You just opened your plan for your upcoming training block, and, low and behold, you see a healthy mix of mileage, speed workouts, and long runs in the early weeks of your schedule. If you’ve prepared ...

Theoretically, base training should be pretty painless. The whole idea is to take it easy as you rack up slow-and-steady mileage. The hard stuff, like tempo runs and threshold intervals, comes later.

All runners have a mental image of their most glorious moments on the road: big smiles as they cross a finish line with new personal bests or feeling the runner’s high on their favorite trail. Each of ...