Is daniels outdated ?

Also this. Daniels says my easy pace should be like 6:20 when I'm in good shape. No thank you, I'll stick to 7:30 for my easy days.

This is certainly the trend of the day, but again it is a concept that many coaches don't take the time to apply appropriately to their runners. Double threshold training is going to look different for a 16:30 5K guy vs. a 13:00 guy.

I ran the 800m in college and I noticed that a lot of my workouts were pulled right out of the Daniels 800m plan.

The 800m training program is an absolute hellish experience, with 3 workouts per week at times.

I did wonder if I was leaving my best running on the interval sessions as opposed to race day. There is a huge emphasis on peaking for race, like most of his plans, but I was so cooked by the end of the training program that I felt like the training program was just a little too aggressive. I will say that I was never leaner/thinner in my entire life while doing that plan and my 400m reps got much faster.

Many years later I attempted a marathon.

The Daniel's marathon training program is OK, but not as good as the Pfitzinger Plan, which I had much better success on with similar mileage (50mpw).

The "formula" in the title of the book(s) refers to the method of conversion of lab-determined values into real-world training paces, based on race-proven fitness levels. This is the core value of the book and of Daniels's contribution to distance training (a not insignificant one!). What other coach beside Lydiard can say he/she has produced anything of comparable universal usefulness?

But to create an entire book around this basic innovation entailed including many of Daniels' thoughts about distance training in general, including his various training plans. Without this material, no publisher would have been interested. (When pitching any manuscript for publication, the first question you get is "who is the target readership?" As you can tell from the training plans that were eventually included in the book, Daniels' answer to this question must have been "high school and college coaches and runners").

Is the book itself "dated"? All books eventually sound like the period in which they were written, so yes. But is the "Formula" dated? Of course not. The idea of regulating our various training efforts by pace is now universally accepted, just as is Lydiard's basic insight that general aerobic conditioning is the basis of training for all distances, from 800 to marathon. Most specific contemporary training systems are like footnotes on these basic insights.

But just as not everything in Lydiard's book ( e.g. all the "bounding") is immediately useful to all runners, not everything in Daniels' book works for everyone. It never did; it has nothing to do with Daniels being "dated" or not.

*As an aside, I think a lot of the particulars in both Lydiard and Daniels reflect the specificities of the sport in their respective historical and geographical contexts. For instance, NZL has tons of hills and is geographically isolated (much more so in the 1960s, when travel to and from the island would have been pretty pricey and time consuming). It therefore would have made practical sense for Lydiard to emphasize a lot of hill work and very long periods of "base" training with no racing. We often make virtues out of necessities in this way. In the US, on the other hand, where the sport is predominantly school-based, with year-round competition widely available, it made (and makes) sense for someone like Daniels to recommend training plans that include ways to integrate weekly racing. There is no strict, universal physiological rationale for, in the case of Lydiard, doing so much hill work, or for having such long periods without racing. There is equally nothing physiologically optimal about, in the case of Daniels, trying to find ways to squeeze workouts in around races. This is not to say these things are not useful for some people. It's just to say that, as guides to training, they don't have the same universal and somewhat timeless value of the big innovations that inform them

Daniels = cookie cutter training. No thanks.

Always remember that Shalane Flanagan ran a 2:26 marathon, and her easy pace during that training was anywhere from 8:00 to 8:30 pace, which truly is super easy for her.

I trust her training methods more than I trust a majority of people on LR.

I never liked that Daniels put a pace chart together for easy runs. My 5K PR was 16:28 and stopped bringing a watch on my easy runs because I was tired to running some sort of pace that didn't line up with how I was feeling that day. I just mapped out my mileage and went for it. I estimate that my easy pace was 8:15-8:45 depending on whoever I ran with and what they told me their Garmin said. I even ran 9 to 10 miles a week with my girlfriend who ran at 9:50 pace.

People often ask about the origin of Daniels E-pace, since it's the most seemingly arbitrary one of the bunch, and the one with by far the widest range. In answer, he said he chose the average pace at which the heart reached max stroke volume, because that seemed like reasonable place to start. Nothing about Daniels stands or falls based on his E-pace recommendation. Being the commonsensical guy he is, he once said the best E-pace is the one you want to run that day, for whatever reason, including wanting to run with a friend!

When I coach, I tell people never to exceed the fast end of Daniels' E-range, but that slower than the slow end is fine, if you really feel like you need to go that slow to recover. In other words, it works best as a limit on more high strung runners. I don't think it was ever meant as a goad to people who like to run slower. And, of course, much depends on how much easy running one is doing, and whether one is at altitude, or in a hot or hilly place. You mention Shalane Flannagan. Her E-pace is probably no better a general guide than Daniels, unless you're also running 120miles a week, most of it at altitude!

Okay so far the modern innovations are:

- replace I pace work with more race specific/ customized intervalls (Hudson book)

- special speed development, Drills, weights etc

- double treshold with lactate meter

- individual calibration of paces

- 800m shedule is bad

Apart from replacing I work with more specific pace work, I would say these are all things that require individual coaching, so hard to cover in a book...

So I conclude it as not as outdated for anyone but elites ?

how does Mike Smith incorporate the pace zones for workouts and such?

I have seen plenty of articles where she is using 8min badger miles but is actually running 7-7:30 pace at 7000'. Pretty much right around Daniels easy pace . That being taken anything you see in an article with a grain of salt. Things like a 50 min run with the last mile in 5 mins turns into 10 mile run in 50 mins. An easy run that starts off a 8:30 and progress down to 7 becomes a 8:30 run.

I think Daniels top end easy pace is 30s too fast for people running more than like 40mpw(at low mileage it is a lot easier to get recovery in) but we are talking about minor details.

If I had to pick on one thing it is too much vo2max work. The general trend is going slightly slower and doing more of it (think 5*1 mile at 10k versus 3*1 @5k) up until the couple months before you are peaking. Same thing with doing 40 mins of tempo work versus 20...

What are 8min "badger" miles?

He just rips them from the book.

70 sec 5k runner

Sub T pace = 82
T pace = 76

I pace = 70

R pace = 63

Daniels roughly uses a 6 sec rule. Smith sometimes lets runners go faster on the short stuff though. He likes to mix in some 800m work and also likes “shifting” reps where you gear change.

It isn't outdated.

There are some other training approaches, such as those practiced by the Norwegians and Canova.

They emphasise different things, but there's still a lot of crossover.

For a balanced approach, from 800m - Marathon, Daniel's formula will still produce world class results when practiced by world-class talent.

badger miles are when you go run for time and then assume a fixed pace. So in this case they're saying that Shalane was running for time and then logging the distance based on a 8min/mile calculation. Typically leads to a notorious underreporting of mileage for those athletes.

Yes it’s outdated, it doesn’t even include triple threshold training

I see. I might give these a shot for my own training

I read other places that he does this based off the HM and M pace

Daniels methods/training will put you in the right zip code training wise, but may not give you the specific address of the place you want to be. That's how my old college coach used to phrase it.

That was my main complaint about the Daniels programs. It always seemed like he wanted you to train for the distance/race below what you were actually training for. The 5K program looked like a good 1600m program. I felt like I never had enough in the tank to finish the race I was training for. It left me feeling like I could certainly could rip a good 200m rep but never reach my potential in the 5K.

I've adobted a more threshold-based approach to training along with higher, slower mileage and it's yielded better results. I hate tempos and love hard and short hill repeats...so training isn't that fun anymore, but I'm admittedly faster now.