Completely skipped base phase, am I doomed?

questionsmaster wrote:

I completely skipped base phase and went right into a season of workouts. I feel fine and things are still progressing. My mileage is fairly high. But now I’m reading a bunch of Lydiard and it almost just makes me want to scrap it all and star fresh with a base phase. It’s not like I have anything to train for anyways. I’m a good 6 weeks in on workouts though. Training for the mile / 3k

yes

Thank you Christian Covid Believer.

Lydiard would say I’m wasting my time right now I assume.

No. Just keep doing what you are doing and go from there.

In a year or so you can see how it worked out for you and draw your conclusions from that.

You be you.

you aren't wasting your time.

There are ways to train distance runners, the crockpot, or the microwave.

you can go microwave and have success, it will be short lived but you can probably still have a few good races.

the slow cooker is the preferred way because it's a better way to develop with a better way of guaranteeing success.

base phase is stupid. just an excuse to be lazy. you do not look cool roaming the streets all day slower than grandma on a scooter.

go to the track and rip some reps. impress the moms.

Will running a lot of marathon pace get rid of my need for a base?

yes. you should not be running slower than marathon pace on normal runs unless you are overtrained and get easily fatigued. in that case, you would take a break.

the great arthur lydiard said to run comfortably hard. not to slug around.

ignore anything Sham 69 says on these boards. dude is a keyboard cowboy

if you don't have any races soon just go in and do a base phase. a base period doesn't need to be 80+ miles of slow runs. Do 3 "quality" type days a week. Day 1 do a tempo or fartlek, day 2 do some short hill reps and day 3 do a long run. Build the tempo from 10-15 minutes up to 40 minutes. do fartlek with good amount of rest at no faster than 10k pace.

double when you can. if injury prone maybe double with cycling or swimming

base also time to do weights if youre into that

then after 6-12 weeks you can come back into some other reps

Sham 69 wrote:

yes. you should not be running slower than marathon pace on normal runs unless you are overtrained and get easily fatigued. in that case, you would take a break.

Ugh. If you’re well trained, your marathon pace is still pretty fast, easy days will be slower than this. If you’re not well trained, MP is irrelevant anyway, so no need to worry about it.

My $0.02, follow your current program while it’s fun & you’re making progress. When you plateau (and you will, everyone does) or get injured or just stops being fun, go and work on base aerobic fitness.

friendojamin wrote:

You be you.

who?

questionsmaster wrote:

I completely skipped base phase and went right into a season of workouts. I feel fine and things are still progressing. My mileage is fairly high. But now I’m reading a bunch of Lydiard and it almost just makes me want to scrap it all and star fresh with a base phase. It’s not like I have anything to train for anyways. I’m a good 6 weeks in on workouts though. Training for the mile / 3k

The lydiard base period is really out of style. Most coaches have gotten much better results with doing workouts during the base phase. The question is what workouts?

This is the time for all those quality aerobic workouts (tempo runs, CV, and occasional vo2max paced ones), short hill sprints for leg strength, and medium fast endurance runs (70-80 min runswhere the middle 6miles are around MP). There is no point in doing heavy anaerobic work right now (i.e. 400s at 1500m with short rest) but occassional 200ms type runs focusing on turnover are fine.

I look at base phase as a nice to have but not a necessity.

Think about many many HS kids. They don't even come out for XC until school starts, so they have about 90 days from start of school until the region/state/sectionals races. That means they are jumping right in to doing some workouts and probably some races pretty quickly.

MOST of those kids can end up running pretty well by the end of the season. Now their early season races are garbage, and it's a darned painful way to go about getting in shape, but it can be effective. It's not optimal, but it can work.

Now you've transitioned to a troll who actively gives bad advice. Very cool!

NotPC wrote:

I look at base phase as a nice to have but not a necessity.

Think about many many HS kids. They don't even come out for XC until school starts, so they have about 90 days from start of school until the region/state/sectionals races. That means they are jumping right in to doing some workouts and probably some races pretty quickly.

MOST of those kids can end up running pretty well by the end of the season. Now their early season races are garbage, and it's a darned painful way to go about getting in shape, but it can be effective. It's not optimal, but it can work.

To a large extent HS XC is base training for 1500m runners. Lots of mileage and quality aerobic work with just a bit of speed. Running 5k races isn't the ideal workout but it does get the job done.

I think the Lydiard base is the one piece of Lydiard that people actually still do pretty closely to how it’s written. He advocates for two runs that are basically 10mi at MP, and for one easy fartlek. This fartlek isnt how many think of it today though, and he literally just meant “run pickups of whatever speed and distance you want but DONT go into acidosis” (paraphrasing here). His simplistic understanding of it was more or less “run fast in the fartlek, but not in such a way that the legs feel heavy or tired” (paraphrasing here as well)

Maybe a better question for me would be: now that I’ve spent 6 weeks working out, what it be stupid for me to scrap everything and start fresh with base, rather than sharpen over the next 8 weeks?

questionsmaster wrote:

Maybe a better question for me would be: now that I’ve spent 6 weeks working out, what it be stupid for me to scrap everything and start fresh with base, rather than sharpen over the next 8 weeks?

sharpen for 6 weeks, do your timetrial/race. Then go into base phase, end of november is good time do so to start preparing for racing again come April