I may be misinterpreting him, but I think his system is too formulaic. I like his ideas concerning periodization and breaking training down into its major components and energy systems. But what I dislike is that he assigns each athlete only one interval pace. He doesn't distinguish between 1500, 3K, and 5K pace and his workouts seem to prepare one for a variety of distances instead of being more race-specific. Which for the common runner, is a recipe for mediocrity.
I disagree.
If you read the book and understand the ideas, then you know what you are trying to achieve with each workout. You can then fine tune it to the athlete's needs/strengths/weaknesses/goals.
You complain that it is too formulaic, but then you want the book to provide exact formulas for each specific distance.
Compare Daniels to others who recommend "run at 3/4 effort pace". what the hell does that mean?
With respect, you are misinterpreting him.
If you re-read the sections on VO2 max training (3k or 5k pace) you'll see that it's quite clearly explained why training faster than max VO2 for long intervals can be counter-productive. Specifically, most people don't need to train at 3k pace because they can achieve the same effect at 5k pace. In Daniels' view, it is probably better to do more or longer repeats at 5k pace than a smaller number at 3k pace.
Training at 1500/mile pace has a clear place in Daniels' system, for neuromuscular efficiency and anaerobic capacity. This pace is what he refers to a R pace.
There's also a clear explanation of why preparing to race above and below your target distance is beneficial.
You're right that Daniels does question the value of 3k pace (too slow to be repeats, too quick for intervals) and 10k pace (too slow for intervals, too quick for tempo). Given that (1) those are popular distances to race, and (2) specificity of training should require some work at [realistic] goal pace, there's a question about how to incorporate those into a Daniels' influenced training program. I think it's relatively simple. Say you have 12 sessions of intervals (4k-5k pace) over the season. Substitute some 800s at 3km pace for 1000s at 5k pace in 2-4 workouts. Or substitute 1600-2000m at 10k pace for 1200-1600m intervals at 5k pace. The overall burden of the workout should remain about the same.
Working at goal race pace is a good opportunity to practice hitting splits evenly. If you want to run 9:00 for 3km, you want to practice hitting every 100m in 18 seconds, not running 16, 18, 19, 19 for your first 400m.
I agree with the original poster. The thing that gets me is he thinks everyone who runs a XX:XX 5k is going to exert the same effort if they run, say, 1200 repeats. I'm a 14:30 guy, but there are 15:15 guys that mop the floor with me in interval workouts. I couldn't follow Daniels to the letter if I tried based on the paces assigned to me. For others who are built a little differently so they can recover quickly between intervals, they may not be working hard enough if they are running their VO2 pace.
go read Canova.
jeff daniels wrote:
I couldn't follow Daniels to the letter if I tried based on the paces assigned to me.
Daniels provides excellent guidelines, recommended paces for interval, threshold, easy runs etc. I'm not sure he intended elite runners (of which I am certainly not) to follow his paces literally. He would probably say they're guidelines that can be adapted to meet the appropriate circumstance and individual. Daniels is also writing to a large audience. For those below elite status, he lays out all the concepts and provides recommended paces, training plans etc better than anybody out there.
On a side note, in his most recent book, I did notice that the easy pace in the 5K training plan seemed a little faster than the easy pace in both the shorter distance plan (1500-3000K as I recall) and in his general training tables. It didn't intuitively make sense and I thought it might be a misprint, so I made a specific post on this board that Daniels responded to. He basically said that either pace work fine, and I could still feel free to use the slower e-pace and still get the benefits. In essence, I think he was telling me that I could consider these e-paces as a range (set of guidelines) and use what seemed to work best for me. I still think the easy paces in the 5K race plan might represent a slight misprint since they don't quite analytically make sense when compared with all the other tables, but I'm a numbers guy. However, I'm not going to worry about it. I still think the book is excellent and still refer to it from time to time.
That's a good analysis on your part, but once you make those changes you're talking about, you're conceding the point and you're no longer training under the Daniels's system. You have only borrowed from it.