Prior to base miles your schedule should resemble a training schedule where one just broke one's collarbone.

Start with the base. You can shatter yourself just doing base stuff if you do a lot of it. A few weeks or a month is not a delay. 5 or 10 years is a delay.

A little story - a friend of mine, euro-pro at the time, was at home on a short vacation during the season. On some midweek day we were riding together (very easy - he always rode easy when he rode with me) and he asked me how his back tire looked. It looked pretty worn, like it has 1500-2000 miles on it so I said it looked fine, that I'd replace it in maybe 500 miles tops. To me that's a couple really hard weeks or four easier weeks, so maybe three weeks to a month of riding for me.

"Okay, I'll replace it at the end of the week."
"No, I meant 500 miles, not this week."
"I'm doing 700 miles this week."
"Oh."

Although he did a couple hard rides at home he mainly did easy base type stuff, 15-17 mph stuff for 3-6 hours. He did a slew of intervals and such just before heading over to Europe and then raced for fitness.