Daniels 8x1000m: What does this workout do for me?

It allows you to recover enough to do the next bout. Remember what the workout is. I'm assuming the workout is VO2 Max training. I'm also assuming that your 1000's would take about, say, 4 minutes to do. What I'm thinking is that recovery time is about 90% of your interval.

By the way, the 3 minutes, according to Vigil, is the amount of time it takes for ATP to recover in the body.

Please read the chapter that describes the reason behind each pace (R, T, I). You are doing yourself a disservice by just looking at the workout schedules.

Daniels protege wrote:

In daniels running formula one of the workouts in his xc programme is 8x1000m with 3 mins rest.

I always found it strange because 3 mins seems a very long recovery for 1000's.

What exactly is the benefit of this workout? Would I be better doing it off 2 mins recovery?

Maybe -- according to Antonio Cabral, a common Carlos Lopes track workout consisted of 1000m repeats at his 5k pace, or thereabouts, with 3 min standstill recovery.

At a much lower level, 6 x 3min with 2min jog recovery was one of my standards. In the good old days, those were 1000m. Nowadays, not so much...

From Daniels' perspective, I'd think these are intended to be VO2 workouts, whatever that means.