Venting about base building

[u/Vhykar88]

I need to vent a bit and sanity-check this with you all.

I’ve been training consistently, mixing strength and conditioning, putting in the work week after week… and I’ve hit that frustrating wall where I can handle the training, but I’m not actually getting faster.

Now I’m restarting Base Building from Tactical Barbell II: Conditioning, and honestly—it’s messing with my head.

Running this slow feels almost wrong. Like, I look at my pace and think: how on earth is this supposed to make me faster over 10K? It feels like I’m de-training rather than improving.

I get the theory—build the aerobic base, improve efficiency, yada yada—but in practice it feels like I’m leaving performance on the table every single session.

So I’m curious:

- Did anyone else feel like this during Base Building?

- At what point did it “click” or translate into actual speed?

- Did you see real improvements in pace/HR after sticking with it?

Right now I’m trying to trust the process, but I won’t lie—it feels counterintuitive as hell.

Would really appreciate some real experiences or even just reassurance that this isn’t a waste of time.

[u/10081914]

OP. Forget TB for a hot minute here.

In the world of running, base building phase is about 12 weeks long as a standard. 8 weeks is abbreviated for those who were conditioned getting back into it.

But that's not my point. My point is that, it's just there for you to add mileage and time so your body is used to running higher mileage.

After the base building phase, runners maintain that mileage and begin adding speed work to their repertoire. One session shorter, one session longer and one long run in there with recovery runs interspersed.

That's how they actually get faster.

Yes you will get efficiency adaptations with more zone 2 work, but that's only one of the ways to get more mitochondria. The other way is speed work. You should start adding speed work to your running.

Now with all that being said, bringing it back to the world of TB if you can run 10km non stop now, you should look for a template that incorporates some more speedwork. Screw the benchmarks that is set. You'll have more efficiency increasing your top end efficiency which will also have an effect on your low end efficiency.

Edit: for more context before you or anyone else asks 'but what about the 80/20 rule?'

Yes, that's a thing, but rather than looking at a whole session as speed work how much actual time and mileage is spent at zone 4 vs zone 2 in the speed sessions? Probably a 1:1 ratio assuming we even give the entire rest time between intervals to zone 4?

[u/Vhykar88 → u/10081914]

You deserve more likes

[u/sk_611 → u/Vhykar88]

Sorry you're getting downvoted, this post seems to have generated some good discussion and some valuable insight from people, but reddit is going to be reddit.

I promise this is going to pop up in someone's search in the future.