Most runners aren’t giddy about base training, a period when you gradually build your mileage with mostly easy effort workouts. “It's not glamorous and exciting,” Sean Henning, a RunDoyen coach and ...

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.

Base training is an essential piece of marathon preparation. It’s when runners establish a consistent routine and build the aerobic fitness foundation that they’ll rely on later. Because the miles are ...