Success with Daniels?

Aggressive plan. I've used Marathon Training Plan A from the 2nd edition with a fair amount of success, but nothing was quite as intense as that workout.

seeker of marathon wisdom wrote:

I'm looking at Daniels 3rd edition 18 week 86-100 mile marathon plan and in the first week the Q1 workout goes like this:

5E + 6M + 1T + 5M + 1T + 1M + 1E (E=easy, M=marathon pace, T=threshold pace) -- a 20 mile continuous runs with 14 quality.

This seems like a really difficult workout to me if run at the recommended paces (based on current fitness), especially in the first week. Generally on paper the workouts throughout the program look hard to the point that I wonder if I would be able to complete some of them.

Has anyone had success with following this program or similar as written?

I'm following the same plan but at 60 mpw..... I had the same thought, some of the workouts are brutal. I completely failed on my first workout and ended up walking home. I was trying to hit the splits and it felt 100% like a race. Eventually, I started to bonk and pulled the plug. Since then, ive gone a little more conservative on my paces...... Calling tempo pace my half marathon pace or even a little slower and about 20 seconds from marathon pace. I'd rather be 90% fit than run myself in to the ground and get injured

It's kinda wierd when my longest runs had been 14 and the plan called for 15 at easy pace and my thoughts were "thank God, a day off"

I'd strongly advocate Training Plan A from 2nd edition (which I understand may be very similar to 2q plan in 3rd edition). Seems to be less intense than what your plan calls for, although it has some tough workouts (2 miles up, 4 x 1 mile at tempo, 10 miles easy, 20 minutes tempo, cool down).

But Jimmy's thought of "15 miles - off day!" Is part of the upside of workouts like that. It shifts your perspective some.

I've tried plans from all three editions but always go back to the first. Plans are simpler and less calculation is required. I just ran my first R workout of a cycle today, after having not done a Daniels plan in a couple of years and it hurt. I'm old enough now that I only try to approximate the R work in his plans to avoid injury. I'm also not convinced that the R work is truly effective on a risk/reward basis. However, I've had my best success when following his plans like out of a cookbook and have stuck with them for many years now.

My dog honestly ate my copy of the first edition of his book, thus my purchase of the 2nd edition. Didn't run my first marathon until after Lola turned the first edition into a Scooby snack, so never paid attention to the marathon plans there.

I've had success with Daniel's 2Q 70 mpw plan from the 3rd edition. I think its first week has something like a 16 mile run with 12 miles at MP. One thing to note is that Daniels recommends you start 2 vdot or 10 sec per mile below your goal MP, and obviously you can adjust this further if you need.

I always figured he put a workout like this in the first week as an honest check on where your current fitness is. If you know that you will improve more than 10 sec per mile over the 18 weeks then you have a good reason to start these workouts slower. Alternatively, you may not need 18 weeks of a 2Q training plan to hit your goal. I typically plan 4 weeks or so before jumping into these training plans and build up to the initial workouts, and I've found I also prefer to truncate the 2Q plan to 12 - 15 weeks.

How do you (personally) shorten 2Q?

I've followed some form of Daniels plans for my past 4 marathons...ran basically a great race or PR in each. Mentally his MP workouts are epic you have to not be literal... if your 10-15 seconds per mile slow that is ok!

The first marathon I just did the quality workouts it was the first version with Bob Kennedy on the cover.. I think I did the C plan... I mainly just did the quality workouts. Ran 2:36 NYC.

I ran Boston the next marathon and did the 56-70 mile 4 week cycle plan on page 235. It's 26 weeks and I didn't miss a workout. I ran 2:33 on a hot windy day in Boston....I was in 2:30 shape. But it wasn't a 2:30 day or course for me.

I ran a marathon again 6 months later basically following the same plan but jumped in at 12 weeks to go... I didn't take the rest weeks and skipped a few of the longer marathon sessions for fear I couldn't do them. I did the 13miler mp... and a 26k effort.....I Replaced most MP with 5x2 miles or similar.... I ran 2:28

6 months later ran Boston again with only doing his interval sessions and no longer efforts...at all... just the intervals. I ran 2:33. My guess I was in 2:30 shape again but went out at 2:26 pace and cracked a bit.

His workouts work... I would say focus on the quality days and ignore the easy days or replace them as needed... your not going to crush every session but when you get to 3 weeks to go you will be ready.

seeker of marathon wisdom wrote:

I'm looking at Daniels 3rd edition 18 week 86-100 mile marathon plan and in the first week the Q1 workout goes like this:

5E + 6M + 1T + 5M + 1T + 1M + 1E (E=easy, M=marathon pace, T=threshold pace) -- a 20 mile continuous runs with 14 quality.

This seems like a really difficult workout to me if run at the recommended paces (based on current fitness), especially in the first week. Generally on paper the workouts throughout the program look hard to the point that I wonder if I would be able to complete some of them.

Has anyone had success with following this program or similar as written?

This is similar to the "Elite" plan from the 2nd edition book. It is very hard for sure, but I was able to have success with it as a slower runner with less mileage (70-75 peak).

The key is to scale it by time as Daniels talks about in the 2nd edition (maybe 3rd edition too?) book. He recommends 6 min for each easy mile, 5 min for the M pace miles and slightly less for the T miles. I used 5 min for T or M miles, this gives: 30 min E + 30 min M + 5 min T + 25 min M + 5 min T + 5 min M + 6 min E. 106 min total running which is doable.

At my pedestrian pace I was running ~1200 meters in place of miles or scaling the workout distance to ~75%.

Yeah, the elite plan seemed unfathomable to me

truncator wrote:

How do you (personally) shorten 2Q?

I've had good success with Daniels and specifically with a shortened plan A (2nd ed) by just jumping in around week 15 and picking up from there. I've also had success skipping the I/vo2max phase entirely and picking up at week 12. For my current buildup I'm doing the whole 18 weeks, which seems like an eternity. We'll see if it pays off in October.

To the OP: that workout from the 3rd ed is insane. 14 miles at M is plenty hard enough without the T's thrown in. Good luck.

I'm glad, it's not just me. Even the 5K/10K plans have crazy MP/T continuous runs that were absolutely painful. I think my proudest moment with his training was doing 1E +10M +1E earlier this year @~+5 sec VDOT MP pace

I've only really worked with the 70MPW plan but I assume the others follow a similar structure. The way I look at the 18-week 2Q plan is that it's made up of a repeated 3-week block that changes a bit over the course of the program. When I shorten the plan I usually cut out one or more of these blocks, or I just look at the overall distribution of workout types and design my own 12 - 15 week progression that follows a similar structure (maybe just for part of it).

The basic 3-week block has 6 quality workouts in (M, T, T, I, E, T) order. Typically these workouts each have the same structure. For example, the T workouts are:

1: long warm up -> T intervals with 5:1 rest -> short cool down

2: short warm up -> T interval(s) (with 5:1 rest) -> long block of E -> T interval -> short cool down

3: long warm up -> T intervals with 5:1 rest -> short cool down

Weeks 1-3 and 4-6 follow that structure exactly.

Weeks 7-9 and 10-12 are similar except that at the end of week 9 Daniels starts replacing some T work with M work (sometimes listed as optional) and incorporating a couple workouts with both M and T pace segments where he previously had pure M or T workouts.

Weeks 13-15 get back to the original structure except that he replaces the last T workout with a second I workout

Weeks 16-18 I view as a taper block. It has the original structure except the I workout is replaced with a low volume M + T workout.

So to me the plan is basically just repeating this 3 week cycle, trading some T work for M work and/or incorporating mixed T+M workouts later in the plan, hitting the last v02max workout 3-4 weeks before the race (including an extra in place of T work), and tapering down workload as he suggests over the last ~4 weeks. Also, it looks and feels to me like the hardest work is done about 7-5 weeks out from the race, so I try to maintain that as well, although I've also had success reducing that block of work a bit and hitting a peak (hardest) workout 4 weeks out from the race.

I've also run the workouts from the 70 MPW plan while running ~80 MPW total because the workouts in the higher mileage plan seemed too hard. Maybe I'd be better off running 70 mpw and trying to hit slightly faster workout paces, but at some point it's up to personal preference and response.

I'd add that his marathon pace is very aggressive for a given VDOT. For a 1:20 HM, he equates this with a 2:47 full. Unless you are incredibly well trained aerobically, it is almost impossible to run a full at that pace with that half time. Instead, run the M pace workouts based on what you think you could run a marathon in given current fitness. For me at 1:20, that's probably closer to 2:55-3:00.

Also, as another poster mentioned, you shouldn't be running these plans in the first week at your goal pace, which is where I think most people fail.

Everybody has a marathon pace. It may be a full minute slower than your T pace due to poor conditioning, but it exists. If you run the workouts given your CURRENT fitness for M pace, it won't be that bad. A good example would be a fast-twitch runner who can run a 16:00 5K. According to Daniels, that person's M pace is 5:51. I can tell you right now to grab 50 high school freshman runners that run a 16:00 5K and not a single one will run a 2:33 marathon, so trying to blast that workout you mentioned at a 5:51 M pace would be impossible for them.

Why complicate things? There is evidence for that mostly 3 factors counts in running middle-longdistance. Just do these 3 factors every week and you "gonna fly" compared to before. And don`t forget the often forgotten "extra factor" , RECOVERY! :)

The Magic Wizard

OP here, thanks for all the good replies! I followed Pfitzinger 12 week programs for my first 3 marathons and had success -- PR'ed in each one, with the most recent one at 2:51 in the fall. I'm shooting for a late fall marathon (probably CIM) and my first thought was to do a Pfitz 18 week program with higher mileage (averaged low 80s on the last one), but I'm honestly a little bored with the structure and was wondering if it might be a good time to do something different anyway, which is what led me to look into Daniels. It's good to hear that it has worked well for people. I'm curious if anyone has also tried Pfitz programs and how things worked out comparatively.

So what I'm thinking is to either follow the 3rd edition 2Q 18 week 86-100 program with peak of 100, but replacing most of the workouts with workouts in the lower mileage 2Q programs OR following the 2nd edition A plan more or less to the letter with similar mileage.

My sense is that Pfitz and Daniels generally apply the same ideas, so I think this is a pretty good idea for you in that you'll be applying principles that have worked for you in the past, but in a new format to break up the routine some.

I've run 2:35 (NYC - 25 mph winds), 2:30 (Chicago - great conditions), and 2:34 (Boston - this year, hot) off of Training Plan A with modest modifications, all from ages 42-45. It will get you ready.