limptor wrote:
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.
That seems very demanding. My marathon pace was more like 2 minutes per mile slower than my best mile; my 10k pace was about 55 second per mile slower than my best mile; and my 5k pace was about 30 seconds slower per mile.
I'm going to say that not many 4:20 milers are running 14:12 range 5k...