Base training is the first phase of any training. Whether you're preparing for a competitive season or building up to a goal race, base training is essential. It becomes even more important when the goal is a longer race such as a half-marathon or marathon.

The primary objective of base training is to build strength that can be used later in the training cycle. A good way to think about it is as if you were building a pyramid. The larger the base on the bottom, the more you can stack on top and the higher you can go with your peak.

For years, base training was thought to be nothing more than doing LSD-Long Slow Distance running (not dropping acid). Certainly this is still the most important aspect of base training. Base training is one time when quantity is more important than quality, and you want to build up to running as many miles as you can without risking injury. A good way to do this is to cycle your training so that you build your mileage for two, three, or four weeks and then take a cutback week. An example would be a runner who does 30 miles in a week, then 35, then 40, and then drops back to 25-30 before starting another cycle of building.

How many weeks should you build up before taking a cutback? It depends a lot on your previous experience and mileage level. Generally, runners who are not accustomed to doing higher mileage should take a cutback week every 2-3 weeks. More experienced runners can get away with 4-5 weeks of building before incorporating a week of reduced mileage. The amount of reduction can vary from 15-30%. Those with lesser experience should probably take a little more of a reduction, and runners logging very high mileage may need to take a substantial reduction as well in order to give their body a chance to recover.

While LSD is certainly the key element of base training, few coaches today advocate doing nothing but long, slow running during the base phase. Most agree that it is important to at least stay in touch with your speed. This can be tricky, because building mileage while also doing some faster paced running can be a recipe for an injury disaster. The key is to mix in just enough fast running. A good way to do this is to run a few strides after a couple of your daily runs. These strides should just be accelerations of 100 to 150 meters (or 20-30 seconds if you can’t get to a track) at somewhere around 5K race pace. You can also run them as buildups, starting slowly and building to top speed. Finally, it doesn’t hurt to throw in a tempo run once a week during the base phase. These tempos don’t need to be anything especially fast or hard, just some time spent at a faster pace than your normal daily training pace.

How much time should you spend in a base phase? It depends on how much time you have until your goal race and how long that goal race is, but 8-12 weeks is the minimum. In general, the more time you can spend building a base, the better you will be when you start adding speedwork later, especially if you stay in touch with your speed while building the base. Distance running is a sport that requires patience to be successful, and if you don’t neglect this important training phase, you will reap the rewards down the road.

Steve Crowder runs for Fleet Feet Racing Team and lives in Fincastle, Va., with his wife and two tail-chasing dogs.