How to adapt Daniels 2Q if less than 18 weeks available?

This what you need?

So you do:

Phase I - 4 weeks

Phase II - 3 weeks

Phase III - 4 weeks

Phase IV - 3 weeks

Thanks. Yes, I saw that chart in Daniels, but the way he organizes the workouts in the 2Q plan it isn't clear (to me) what "phase" he is in in any given week. So I'm not sure which weeks to cut out.

There is a 15-week plan available.

2Q wrote:

http://runsmartproject.com/training-plans/

There is a 15-week plan available.

That's one week too long, idiot. That plan is useless.

2Q wrote:

There is a 15-week plan available.

Thanks for the link, but I'm not really in the market for a custom training plan.

bumpity bump

pfitzinger has 12 week plan in his book (freely available at libgen dot io)

abandon Daniels.the answer to your questions if you try to do Daniels in less than 18 weeks: You'll be injured or overtrained. i'd bet money on itDaniels plans are garbage, unless you are really durable and/or really talentedjust run as many miles as you can, do fartleks and don't do workouts by a schedule. workout when your body feels ready to workout. alternate V02 max one weeks, tempo (10k-HMP) the next and try to do a good long run every week.good luck

glacial wrote:

Can anyone familiar with Daniels give me some advice on this?

I want to follow Daniels' 2Q plan for a marathon scheduled for the last week of April. That means I have 14 weeks of training to work with. Should I jump into the plan at week 14, or should I rejigger the Q sessions (and if so, how)?

If it matters, I am a novice. I have been running nothing but easy miles with a few strides since late November. Most weeks have been 40 mpw with a peak of 45. Because of injury/illness my last 5-6 weeks of training have been inconsistent. I would probably try to peak at 50 mpw for this training cycle.

Damn, harsh. I love me some Daniels.

That being said, if there are durability concerns with a newcomer to running, I would agree that at this point, getting an idea about the kinds of workouts are useful in improving fitness and when they would be useful to do, and then picking your spots as to when to do them is sound advice.

I coach my wife, and I coach her according to the general principles espoused by Daniels, but because she is a relatively new runner who did not come to running until a little later in life, I greatly reduce the volume of the quality she does. I keep her to one workout per week and alternate each week between tempo efforts and interval workouts. And because she tends to get the little aches and pain that new runners get and because our local track is paved concrete, I tend to avoid the rep paced work with her as well.

The challenge with a newer athlete taking this approach is that they really don't have a great sense of what good workouts are or when in a particular cycle to do which or which workouts are going to take a higher toll, etc.

Hmm, ok. This isn't exactly the advice I wanted to hear, but it's helpful. I have no interest in breaking myself. (For my current mileage of 40ish mpw, Daniels prescribes 29 miles of quality work right off the bat, which sounded a little crazy to me.) But I also don't have enough experience or know enough physiology to trust myself to write my own plan.

So, it sounds like I have a few options:

(1) look at Pfitzinger/somebody else

(2) stick with Daniels, but only do one workout each week, possibly at less volume [not sure if this would target all the right systems; for Q1, he seems to cycle between MP, threshold work, and steady easy runs, no intervals]

(3) just concentrate on getting volume in and mix in some threshold or interval work once a week

I like the third option least as I would probably need something more concrete to work from.

Any other thoughts/comments?

I guess I should have mentioned this in the OP, but I have been running for about a year and a half and have jogged a couple of half marathons in that time (PR is 1:28). Obviously I am new to the marathon and am fine ego-wise approaching it with the humility it deserves.

Not a chance that is correct. You have misunderstood or are very bad at math. That being said, from my experience I feel 60-70 mpw is a good minimum volume for Daniels' marathon plans. Thus you are starting form a bit of a hole and then trying to shortcut it which won't work that well. You may or may not be able to pull it off, but certainly you have to shorten the cycles and workouts and make darn sure to ease up on the vdot for paces.

If you were at 55-60 mpw now I'd say go for it but re-read the book so you understand how much Q to run.

I started at age 45 running 5k-10k stuff using Daniels, built up to ~40 mpw in a bit less than a year, then embarked on the marathon "Plan A" from the 2nd ed. book. However I used the entire 24 weeks (6 wks base - 18 wks training) and 50-70 mpw. My 2nd marathon I did jump in somewhat like you are talking about and that went well, but I had a good base to draw from.

I am also slower than you (1:31 half - 3:11 marathon PR) after a few years of good training. I don't have a lot of "talent" as it were. Daniels is definitely not "garbage" nor will it break you if you understand and apply it properly. (referencing "monumental glacier" above)

I helped guide a few friends through their initial cycle with great success. One had much more potential but couldn't put a good marathon together, other people told him Daniels' plans would break him, He ran about a 12 minute PR.

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I think Hanson's stuff would be a good fit for you in this situation:

Luke is very knowledgeable (as are Kieth and Kevin obviously) and the plans laid out may be a better fit for a lower mileage start.

Now that I am much older and can't grind out as much quality as previously, I am going to give this a try if I get back into the marathon business.

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Awesome humble brag ;-)

That's a great result off of 40 mpw. You won't have trouble with Daniels' stuff if you have time to dedicate to it and build up your mileage.

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Agree that the OP must be mistaken regarding the total volume of quality work. Daniels typically prescribes 2 workouts per week - 1 tempo (typically limited to 10% of your weekly mileage) and 1 track session (limited to 8% of your weekly mileage if it is at interval pace and 5% if it is rep pace). The only way I see getting to 29 miles is if OP is including warm ups, cool downs and long run mileage.

I too use Marathon Plan A from the 2nd edition for my marathons. I am a pretty experienced runner (I am 45 and I ran collegiately), and when I first drafted my specific plan using Plan A as the base, it looked incredibly daunting, particularly because of the huge volume of work at tempo pace. Going from a 20 minute tempo run as a 5k runner, to what that plan prescribes left me wondering if I would even complete the plan.

I am now using it for the third time and have confidence that I will be able to complete the vast majority of the workouts and that some workouts will just suck and come on bad days and I will do my best but modify the workout as needed.

In support of Daniels, in my two marathons, both run in my early 40s, I have run 2:35:x in NYC and 2:30:x in Chicago. I have also run sub 15:30 for the 5k as a masters runner training in accordance with my own training plan (based on Daniels's underlying principles).

Thanks for the additional comments.

Yes, I figured out the source of confusion. Daniels (3d ed.) has a column in which he lists "miles for Q sessions," which includes any easy miles you'd do as part of the workout. E.g. Q1 for week 18 is 4 easy miles, 8 mi @ MP, 1 mi @ threshold pace, and 1 easy mile. So, I was sloppy when I used that number. In reality it's more like 14 mi of quality over both sessions, not 29.

I'll look into Hansons.

Thanks. I genuinely didn't mean it as a humblebrag - sorry it came off that way.

I have the third edition, which doesn't include Plan A. I understand 2Q is similar but not exactly the same.

I have gotten a lot out of reading Daniels - much more than say Hal Higdon, which I used for my first half - which is why I was inclined to stick with him rather than look at another plan. For this cycle, I might have to come up with an abbreviated plan using Daniels as a starting point and come back to 2Q next time. It's a shame he doesn't have anything to bridge the gap between the novice plan (which seems like it's aimed at true beginners to running) and 2Q.