Daniel's T pace

Get the new book, it explains what you want.

Cool. It's on order.

Bump

Anyone else? I know people sometimes have problems with the E pace stuff.

I think that what Will is telling you is that in the new book, he has a conversion chart for T runs over his standard 20 min. time frame.

Thanks. It is real confusing to get an accurate gauge of things, due to my various workout levels, as you can see below.

Lydiard wrote:

Hey,

I just did an 8k track tempo in 29:43 two weeks ago (5:56 pace). Last Friday I did 8x600 w/ 1:45 rest in 1:55 (76s pace). These workouts were all done solo, so I may not be running at my full potential. I don't have any recent Pr's to go off of, I am just starting out.

According to Daniel's, If I go with the intervals, it says my T pace should be 5:32, which is way too fast. If I go off of the Tempo run, the intervals are much too slow. Is the T pace based off of mile repeats rather than continuous runs?

Again this is all done by myself, so if I was with a group I could go much faster but still.

Is the MP pace more appropriate?

I would go with the T pace. Using the I pace is tough to get an accurate guage of your fitness. Remember that the I pace he uses is 98% of VO2 max. He says Vo2 max pace is the effort you could maintain for 11 minutes continuously. Keeping this in mind, is the 76 second per 400 too slow? Could you keep going for 11 minutes at this pace? Short intervals of less than 2 minutes don't work on you Vo2 max much unless the rest period is kept short. I believe the 76 second pace is more likely your Rep pace. Which is about 12 seconds per lap faster than T pace. Approximately your mile race pace.

You should definitely get the second edition. That said, here's some more advice: Your intervals are SHORT for the amount of rest you are taking. It takes two minutes simply to get to VO2max when you are doing an interval workout. Of course, your rest is just short enough that you probably finally do get up to VO2max somewhere near the end of the workout. You'd be better off either reducing your rest a bit (1:30 for starters) or increasing to 800m intervals. My guess is that you will find this workout suddenly much harder and will re-appraise your VDOT accordingly.

The 8k tempo is a much better indicator of your true fitness. You don't mention how hard you found this effort but I'm going to bet that it was somewhere just shy of your true T-pace. You should be able to hold your T-pace for 20 minutes of running with a feeling that the effort is comfortably hard. COMFORTABLY hard. If it is an exercise in pain, you are running faster than T-pace.

There are two key points: (1) T-pace is something you should be able to hold for an hour in a race situation. If you can't imagine running a 15K race @ 5:32 pace, you are overestimating your VDOT. (2) Daniels does provide a chart for T-pace workouts that are longer than 20 minutes and up to an hour. He's done so to acknowledge that there is some, that is SOME, benefit to LT when training at paces below true threshold. The longer you run at a pace below but near your LT, the more benefit you accrue. That said, all things being equal, 20 minutes at LT give the same benefit as 60 minutes at some sub-threshold pace. So why do the latter rather than the former? Mostly, if you are training for a marathon or if you want a break from track running or if you are coming back to running after a break and feel more comfortable at slightly slower paces for a while.

Thank you for a very good, and informative post.

Lydiard wrote:

Hey,

I just did an 8k track tempo in 29:43 two weeks ago (5:56 pace). Last Friday I did 8x600 w/ 1:45 rest in 1:55 (76s pace). These workouts were all done solo, so I may not be running at my full potential. I don't have any recent Pr's to go off of, I am just starting out.

According to Daniel's, If I go with the intervals, it says my T pace should be 5:32, which is way too fast. If I go off of the Tempo run, the intervals are much too slow. Is the T pace based off of mile repeats rather than continuous runs?

Again this is all done by myself, so if I was with a group I could go much faster but still.

Is the MP pace more appropriate?

Are you trying to say that you consider both of these workouts to be T workouts? If so, say that you've missed the boat on Daniels' idea for his termed "cruise-intervals". They should be on the longer side with shorter rests. I stay with rests under 1:00 until I start doing lengths longer than one mile.

where can you get the new book? Went to amazon and they only have the old one listed.

It's there...It's just hidden a bit.

I'm considering the 600's I pace workouts. The rest was actually a 200m jog, so i guessed it to be about 1:45, that was a overestimate. it was probably shorter, closer to 1:30. I just wanted to be conservative.

The tempo felt pretty good, no major problems. Started with a 6:00 and ended up with a 5:49.

I have the same issue with Daniel's tempo workout pace being more demanding than interval workout pace.

In my case I think it's because I naturally have more speed than strength. (My VDot is higher for shorter races than longer races.)

I take this as an indicator that I need to work on strength/endurance.

Yeah, kind of what I'm feeling. I think I can hit the low 4:40's for the mile, but only just barely break 17. I know it's pathetic, but I haven't been able to train more than 6 months without a stress fracture courtesy of my bones. I'm at three months now.

Daniels follower wrote:

I would go with the T pace. Using the I pace is tough to get an accurate guage of your fitness. Remember that the I pace he uses is 98% of VO2 max. He says Vo2 max pace is the effort you could maintain for 11 minutes continuously. Keeping this in mind, is the 76 second per 400 too slow? Could you keep going for 11 minutes at this pace? Short intervals of less than 2 minutes don't work on you Vo2 max much unless the rest period is kept short. I believe the 76 second pace is more likely your Rep pace. Which is about 12 seconds per lap faster than T pace. Approximately your mile race pace.

That's the thing, I got Daniel's first edition and he says keep the rest equal or less than the work interval, which is what I thought I was doing! Would this workout be more conducive with my 3k pace?

Like the other poster said, 600 meters is too short for optimal VO2 development. That's probably why the I workout felt comparatively easy. The duration should be over 2 minutes, so I would recommend repeats that are at least 800 meters and preferably 1200-1600.

The problem is you are working too hard. Yes you can run as fast as you are doing your intervals, but if rested could you run at this pace continuosly for over 11 minutes? If the answer is no, then you are running them too fast to improve your VO2 max, which is the reason for doing this type of workout. There isn't much sense in working harder than you need to.

You answered another poster that you feel that right now you could probably only run 17:00 for 5k. If that is the case, then you should use that VDOT or even a little slower to get your training paces. Of course you could always jump into a 5k to find out. I would trust your intuition though.

A 17:03 5k would give you a VDOT of 60 which would have you running T pace for 20 minutes at a 5:54 pace, or 88 seconds per 400. Your I pace would be 82(6 seconds faster) and your R pace would be around 76 (again 6 seconds faster) You are running your intervals at your approximate rep pace. That's fine since they are only 600's, but the rest should be a lot longer according to Daniels since they are reps and not intervals.

Slow down on thise intervals until as Daniels says you can prove your fitness in a race.