Jack Daniels

Run hard on hard days and run easy on easy days...do you feel like running 6:20-6:35 makes you more tired than running 6:45-7:00? Either way I doubt there's much difference in the aerobic benifits you're getting. My suggestion would just to run at a comfortable pace and not worry about it, just so long as you go hard when you're supposed to. Going hard and then resting is what makes you stronger. There's a chapter early in the book that deals with just that ( overload principle, adaptation, etc.)

"Quality junk" is detrimental because it undermines your ability to run higher volumes. So, on your "recovery" days, slow down a bit but go a couple of miles farther. Unless you are running a "marathon pace" workout keep it easy. If you want more quality, add a bit more high-end/slash threshold. When Kennedy ran 12:58 for 5k much his mileage was at 6:30/mile.

I was coached by Jack at Suny Cortland, and actually we ran our easy and long runs at a slower pace then what his charts said we should. It was all about recovery for the harder workouts and races. Great guy and a great coach.

Daniel

Beware, Jack Daniels can lead to faster times and raging alcoholism....I am now the fastest alcoholic in the country(although I hear Boaz has been hitting the bottle pretty hard too).

I think it depends on the event you are training for

and also where you are in your training schedule. Lydiard,

for example, recommends doing most of your runs during

your base phase at or slightly below your aerobic

threshold - this pace is slightly slower than marathon

pace and is basically the fastest pace at which you could

run indefinitely. It's a lot slower than LT pace, but it's

a lot faster than Daniels easy pace - typically it's

50-60 seconds slower than 10k pace. I'm not sure if

this is the pace you are running at, but I'm guessing it's

in the ballpark. If you are just building base and are not doing any real speedwork (other than some striders) or

racing, I see no harm in doing a lot of running at this

pace, especially if you are training for longer events

(marathon in particular).

As you get into your race preperation phase however,

you need to run a lot faster on some days, and a lot

slower on the others. If the slow days feel to slow,

it means you should run harder on the hard days - keep

the slow days easy.

okay...I have wanted to ask this question for some time now...who is ET?

ET is a former mediocre collegiate middle distance runner

(1:53, 3:56) turned doctoral student in physiology. Most of what I do is in the gray area between physiology and biochemistry. I have no plans to save the running community with science (but maybe to save science with running

.)I coached a highschool team for a couple of years turning out a few very good runners: 1) 9:07, 4:10,1:54 2)4:18, 1:53, 3) 1:56. All three are running collegiately and have improved substantially. The first was d-1 all-american in the 1500 his frosh year. I've helped several collegiate runner wannabes make the team in the 800m.Currently running lot and lots of AT workouts with bit of plyos, short sprints, and some light VO2max work. Hope to PR someday if I can find the time to train consistently.Two rules for success in running:1) Train to meet the demands of the event.2) Recover between training sessions.Point one is the more complex of the two but most people screw up point two.

E.T. what is the physiology behind training just under

the Lactate Threshold in terms of clearing lactate in

a race?

If it's hyrogen ions/protons that actually causes the

muscle and machinery to freeze up, why the focus on lactate?

Not an easy question to answer, but I'll take a shot.

First of all, lactate is more easily measured than blood or muscle pH, which is why lactate is referred to more frequently. Secondly, there appears to be a temporal relationship (not cause and effect) between lactate and pH thus if you know what lactate is doing, you can also get a good idea what is happening with pH without directly measuring it.

How does clearing lactate influence protons? Lactate and protons are co-transported, thus any improvement in lactate transporters will also benefit proton transport. Endurance training has been shown in general to improve lactate/H+ transport capacity.

Finally, you correctly indicated that it is indeed the proton accumulation that is detrimental to muscle contraction at higher intensity exercise. To tolerate this metabolic acidosis, buffering capacity must be improved, which to my knowledge, is best accomplished through high intensity, interval training.

Probably clear as mud, but hopefully this helps.

I think it is a bad idea in general to provide any specifics about what one's easy run pace 'should' be. After all, I think most experienced coaches agree that more people run their easy runs too fast than run their easy runs too slow.

Run at whatever pace is easiest (in other words, slowing down should not make it easier, and speeding up should require some effort, however little).

I find that I can never even come close to the 'easy' pace Daniels predicts for either my race performances or for my tempo run or interval paces. His tables work pretty well for linking quality workouts to race performance, but I think I'm more than a minute slower on my easy runs than he specifies.

You may notice that Daniel's specifies that pace as the FASTEST you should go on easy/long days, he does not identify it as the abosolutely optimal pace.