In Reply To:
you'll note that whether you citing lydiard or the africans, you're looking at 100+ mile running weeks. when i write about triathletes (you guys) and what you should do in the early season, i think there's quite a chasm between 100+ miles afoot and the 12 or 16 miles a week many of you guys are doing.
i don't mind you guys disagreeing with me. nevertheless, i think it's fair to know what you're disagreeing with. it's my view that if you try to be a good runner without building and maintaining base, you'll fail, and you'll probably get injured. second, base is not like a merit badge. you don't check it off as "earned" after 3 or 4 years in the sport, allowing you now to move onto other more advanced training. base always has to be earned, and re-earned, and maintained. you can lose it even inside of a continuous program of running.
third, you ought to take time off, from time to time, and this will make you faster than if you keep training at a constant level all year round. whether you think this is true or not, you probably act as if it is. most of you take time off, because of inclement weather, shorter days, and so forth.
but time off doesn't necessarily mean sitting on the couch. most pro athletes do more running in their winters "off" than most of you do in your summers "on." i think a typical pro routine might be 3 weeks entirely off after ironman hawaii, then the running is sifted back in, fairly quickly growing to 40 miles a week, maintained most of the "off season" winter.
even this 40mi a week afoot won't build the base you need, as a pro, for an ironman. forty a week doesn't include 12 and 16 and 20 mile runs, and you can't hope to run 3:15 (as a woman) or 2:55 (as a man) unless you do these long runs. so, you build base on the run, likewise on the bike.
if you're building after time off, you can't hope to do much bulk mileage if you're not yet very fit, and even more so if you try to throw much quality into the mix. if you try to go the route of quality-first, base and bulk-last, you have no background on which to run that quality. this is not to say that a national caliber runner who's succesfully absorbing 100 and 120 mile weeks should run zero quality during base building, it's that his quality is more likely to be tempo runs at a moderate pace, fartlek, and perhaps a set or two of short-duration strides. during my base building period (as a pure runner) my first "track" workouts were sets of 20 x 120yd in 20sec with 20sec rest, done barefoot, usually, on the grass, end zone to end zone. this is a low-impact workout gets my legs ready to run fast, when the time would come for harder, formal, track work. paul thomas has written here before about closing every workout with an easy set of strides, maybe just a half-dozen @ 100yd long or so, no stress, just to get the legs ready for speed.
each person has to gauge what place he's at. because of some freak injuries/illnesses over the winter, i'm starting at a very low point: extra weight, little fitness. if i try to do
any quality right now, tomorrow's workout is going to suffer, and i won't be able to build the base i need. my mission now is to take 4mi daily runs and stretch them to 6mi, then to 8mi, and then i'll be able to, i hope, run the weekly 15-miler, and, voila, in 6 or 8 weeks i'll have somewhat of a base under me, and i'll have the freedom to start moving to some quality work without damaging my ability to recover day over day.
this is not to say that you abandon base work during the part of your training season where you focus on building speed. indeed, if you do abandon base work you'll lose base as you're building speed. it's not that you can't race fast without base, but you risk injury and your fitness will be fragile and suspect at anything longer than a sprint or olympic.
i'm not sure i know what markyv is talking about by moving from the general to the specific, but if he means what i think he means, then i agree with him completely. when you get closer to a race like an ironman, you have to inject quality into your workouts. doing so comes at a high price. intensity costs a lot, and you have to abandon some of the bulk base miles you had been doing. concurrently, tho, you have some rather high quality long rides and runs you must do as the race approaches. how do you fit all that in? this is where it gets tricky, because
every workout has a specific purpose when you're 5 or 6 weeks out from an ironman whereas, in a base building period, whether you go out for 2 x 6mi runs or one 10mi run or a 40mi bike and a swim doesn't much matter, because it's all accruing to the base.
my guess is that more of you are like me than are like the kenyan running 100 mile weeks. if you'd like to run that 13.1 miles strong this year; if you'd like to not have IT band problems, and constant strained calves; if you'd like to train hard one day without being totally bushed the next; if running 7mi before work and still having energy to perform work appeals to you; then i'd recommend building a base, most of it at lower heart rates, focusing on increasing the
length of your rides and runs, without (for now) increasing the
speed of your rides and runs. it's january. start that now, and by march or april you'll have a very nice base, and you'll be a durable athlete with options available to you. if it's too cold to ride, fine, as soon as weather permits, start building your running base.