I tried the Easy Interval Method so you don’t have to

Ths study is interesting and it shows that EIM is maybe not the best way to train. At least not for a 10km race.

There were 2 training groups Z1 and Z2 with a training distribution of 80/10/10 (zone 1, 2 and 3) for Z1 and Z2 of 65/25/10. Both trained for 5 month, and interestingly group Z1 was significant better after that time.

intensity zones: zone 1 (low intensity; VT), zone 2 (moderate intensity; between VT and RCT), and zone 3 (high intensity; RCT).

Martidani is being a turd and misrepresenting what I wrote. I'll respond to him next. 6 x 1K at MP + 30 is what I had to run so that I did recover before the next day's workout. I appreciate your comments about your experience, but please refer to what I actually did, not maridani's misrepresentation.

No troll. I've made detailed training posts before about what worked/didn't work for me. The EIM didn't work for me.

Also, you have crummy reading skills, or you're dishonest. The difference isn't important to me. Since I run 6 days a week, I used a 6-day schedule, which seems pretty normal. To adapt to the training, I had one of the easier workouts 3 times a week instead of just once, but the EIM still sucked. I did the bread and butter workouts
(1000s, 400s, 200s) 3 times a week, not once a week, as you say. As noted a few times, I made a second try with orthodox EIM, just as written in the book, but with paces that I could recover from. It still sucked.

You (and the EIM) treat MP as an easy pace. It's not. Specifically, it's not something I can turn on and off for intervals every day without recovery, even for 6 x 1K. I'm sure some people can, but I don't have their physiology. The EIM made me want to quit running altogether, so that's the end of my experiment with this stupid plan.

You really need to re-read the book. You can even have my copy, since I won't be using it again. The EIM only specifies a pace range, not a HR. It's not a HR-based plan in any case. As Daniels notes, athletes' HR takes a while to get to the target, and 4 minutes at MP off of full recovery is too short to actually get to marathon heart rate.

It's stupid in any case to say that "we all know 6x1000m at MP+30 is pretty close to the top of zone2" since there's no agreement about what HR zones mean, how to set them up, or how to use them. The response of HR to various paces isn't going to be universal in any case, especially after just 4 minutes. It certainly didn't work for me.

It's not helpful to misrepresent what workouts I did. It's all in the OP. 6x1000m at MP in addition to 5 other EIM workouts a week wasn't sustainable. 6x1000m at MP + 30 was sustainable exactly as scheduled, but was a waste of time.

And in fact, orthodox Daniels guys like Smoove were always pretty open to ways that Daniels plans could be modified. It's just the EIM where deviating from the printed schedules gets treated like heresy. Like, I did two more of one type of EIM session that was easier, and less of another session that was harder, and the overall week was still too hard, and the best that martidani can come up with is "YOu'rE makinG IT ALL Up."

Basically, it seems like the EIM is a plan that goes against a lot of general training principles. There are some people it can work for, but I'm not one of them. So, yeah, screw that nonsense. I'm done with it.

So to conclude the discussion, the following training schedule did not work

M Moderate Endurance w/ surges

T 6x1000m @MP +30

W Moderate Endurance w/ surges

Th 15x200m

F Moderate Endurance w/surges

S 10x400m

Su Rest

He thinks this EIM, I totally disagree. But let's agree to disagree.

We can all agree that none of us will be doing the schedule above. Thank you for trying so we don't have to.

The EIM definitely doesn't suit the half and marathon.

Why do I have a feeling the 1k should be at MP, the recoveries at MP + 30

Not quite. Here's one schedule that didn't work because it didn't allow for sufficient recovery:

Here's another schedule, essentially copied from p. 90 but with paces adjusted as needed. It didn't work because the recovery was sustainable, but the workouts were pointless:

My takeaway from this isn't that the EIM workouts are bad, or even that the schedule is bad (although it was for me). The basic point is that EIM's basic approach to stimulus and recovery is flawed. The only options are either a moderate stimulus, or taking the day off. It could just be my age, but I have to fine-tune my recovery on a much finer scale than this. Repeatedly switching from low gear to high gear and back in a workout is a significant stress for me. Trying to keep up a moderate stimulus every day just led to fatigue piling up unproductively. I could have cut back to running 3-4 times a week, but that also has major fitness costs for me.

As you noted, age is likely a factor here, but I would argue that the stimulus of the EIM is anything but moderate especially if you are doing a weekly race OR "race-like" effort. If I did nothing but easy intervals and moderate endurance runs with surges, I don't think I would have gotten nearly as far as I have doing either a weekly race or traditional track intervals. The weekly race or hard session is the most important day of the week, and the days between are just meant as recovery (while still running "fast", but not "hard"). I think the second schedule that you posted could work a little better for you if instead of doing that moderate endurance run you did something like 5x1k @ 5k pace or 5x1 mile @ 10k - HM pace.

I have the book also, a weekly race and/or harder effort is essential imo. I think people see 'easy intervals' and think its some magic shortcut and everything is easy. No, the 1km are meant to be just under threshold - they are literally meant to stimulate your LT improvement. Running them too slow lessens this. The long and very easy recovery jogs are what makes the overall feel 'easy'. If x6 reps is too much for you to recover from them do 4 or 5! not rocket science. I guarantee your average pace will be similar to an easy days running, but with 4-6k of near LT (~HMP) running. Do this 2-3 times a week and that's solid training. Then as stated, you do a race, racing frequently is the best way to train.

Now my only concern for longer races like marathons etc, this perhaps isn't the ideal method, but for a beginner its actually pretty good and likely better than plodding abound 3 times a week then throwing out a 20 miler.

Didn’t read much of this thread; what is the general simple format of the training plan over a week or two week cycle ?

Just for the purpose of discussion, how would one convert the EIM plan to a heart rate plan? MHR, not HRR or %LTHR, just maximum heart rate zones?

Youll find the plan just two posts above yours. Do some work, lazy.

hE dIdN't Do EaSy InTeRvAl MeThOd. His intervals were MP+30 seconds and that should be easy to bounce back from!

Not everyone has the same recovery abilities. I think if he had stuck to EIM to a T, he actually would've done even worse. And I'm speaking as a person who knows somebody that PRed in the mile by a significant amount doing EIM this winter. The method doesn't work for everyone.

Kind of annoying that any time somebody posts some anecdotal evidence about a training philosophy they are shot down immediately as a troll or told they didn't do it correctly. Perhaps this is why people would rather talk politics on here?

OP did EIM wrong, that has to be written here. Because you can't say EIM does not work if you do it wrongly. We told him his pace was too slow, but he still believes it is EIM. OP says he is not recovered the next day, but we suggest to reduce the rep distance or amount of reps. Can't be that difficult. OP does not get that, stubborn and narrow minded.

Baffles my mind. He did the equivalent of going straight into a fitz 18/70 plan. He should have started with less reps, done faster than he did, with slower recover, this is literally the concept of the book. Some of you are over complicating this too, it's really just a weeks worth of easy runs done as 'easy' intervals', with strides which everyone should be doing anyway, plus one hard day.

Just for the purpose of discussion, how would one convert the EIM plan to a heart rate plan? MHR, not HRR or %LTHR, just maximum heart rate zones?

I don't think you would. It's possible to have different LTHR with the same MHR - in fact that's much of the point, to improve pace at LTHR.

Bump.

About 3 1/2 months into this. At age 31, ran my first 1500m race in ten years last weekend and bettered my PR from college by more than half a second. This method works (for me, at least).