Jack Daniels Training Failed to hit marathon pace, is it a problem

Maybe a marathon isn't the right goal for you at the moment. Or maybe you need to dial back your target pace to match your current endurance. Have you ever run a half marathon?

Running 9 miles at marathon pace in the third week is crazy.

justaquestion wrote:

Maybe a marathon isn't the right goal for you at the moment. Or maybe you need to dial back your target pace to match your current endurance. Have you ever run a half marathon?

If I am not mistaken, he is doing a 5k training plan.

To OP: if long run at MP is too hard for you, try it at EP.

This sounds awfully complicated for a 5k program. My 5k plans never included marathon pace work, because marathon pace isn’t really a training stimulus. It’s too slow to be lactate threshold and too fast to be easy. It’s really only useful during marathon training, to teach your body what the goal pace feels like, and even then, training too much at that pace does more harm than good and leaves you burnt out

not inside the box wrote:

This sounds awfully complicated for a 5k program. My 5k plans never included marathon pace work, because marathon pace isn’t really a training stimulus. It’s too slow to be lactate threshold and too fast to be easy. It’s really only useful during marathon training, to teach your body what the goal pace feels like, and even then, training too much at that pace does more harm than good and leaves you burnt out

Guys like Lydiard disagree with you. They found doing hour runs at roughly MP did a great job in boosting fitness which is why doing it 2x/week was a core part of base training.

The OP problem is that his marathon pace probably isn't close to 8:17. Yes it is what the chart says but that chart makes a lot of assumptions about fitness. Back off 20-30s and pick up the pace as you get fitter. The workouts are also likely to be too fast. 45s pace is close to 800m pace instead of the 50s which is mile pace. 7min pace is like 3k pace and I expect the workout should have been done at 5k pace.

You might also want to try swapping workout dayss. The 7x2 min workout needs a lot more recovery than the short fast stuff. You could be setting your self up to have to the the MP run right as DOMS is peaking from that workout. The short stuff shouldn't be that fatiguing once you are used to doing it.

The Daniels M pace workouts from the 5k plan are crazy for two reasons.

1) Very few people convert their shorter distance VDOT to marathon times

2) They basically start with 10 mile continuous runs

I had to work up to it in my last 5k cycle. 2 weeks before target TT I hit 10M but the week leading up I progressed as follows as part of long runs

3x 2M w/ 1E rest

2x3M w/ 1E rest

4x2M w/ 1E rest

2x4M w/ 1E rest

3x3M w/ 1E rest

2x5M w/1E rest

10M

You get the picture. This seemed to work really well for me. These were lighter workouts that allowed for me to nail the R/T/I workouts but still learn how to run fast/relaxed and get in some high end aerobic workout

I think the only thing that’s wrong is your estimate of your own fitness. Your marathon pace is slower than 8:17. Keep chugging along and you will get there.

I’ll infer that your “speed” work isn’t fast enough and you can’t do it any faster because your easy runs are way to fast for your current fitness. If you slow down your easy runs until you can actually do speed work, you will progress faster. Otherwise you can keep doing what you’re doing and you will slowly but surely progress.

Adding 50% to last year’s average weekly mileage looks a bit keen in January

BuyTheDip wrote:

Adding 50% to last year’s average weekly mileage looks a bit keen in January

It sort of depends on if he started the year at say 20mpw and built up to 40mpw in Dec. You can also think about if 60mins of easy running is too much and if you would be better off with 45.

Thanks everybody for the suggestion about the marathon pace workouts. To make some things more clear:

-I'm training for 5 to 10k races, as is the goal of the plan

-I did a lot of 40 mile weeks last year, but I was a bit inconsistent, I'm trying to improve that

-I always get mixed opinions about my easy pace on these boards, so I never know if my easy pace is fine, too slow or too fast. I don't think I'm forcing it, but I could go slower with my form intact.