Daniels' easy pace v. jogging

Easy pace is whatever feels easy. What your VDOT table tells you should not be taken as fact, ever. Many times you will probably be slower.

Repeating Old LRC Wisdom wrote:

Easy pace is whatever feels easy. What your VDOT table tells you should not be taken as fact, ever. Many times you will probably be slower.

I understand this and am always considerably slower between intervals and during cooldowns but am interested to see if Daniels actually ever addressed this.

...if you read his books.

Might help... wrote:

...if you read his books.

I have not. Isn't the point of the Internet to enable more segmented transmission of information? There is basically a book written about anything I could Google. But since there are only 24 hours in the day, it sometimes makes sense to search online or ask a particularly knowledgeable community (ex. LR). Your response sucked.

Yung wrote:

Might help... wrote:

...if you read his books.

I have not. Isn't the point of the Internet to enable more segmented transmission of information? There is basically a book written about anything I could Google. But since there are only 24 hours in the day, it sometimes makes sense to search online or ask a particularly knowledgeable community (ex. LR). Your response sucked.

You are both right, lol

Same boat here: all other paces are spot on, but "easy" paces are harder than "easy". I paid more attention to "not going too fast" than "not going too slow" on these while training for a HM PR this fall. (By comparison, Daniels' Easy pace is significantly faster than what John Parker's recommendation of 70% Weighted Max Heart Rate comes out for me.)

Best to read to the book for proper context. "Easy" - means relaxed conversational pace, no heavy breathing, etc.

I think his faster paces are too slow and the E ace is too fast for really easy runs.

On a really easy run just ignore the watch.

Yung wrote:

Might help... wrote:

...if you read his books.

I have not. Isn't the point of the Internet to enable more segmented transmission of information? There is basically a book written about anything I could Google. But since there are only 24 hours in the day, it sometimes makes sense to search online or ask a particularly knowledgeable community (ex. LR). Your response sucked.

Calling the LR Community particularly knowledgeable is not accurate at all. Many people on here have no idea what they are talking bout when it comes to training at a competitive level.

Unhelpful again.... Too easy to be cynical

Surprised people were saying Daniels' easy pace is too hard for them. I find it to be a tad on the slow side when compared to my heart rate.

The VDOT calculator is certainly over-optimistic when predicting longer race performances, but it's accurate for most people's workout paces, and easy run pace is no exception. The calculator has a 16:00 5k runner's easy pace as 6:42-7:07. That is entirely reasonable. If you can run a 16:00 5k, a 6:42/mi easy run on a comparable course should feel just fine. 7:07 should almost feel like a joke. If none of that is the case for you, something's wrong with the training. You might be working too hard in your quality sessions. Very few quality sessions should leave you exhausted. Leave those kinds of efforts for races.

If you run within the range of the VDOT easy pace, you should recover the same as if you had slogged it at a minute per mile slower. You should literally feel the exact same the next day. And you will. That's what your fitness does for you.

Stop slogging.

Yung wrote:

Might help... wrote:

...if you read his books.

I have not. Isn't the point of the Internet to enable more segmented transmission of information? There is basically a book written about anything I could Google. But since there are only 24 hours in the day, it sometimes makes sense to search online or ask a particularly knowledgeable community (ex. LR). Your response sucked.

Go buy the fking book and support the guy who researched the training plans you follow. If paper books are too scary for you just buy the kindle edition, fool

His response may have sucked, but there is truth in it. If running is important to you, invest the few hours that it will take to read the book so that you better understand Daniels' approach to training. It will empower you greatly, including allowing you to understand how to modify workouts on the fly when you are having an off day.

Nuance is important, and asking others to digest and represent information for you is a recipe for missing out on that nuance. It is honestly hard for me to understand how you can be self-coached and can elect to use Daniels as at least part of your self-coaching, but have never read any of his books. If running is important enough for you to spend hundreds of hours per year doing, I think you can probably manage to squeeze out 5-10 hours over a few week span to better understand what you are doing. I promise you it will be worth it.

I'll echo that you should read the book - there's useful nuance in there that isn't captured but just the vdot tables.

I also use Daniels' philosophy as the general framework for my self-coaching. I find the vdot tables to be a good guideline for workout paces but find I often drift off the various prescriptions depending on what kind of training I've been doing, so I'm never quite on a single vdot curve but more like in a range of 2 or so vdots. I also completely ignore his easy pace prescriptions and run all easy runs by feel. I don't care how slow I run the day after a hard workout, and I usually find that my easy paces naturally speed up and slow down in response to how easy or challenging my workouts are. During a peak pre-race training block my easy pace can become quite slow but it doesn't matter as long as I'm maintaining volume and hitting my workouts well.

Yung wrote:

Might help... wrote:

...if you read his books.

I have not. Isn't the point of the Internet to enable more segmented transmission of information? There is basically a book written about anything I could Google. But since there are only 24 hours in the day, it sometimes makes sense to search online or ask a particularly knowledgeable community (ex. LR). Your response sucked.

Hi letsrun, I just read

If you're going to follow the training system then read the book, that's what it's for. Otherwise there's potentially lots of important info you're missing out on.

The VDOT calculator is overly optimistic because it is being misused. It isn’t the calculator that is wrong- but most people are not sufficiently trained for longer distances. Daniels does not claim that a runner can achieve all the performances for his/her current VDOT.

In the books, Daniels says E pace is for warmups and cooldowns. But based on his philosophy in the books, I don’t think Daniels would have any objection to a runner going slower than the E pace for his VDOT- especially for runners who are better at shorter distances. For runners who are better at longer distances, it might be the case that the R or I paces are too fast. So it is the result of your individual profile and how you are trained.

What would this come out to for Kipchoge? He runs significantly slower than his Daniels' easy pace on his easy/recovery days.

5:22-5:42 on a course similar to Berlin. But if I'm not mistaken, Kipchoge trains at altitude and on various terrains and hills. Berlin's fast.

Not coincidentally, Salazar has his athletes run around Daniels' easy pace. Farah and Rupp did many easy runs at ~5:30-5:40/mi.

Once you're that elite, you know what works for you. I wouldn't sit there telling Kipchoge he runs too slow on easy days even if he did. Fact is, Kipchoge does a lot of quality. The elites are in a class of their own and general training plans might not be applicable for some of them. For the general running community, though, people run too slow on easy days.

Honestly though, if you're in your 20s and your HR is sitting in the 130s for the entirety of an easy run, it's simply too easy unless your legs are just absolutely trashed. You might as well take a nap. The exception is if you're one of those rare individuals with a relatively low max HR.

You are not considering total volume.

I know sub 29 college guys running 7:30 pace - (probably due to running 90 miles per week)- are they wasting their time too, or do you give them a pass like Kipchoge?

cbenson4 wrote, in part:

"For the general running community, though, people run too slow on easy days."

Umm, no.