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 ...

Before the 20-mile long runs, tempo miles, or sprint interval workouts of marathon prep, there’s base training—a quiet development period used to stack easy miles, reinforce strength training habits, ...

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.