Daniels' Running Formula - What's missing in the marathon plans?

Seems to me pace should consider HR on any given day, adjusted for heat, humidity, altitude, etc. Many experienced runners will over train given half a chance. Most importantly check that morning RHR as this is a solid indicator of fitness. If it is going slightly lower then you are getting more fit, consistently higher then over training or maybe getting sick.

This raises an interesting question for me because, as a fellow Daniels 2nd edition Marathon Program A adherent, I've grown accustomed to the 15-miler at marathon pace hell workout. It's always sucked hard and I've always only done it once during a given cycle. This spring, though, I may try it twice.

But I've noticed there are two popular big-marathon tune-up races near me -- one is for New York City (late September) and the other is for Boston (takes place a few weeks before Boston Marathon) -- that are 18 miles or 30k. Some people seem to run them hard, then go on and do New York or Boston.

I've never attempted to go beyond 15 miles at goal marathon pace in training, but I've wondered if it'd be worthwhile (physiologically as well as mentally) to extend this workout to 18 miles/30k at goal MP. For all I know, it won't seem all that bad if it's done in a race setting...

One concern: I don't know if I have the discipline to do 15 of those 18 at goal marathon pace and then jog it home over the last 3 miles as a cooldown.

But the premise of my question is whether 15 miles at goal marathon pace (tough as it is, and it's f$&%* tough!) is enough? Would we be better off going for 18? Or is 18 too demanding when you consider what sort of benefit you're trying to reap from the workout?

I'd approach it like this:

If goal marathon pace was 6:00

10k @ 6:20, if feeling good go to

10k @ 6:10, if feeling good go to

10k @ 6:00 with the green light to pick it up for the last 5k.

That's a very marathon specific workout at 18.6, but gives the athlete a lot of freedom to control their destiny. 18 miles @ 6:20 would be a great, very specific run and would create some adaptations 15 @ MP wouldn't, but there is some room to push down if you're feeling it.

Smoove,

The thing about it is well thought out training makes it less daunting. You start by building a long run at ~90-95% of marathon pace of just 7 or 8 miles. That then turns into your medium long run, which in turn progresses into these longer fast runs. If it is progressed correctly, it doesn't come out of nowhere.

15 was enough for me (7:20/7:30 pace), time wise it would be similar to a Smoove running 19 or so though. A little extra didn't seem to hurt me.

A local 30k race used to fit into my training schedules fairly well before the fall marathons. My approach was usually to go easy the first 2-2 1/2 miles, run the next 15 at MP, and if I felt decent at the end pick it up passing a few folks the last mile or so. I ran it as a race once but can't recall the context in my training at the time - I'm sure it wasn't 3 weeks out though.

I really liked that race. I found the discipline needed to maintain a slower pace during a race setting somewhat easier if I skipped the warmup and used the first few miles for that, then if I felt good, hammer for a mile at the end when it was so tempting to pick off stragglers that went out too hard. I would just jog slowly for a mile or so as a cooldown before heading for the beer they provided.

Allen1959 wrote:

BLtheKid -- you and I are similar age and pace range. At 57, I returned to marathoning after a 13-year hiatus. A year later, I saw significant improvement with a more structured plan that emphasized LT-pace workouts. Usually once every nine days I would run one of just three different LT workouts: 3 x 2 mi w/2min recovery, 4-mile threshold run, or 5-mile threshold run. Also, just once, a one-hour run at LT pace (actually a 15K race). No targeted MP at all, although long runs (18-22 miles) and medium-long runs (12-16 miles) were progressions or included faster portions that approached marathon pace.

Well, you're a lot faster than I am but definitely similar in age and the fact we both got back to marathoning after a long time away.

On the LT runs, in my case I like the 5x1 because it allows me to run at a faster pace. I'm mirroring Pfitzinger's medium-long runs with a distance of 11 to 15 - every fourth easy run I do will be one of those. Pfitz recommends starting at MP+20% and working down to MP+10%. The first one I did I just ran easy - I have to think about whether I want to do these progressively or not.

The failings of the marathon plan vary by the level of an athlete's current performance and goal.

4:30 - 3:30

A lack of walking combined with too much slow running.

Avoidance of meaningful speed-side development.

3:30- 2:30

A tendency to overtrain and downplaying the need for speed.

Most of the improvement in this range is tied to improvements

at 2000-4000m

2:30- 2:03

A much larger threat for overtraining along with a lack of individualization.

One size fits all approach fails this group even more so than the others.

dsrunner wrote:

The failings of the marathon plan vary by the level of an athlete's current performance and goal.

4:30 - 3:30

A lack of walking combined with too much slow running.

Avoidance of meaningful speed-side development.

3:30- 2:30

A tendency to overtrain and downplaying the need for speed.

Most of the improvement in this range is tied to improvements

at 2000-4000m

2:30- 2:03

A much larger threat for overtraining along with a lack of individualization.

One size fits all approach fails this group even more so than the others.

Well, I'm right on the cusp of the first and second group, since I'm looking for 3:29:45. I guess the question related to what you wrote is whether my LT workouts are addressing speed well-enough (I think that would tie in to the 2K-4K range also).

I did some VO2max workouts earlier in the cycle (December). Started having a tough time with them - at the same time realized my time would be better spent transitioning to the LT workouts (which unfortunately I didn't do any of these last year).

Great thread, appreciate the insights, everybody. Hope you don't mind if I throw a few thoughts out there...

Just for reference, I'm 42, a guy, with a 2:45 marathon PR that I ran about fifteen years ago. The next year, I got hit by a car - an 84 Yugo! - and it broke three or four bones in my foot. While I got back into running, I never got around to doing another marathon, but with the folly of middle age, I'm thinking about getting back into the game this fall. Also, just happen to be another person with Bay Ridge connections - I lived on 74th St. off 3rd Avenue from 2007-2013. Great neighborhood, and I have fond memories of running on the shore path with the big ships going by in the fog.

To BL: From what you've described, it sounds like your performance in the marathon has been limited by a lack of basic endurance. If you were doing 6 miles for bread-and-butter runs and 16 miles for long runs, then maybe that's not surprising. (I understand that some people do have success with the Hansons' program, but it seems evident that it wasn't doing enough for you on the basic endurance end of things.) If you're able to bump up your bread-and-butter runs to 10 miles, that seems like a big step in the right direction. If you're able to stretch out your long runs to the 20 mile range, and maybe do three of those (or more), that ought to be a big help, too. In fact, I would suggest that if your goal is to get under 3:30, those are probably the two most important things you can do - significantly more important than the details of what you do with your faster-than-MP workouts. Don't get me wrong, it's good to run "comfortably hard" on a regular basis, but you don't need to sweat the details of exactly how you do it. (It's also a good idea to do "speed workouts" - strides, hill sprints, light fartlek - on a regular basis, but you don't need to sweat the details of that too much, either.) In fact, for someone in your situation, I would put the priority on running more miles, and then do the quality workouts that you are able to do without compromising your mileage, rather than the other way around. (Note: I'm not suggesting that you try to run as many miles as possible, and I'm not suggesting that you skip the quality workouts entirely, either.)

In general, I do wonder whether you are sweating the details a little too much. Philosophically, I think this is one of the places where I have trouble with the Daniels approach, or at least what seems to frequently be the takeaway from the Daniels approach. On one level, this may be just a personal quirk - I'm not really a charts and numbers guy - but on another level I do think there are times when it works better to focus relatively more on feel and effort and less on specific times. It can be a good thing to run a little scared, but you don't want to run worried.

Just my two cents, and of course, different approaches work better for different people.

Thanks for the reply - I lived on Senator Street between 3rd and Ridge so pretty close to the 68th Street Pier and the NYC Marathon course as well. Watching the marathon in person was what got me into running about a year later. Of course I did a lot of running on the shore path (4 3/8 miles long as I recall) - exactly three weeks before my first NYC Marathon in 1988 I did the longest training run I've ever done on that path - 21 miles in 2:44:xx with three sips of water from the fountain near the tennis courts at the far end. Years later when I was living in the city, I took the subway out there and did my 10,000th mile on that path.

I think I'm on the same page with everything you said. I think maybe the biggest thing of all was increasing the length of my easy runs - it feels to me that has kind of set the stage for everything else.

Everything has actually gone pretty much according to plan - I've hit every single LT, MP and long run workout. The only thing I came up short on was three consecutive 6x800 workouts (at 3:24 pace) right before I transitioned into the LT workouts instead. Today I had 18 with the last 6 at MP on the schedule (my longest run of any kind with the exception of last year's marathon since 1999) - started at 9:03, with every mile progressively faster down to 8:23 at mile 12 - then closed the last 6 miles at a 7:56 average pace, under the 8:00 I'm shooting for.

The reason for my concern (even though I've done everything according to my plan and I think it is mostly a good one) is that I haven't been even close to not bonking - if I had gotten to mile 21 last year (instead of between 14-17) before losing pace, I'd feel a lot more confident that I'm bridging the gap this year based on what I've been doing. That said, I'm in a pretty good position right now and want to make the most of it. I've been reading some articles on how to train the body to use more fat as fuel and may make some small tweaks to my plan. For instance, I'll probably do at least one of the three longest runs I have left (19,20,21) as a depletion run.

Last year, I bonked because I really wasn't in the shape to run 3:30 and was trying to do it. The three previous (in '96, '97 and '99 - all in New York) I wasn't capable of running more than 35 miles per week, not to mention I barely fueled during the race (somehow not knowing any better). Only in my first one in '88 did I actually have a real chance - it just didn't work out.

The thing is, I've run five marathons, but in a way, I've never really run one at all - I guess that's what it really comes down to.

Smoove, Hats off to you as a long-time poster with knowledgeable posts about Daniels. Always appreciate your posts.

I'm a bit of an "anti-Daniels" guy for the reasons that have frequently been cited: overemphasis on "special" paces and too many workouts at these "special" paces that are just plain too hard for most runners (the I-ones in particular). Daniels is fine -- not a disaster by any stretch -- and most people are going to get better following his program (or any half-decent program), but I also think there's a reason why elites don't do Daniels and that's because his program is not optimal.

But back to this discussion. The thing that I find intriguing about "how much threshold or faster" training to do during a marathon build-up is that John "Hadd" Walsh, who I admired, was a big believer that a slow-twitch dominant, naturally more fat-burning runner should be in "near" 5km PR shape when he/she toes the line for the marathon. But this was definitely not true in his view for a fast-twitch dominant runner.

If I understand the rationale, it's because the slow-twitch runner needs to be able to generate the lactate to use as a fuel to run fast and/or be comfortable at faster speeds, while the fast-twitch guy is going to burn glycogen too quickly and run out of fuel if he is in near 5km PR condition.

In other words, the Magness explanation mentioned earlier in this thread for avoiding too much faster-than-MP pace work applies primarily to fast-twitch runners and much less to slow-twitch runners. For the fast-twitch guys, speed is not an issue in the first place and a key goal of marathon training for them is to suppress the anaerobic system (think Olbrecht here, and Magness cites Olbrecht as a big influence). Whatever the accurate science -- and apologies if I misstated it -- I think Magness would agree with this view: that slow-twitch dominant runners can and should do more faster pace work in the marathon cycle.

If I have a problem with Magness's schedules, it's that he only publishes a single sample schedule for each race distance with some textual explanation about how to approach for ST vs FT, but since ST vs FT is so fundamental in his view to designing the schedule in the first place, it would be really instructive to see a sample ST vs a sample FT schedule for every race distance.

-- Floyd

In your opinion, why is Daniels' program not optimal?

The Floyd wrote:

I'm a bit of an "anti-Daniels" guy for the reasons that have frequently been cited: overemphasis on "special" paces and too many workouts at these "special" paces that are just plain too hard for most runners (the I-ones in particular). Daniels is fine -- not a disaster by any stretch -- and most people are going to get better following his program (or any half-decent program), but I also think there's a reason why elites don't do Daniels and that's because his program is not optimal.

I thought that was interesting - exactly the pace I was having trouble with once I progressed to a certain point (Pfitzinger's pace for the equivalent workout I was able to hit, though).

I appreciated your comments on fast versus slow-twitch in regard to faster than MP work - ties in with my ultimate conclusion that personally I need to be doing those LT workouts every week so that MP will feel that much easier. I don't feel as though I'm quite there yet but have 8 or 9 weeks before my taper to get there.

I thought that was interesting, too. I'm using Daniels right now, and I can't do my I workouts at the prescribed pace (nor the R workouts). So I adjust according (about 10 sec/mile slower for each). Seems like my calculated T and M paces are right on the money. On E days I get down to E pace only if I'm well rested or at the end of the run. Not sure any of this is an argument against the program.

Can someone pls tell me what is the Q2 workout in Daniels book 3rd ed , phase 4 week5? No race that week. Book i got is missing this part,just wonder what it is.

Thank you!

Sorry, i means the finally week of the 10km plan(64-80km)