aerobic base mileage question

wellthis

Hi! I just began training for my 2nd marathon and have been told a little bit about the importance of building up a good mile "base." Can someone please help me understand how to do this and what it does for my body? Thanks so much in advance!

FoxyMcDeadlift

It just means you need to run lots of miles to prepare yourself to run lots more miles! If you google hal higdon or marathon training plan generally it should give you a decent plan to build up your base. The longer you have, the more miles you can get in, and the better you will be for your race. Remember to never increase mileage by more than 10% per week. Good luck!

rybo

What he said.
Logging miles over an extended period of time. How long ago was your 1st marathon, and did you keep running since then?

I'm training for my second marathon and this time around is SO much "easier" than last time, I think just becaue it was another year of consistent running.

scottb81

Building base is running lots of miles at aerobic effort. How much is lots? As much as you can do; probably around 10+ hours a week is ideal. Less than that is good also but will simply give you the fitness gains slower. For how long? As long as you can, but for around three months is pretty standard.

The reason you build base is to increase aerobic capacity so that you can run faster for longer. Later you add speedwork on top of that to be able to increase the pace further.

The reason it is important is because your aerobic capacity is the number one determinant of your ability to run well in any race over about 800 meters. It also is something that is built rather slowly but that will improve for years. The effectiveness of the speedwork you do on top of it depends on the size of your aerobic capacity and maxes out in a number of weeks. So during one training cycle you build aerobic capacity and then add speedwork to top it off. After your races are finished you move to the next training cycle and focus on building more aerobic capacity and then again top it off with speedwork. During each progressive training cycle you will continue to improve because your aerobic capacity gets larger and is topped off with speedwork.

This assumes that you continue training consistently and don't take any long breaks for injury or other reasons. If you take a long break your aerobic capacity goes away and you have to start all over again.

The specific adaptations that the aerobic base training causes are:
Increased blood volume
Increased size of the left ventricle of the heart to pump more blood with each beat
Increased capillarization in the leg muscles
Increased mitochondria in the leg muscles
Increased aerobic enzymes in the leg muscles
Increased storage of glycogen in the leg muscles
As well as stronger bones, tendons, ligaments, and muscles.