Jack Daniels Running Formula

My roomate in college did this when he was 28 or so and in a little over a year went from a 19:50 5K to a 16:30 5k. Now his PR in college was around 14:50, so he was obviously out of shape, either way it helps.

Has Jack Daniels coached any elite athletes? Or have any athletes improved under his coaching?

Not that his program wouldn't necessarily work for common folk without being proven effective by elite athletes.

Anyone have a good bio on Daniels. All I know is he coached at Div III and has a bunch of national championships at that level and coached individuals to div iii titles, so I really don't know much about the guy's background. Did he move up to div i ever? Why not if he didn't?

He has more background than you can imagine. He was an Olympic medalist twice in the modern pentathlon. Educated at UW-Madison under great instructors. Educated in Sweden under Aastrandn and other gurus at the sports institute. Coach at a small college before going to Oklahoma State and coaching successfully. Coached at Univ. of Texas and hosted the D1 national championship xc race. Tested elite athletes for Athletic West in the 1980s. Such notables as Joan Benoit Samuelson and Alberto Salzar ran for Athletic West. Coached at the State University of New York - Cortland, producing more than 150 All-America athletes, including several national champions. Coach of many elite runners including notables Ken Martin and Lisa Martin, later Ondieki. Hired by the USOC to test athletes in 1968 at altitude in Alamosa as they prepared for the Mexico City Olympic Games (one of the reasons he is so knowledgeable about altitude training). The list goes on and on. Any university who doesn't outright recruit him to coach for them needs to send their Deans to pyschiatric counseling. Tinman

Coached Jerry Lawson, I believe.

Jerry Lawler, too.

please inform me wrote:

Did he move up to div i ever? Why not if he didn't?

Since when does coaching at the division 1 level make you a better coach? I know of a lot of horrible coaches at the division 1 level, and I know of a lot of fabulous coaches at the division 2, 3 and NAIA level. Coaching at the various levels is not like the difference between playing A ball and making the big leagues.

I got my hands on DRF a few years ago and have found it very useful. I've read Vigil's "Road to the Top", the "Self Coached Runner II", Higdon's "How to Train", and a crapload of others, but page-for-page DRF is more valuable. It is easy to read and apply for those who are not immersed (sp?) in the language of physiology and the training schedules can be modified for any level of runner.

I don't doubt someone could be a great coach and stick to coaching at a div III school. Someone could be a great coach and only coach jr high or a high school athletes. But you would think that a top level coach would want to coach the best athletes he could coach and the best athletes are usually at div I schools.

And again, I am not saying he isn't a good coach because he didn't pursue or land a coaching job at a top div I program. I don't know enough about the guy to form an opinion.

I understand there is a lot more to coaching than giving workouts - recruting, fund raising, and providing emotional/psychological support to athletes and maybe that is why he didn't want to go that route. Maybe the workouts he gives are right on but he didn't want to deal with the other aspects of the job at a div I school or coach more high profile pro athletes?

You just contradicted yourself

i like his system and have used it before. but either he just didnt feel it was appropriate to go into detail, or he seems to feel that there shouldnt be any deviation in the pace you run for each type of training.(he has a pyramid illustration with training paces vs. no mans land training paces.) ex. if running 20min steady for a tempo or breaking it down to intervals i understand that he feels the pace should stays the same. also for intervals, 400m repeats and 1600 repeats to be done at same pace but with adjustment in recovery as opposed to adjustment in pace.

wheras now i hear a lot about longer repeats at 10k pace, and 1600m repeats at closer to 5k pace and then 800-1200 at closer to 3k pace, all being used to improve vo2max.

I was posing a question. I didn't contradict myself. I looked at possible answers to the question but I have no idea the right answer and was wondering if someone did.

thanks for the quick and dirty summary of his philosophy. Every run has its own purpose. It seems to me that doing intervals at 10K pace would seems to be sort of a no mans land between lactate threshold and V02 Max though.

I thought Daniels idea was to do cruise intervals where you go at about your half marathon/15 pace for about 8 minutes than jog a couple minutes and go back and do the longer interval again in repeats.

Jack has been coaching me for two years and I've had steady improvement the entire time. With his system you really have to understand what each workout is designed to accomplish. He gives precise paces, durations, and rest intervals that give you guidelines in order to pace yourself. After a while you understand the intensity that each pace represents and you can get away from the watch and the charts. In the beginning I'd recommend following the prescribed paces very closely so you understand what level of intensity is involved. Also, be very conservative in estimating your VDOT. Don't base it off your PRs unless your in PR shape. You also have to account for being tired on high mileage weeks. One of the things that I like most about this system is the lack of ambiguity in pacing. I know exactly what to do if given 4 miles threshold + 2 x 2 miles threshold. I know the rest is always one minute per mile of threshold running and I know the intensity of effort that threhold pace represents. Compare that to so many coaches that say things like 6 mile tempo run comfortably hard. What does that mean? How do you know if your getting the most out of that workout when its so poorly planned. In the end, progress is measured by getting the most out of your workouts. Why would you suffer through such pain if your not getting maximum benefit? That's my JDRF summary. Start with a conservative VDOT, run the paces, read and understand the theory.

Oh, one last thing, the easy pace is a maximum effort, as in not to be exceeded. You will have a challenging time running all the easy runs at that pace, so slow down and recover.