, when we get to the build phase, and then the taper and peak phase, then you can really build that fitness to a higher peak than you were able to last season.
So, if you want to know more about what happens in the build phase, the kind of things that go on there, that video should be coming up here shortly. So, click on that to learn more about the build phase.