Daniels' Workouts Possible?

I think its a mistake to think of one workout or type of workout to be key to the marathon. The key is finding a balance between the long MP and threshold work, the shorter threshold work, the interval work, and the fast reps. Jack's plans are very good at mixing together the various workouts. Everytime I get too far away from one of those areas, my racing suffers. The right mix varies from person to person. I spent a lot of time at World Champs with Sell and Verran and what works for them in training doesn't seem to work so well for me. Its an individual experiment. The only constant is the need for a big aerobic base from years of realtively injury free running. I've always loved reading Shorter's training logs from the 70s. He did the same three workouts almost every week, but it was the easy days that made him great. He did as much easy aerobic running as his body could handle. 117 miles per week average for the entire 70s, including injury time. If he can stay healthy, Sell will look back at this decade with numbers like that.

It is good to adjust the amount of running to the use of minutes in place of distance for runners who are taking longer per mile at threshold pace. As Peter has pointed out, each person is different. I rely on his reaction to various workouts as much as I rely on what I feel will work best. Without interaction things can get very demanding, not demanding enough or even very boring. When I get to where I have a copy of the book handy, I'll point out a couple errors. The only one I have memorized is the heading for the table on page 55 -- should be the same heading for that table as is printed for the table on page 53, but most probably figured that out, knowing that 84 sec is not a reasonable mile time

Jtupper, thanks for posting. At first look I thought the workout in question was an error, but as several have pointed out, it's T pace as written. I should have known from the rest periods being 5 to 1, but with 15 miles at T pace it seemed like too much of a coincidence with your cap on marathon pace being 15 miles. My bad!

I did notice the heading you spoke about and wrote you on that. In your reply you mentioned another one I beleive pertaining to Benoit's training, or something she said in the foreward, but I can't recall.

Thanks again!

The interaction is important when you coach an individual. Certainly what an athlete did yesterday has a huge influence on what is done today, but there is another consideration. There is intra-action among the members of a training group. With Greater Boston I train groups of post collegiate athletes who live complex lives. An important consideration for me is to "broker" what they want to do together.

One group this weekend ran 30 km "progressive" getting faster as it went on and on the other weekend day another group ran 11 miles with some tempo parts continued into a 5 mile race and ran more afterward to complete 19 miles. So the intra-action can be very important and unique to a group aside from some universal principles of physiology.

I have found it useful to support experienced athletes doing the workouts they want to do and like to do and dream up in their own study and discussion. The group tends to temper the extremes all by itself. They slow down the "wind up self-destruct maniacs and get the lazy bums out of bed.

(remember I am talking about people who have been in the sport for 10 years)

Tom

Why is there a cap of 15 miles for MP pace and yet there is no cap for T pace, if T pace is more demanding?

Thoughts?

This was part of the confussion I had but I believe it was because there is a difference from the first edition to the lastest edition. In the first edition there's a cap of 8 miles(13k) or 50 minutes in a cruise interval workout. In the latest edition the cap is not as defined. It now says more than 1 hour at T pace is recomended, though some elites will do as much as 15 miles in a session, but even they need to work up to that level of threshold stress. It then goes on to say that for other runners.... the previous cap of 8 miles is recomended or 10% of weekly mileage, whichever is less.

Like Jack and others said in a previous post. Getting to know what works for each individual is what matters most.

My bad....the previous post should have said more than an hour at T pace is NOT recommended.

Thoughts on this possible future scenario:

Half Marathon Race on up-coming Sunday

Usually scheduled Q2 workout on Wed... should that be cancelled in light of the Sunday race or is it okay to have Wed Q2 and Sunday's regular Q1 just be the race or will I be wiped out from Q2 workout?

I really think everyone should read this part of the 2nd edition before commenting further. It's an "Elite Marathoner Plan". Nothing more, nothing less. It's not something an 18:00 5k runner is just going to be dropped into. Basically, it seems like Daniels wanted to show an "extreme example" of his training ideas and put out this "ideal" schedule. Of course we all know nothing in running is "ideal" and very few of us can be quite so "extreme". Like any printed schedule you should simply take the ideas within the schedule and run with it. The above workout is ONE workout at the END of a PERIOD of WEEKS of similar workouts. Try something like 8xmile, 4x2mile, 3x3mile, 2x4mile, etc at "threshold" first. Have fun.

Alan

Daniels suggests doing the last quality workout 4 or maybe even 5 days out from an important race, so Wednesday before a Sunday race is just that, 4 days out. One thing he does stress though is to not do anything you aren't used to doing regularly in the last week or even weeks leading into the race. This could make you sore, even running just a tad faster than normal. Not the time to change things much.

If the race is of high importance, then your mileage should be lower in the week leading into it, so the amount of quality running should drop in proportion. I personally like to do just half of what I would normally do in my last session. If I want the miles that day, they are easy ones instead.

He does say that a few strides in the last few days won't hurt you, just keep the pace what they would normally be.

Good luck in your half!

The first edition was pitched a bit more like a textbook you'd find in a training 101 course. The prose is very rich in offering up suggestions of greater complexity.

For example, Daniels establishing rough percentage limits as well as concrete mileage limits on T-pace. The percentage limit is 10%. Now if you are running a 150 miles a week...10%=15 miles.

A fundamental aspect of Daniels's belief is that you should not overtrain which I take it is why he also proposes concrete upper limits. That said, earlier in the first edition, he mentions that if you want to make an olympic team or something similar you may push your body into the territory where the risk for injury is very high.

If you put this comment together with rough limits, you begin to see that he can envision more rather than less, for the right reward, at the right moment in a career.

The elite marathon training plan is clearly geared toward someone running 100+ miles/wk...not just recently but for a long time. And his suggested times (as opposed to miles) shows that he thinks you ought to be able to do I-pace work in the 4:4x/mile range to hang with these workouts.

Hey..peter how are you? Man you are running really great. We ran agiants each other in high school in the mile we both ran under 4:18 but i was a soph and u a senior. Anyways old history. I attend Belmont high school and mine name is Manny Lopez. I don't think you remenber me or maybe now you will...lol. I'm getting back into running again i'm hope u send me same tips.

Manny lopez?! oh my god!!! you are that guy from stanislaws who ran a 3:52 mile at confrence. I remember you! what have you been up 2? i bet your running really fast right now huh. what team are you running with.

the one miler wrote:

Manny lopez?! oh my god!!! you are that guy from stanislaws who ran a 3:52 mile at confrence. I remember you! what have you been up 2? i bet your running really fast right now huh. what team are you running with.

Don't you know?...All great Turlock runners work at Togos

OP, I did basically that exact workout either 10 or 17 days out from my last marathon (can't remember), except the the pace was MP (6:17/mile) and the rest was an easy 2min 440. I'm not elite, 2:45ish. I think it gave me confidence and let me really get a feel for the pace. I had been doing a lot of long tempos at 6:00/mile thru training.

Amazing! I basically did THAT EXACT workout, too, except the pace was 20 sec slower than MP and the rest was 5 min. I'm not elite either.

Peter Gilmore wrote:

The only constant is the need for a big aerobic base from years of realtively injury free running. I've always loved reading Shorter's training logs from the 70s. He did the same three workouts almost every week, but it was the easy days that made him great. He did as much easy aerobic running as his body could handle. 117 miles per week average for the entire 70s, including injury time. If he can stay healthy, Sell will look back at this decade with numbers like that.

"Distance Consistency", that was the mantra I got from Shorter's book. I liked reading about all the running he did in New Mexico and Colorado.

Cerutty Fan wrote:

Did you read the post that Sell did 2 x 6 miles in less than 29:00 for a workout?

That is a harder workout than is needed by a 2:11 guy. One x 6 miles at 12-15 secs per mile faster than M-pace woulda been enough.

That kind of workout has taken Sell from a 2:20 guy to an Olympian.

Alan