Jack Daniels = charlatan?

Most runners complain that the easy runs are too easy until they work.

I have used JD's Tables for decades with much success both personally and professionally. I do believe that most of his training programs can only be completed in a vacuum. The performance chart and pace charts are very accurate and useful.

Actually, he's the opposite of a charlatan because he didn't endorse the PED concept.

I know people will find this mind blowing, but double threshold is not the only way to get faster. People criticize the E pace, but I always thought of it as a speed limit, not "you must run this fast every day. Daniels isn't going to be the optimal training for most people, but it's effective and WAY better than a lot of high school coaches making up their own training.

You are mistaken in your premise that the range was the original intent. Daniels previously had a single pace for E in all his charts until 3rd edition. He changed to a range because people aren't able comprehend that you don't have to hit every pace.

Most people that have complaints such as yours overtrain on his program. The paces are current fitness...current fitness...current fitness. Until you prove otherwise in a race or time trial, don't increase your vdot and corresponding paces.

Going by his half marathon time, Mantz is 82-83 for VDOT, but he runs his easy runs closer to what JD prescribes for 70

I had Jack as a college coach, I don't recall him ever really talking about easy pace. On an 'easy' day the team would go for a run and the pace was based on the days conversation, fatigue levels, or who was pushing the pace.

You don't understand Daniels and you are training above your level. Daniels is still used. You are just starting with an assumption that you are fitter than you are, or perhaps training as if your goal race time was your actual fitness.

Daniels will work for almost anyone if they are honest with themselves about ability.

A lot of runners would run faster on Daniels than they do using programs that have them doing double thresholds, low mileage, mp training for sub marathon distances, etc.

You guys need a book to know how to run easy? Jeez

For me at least it's more about justification of why I run a slower easy pace than he suggests while also doing workouts he suggests

I think Daniels is out dated at this point. It was a starting point for everyone, and ground breaking at the time. It might work for super talented people, but there are other parameters now you can follow that just make more sense. I like Coogan's book a lot, even if it is derived a bit from Daniels'. It just makes sense... Workout days with recover days after, easy runs with strides, long runs, doubles when you can. Just makes sense.

Farah and Rupp were running their easy runs @ 5:30-6:00/mile. That's one of the first things Salazar changed when he started coaching Farah. (He was running more like 6:30-7:00/mile.)

I don't know how many Olympic medals those runners on Strava have won. But apparently, the faster pace worked for Mo and Galen.

I remember trying to use the Jack Daniels system. As a natural middle distance guy, all the slower paces felt too fast, and all the faster paces felt too slow. I figured this out within a week quickly because there was no way I could sustain that E pace day after day.

I liked the concept of having pace charts, but I just had to ignore them.

What was missing was more explanation of what to do in my situation. I recall a discussion by a great poster back in the day (Hadd) talking about how your paces should be like the face of a clock, with 1-mile pace at the top, 5k pace at quarter past (15-sec per mile slower), 10k pace at halfway, HM pace at a quarter-to, then Marathon pace back at the top (1 minute per mile slower than 1-mile race pace). And then there was a discussion of what to do if your performances did not have this tight relationship, what you could do to improve aerobic development to tighten it up.

I wish the Daniels book included more of that, but at the time I was following the book I'd never heard of this before so I just ignored the charts and did the best I could to follow the program with different paces.

I disagree. His training principles are solid and timeless. Especially if you aren't a professional and are self-coached. I often question if my high school and college coaches were any better than the Daniel's method that I've followed post-collegiate.

I don't agree with all of Daniels stuff but I look at Daniels methodology like this: It's like trying to find a specific address without GPS. His methods will put you in the right zip code but maybe not as close to the actual address as you wanted/expected at first. But that's where you just have to experiment, fail, try again, etc till you dial in the training that sort of works for you and allows consistent, incremental gains.

I met Mr. Daniels years ago. Super courteous and polite and open to questions. Talked to him about 15minutes at a college cross country meet.

You must understand that the only way to achieve success in the 800 is to run it on pure hate.

It's very difficult for a coach to develop and nurture pure hate in an athlete via training programs or other means

JD knew this and he mentions nothing about pure hate in his programs. So with regards to 800 training he is not a charlatan.

I think context is important too when we discuss Daniels. Prior to him we were told to go hard every day, and on track days.. EXTRA hard! I would finish workouts laying on track about to puke. We'd scorch through 400s, and 600s at paces faster than any of us could ever replicate on race day, then go race with mixed results.

His book changed that whole way of thinking. I actually remember the first Daniels workout I did because I remember thinking the pace looked so slow compared to what we had been doing, and it was easy... until the last 3-4 reps.

Have you actually seen their training logs that demonstrate they were doing this for every easy run?

In my experience, there's a big difference between what people say they do, and what they actually do. Maybe Mo and Galen did this for 1 run a week (perhaps their long run) and then the anecdote became that that was their easy pace.

The beauty of Strava is that we get to see what people are actually doing. You can condescend to "those runners on Strava", but they include Conner Mantz, Clayton Young, Andy Buchanan (2:06 marathoner), Brett Robinson (2:07), Jack Rayner (12:59 5k), Izzy Batt-Doyle (67:17 HM), Emma Bates, Keira D'Amato and many more of the best distance runners in the Western world. This allows you to collect a big enough sample size in order to spot trends, and it quickly becomes very, very obvious that all of them run much slower on easy runs than what Daniels prescribes. The guys tend to run the paces Daniels prescribes for a 33 minute 10k runner, rather than a 27 minute runner, as most of them are.