why do Jack Daniels M pace workouts destroy me?

Wow! I really didn’t expect to get such well-thought-out answers. To summarize multiple responses:1- I do wear a GPS watch. Its purpose is typically to make sure I don’t run too fast at the beginning. If I’m struggling to hit times I’ll cut the workout short, or slow down. Just depends. I make a point not to look at my pace on easy runs. Just go by feel. I run in the mountains a fair amount, so a steady exertion is much more important than a specific pace.2 - Part of why I went with JD was because of the flexibility. I read the different plans, and the different distances. Seems like a certain percentage of certain paces, based on a recent PR and your total mileage. A little algebra and I feel like I can tweak a plan for my scenario. Been logging 30mpw? Do some algebra on the 40mpw plan, and you have your workouts.3 - I’m prone to injury. If I wing it, I end up injured. If I stick to JD, I’m typically amazed by the results. Numerous times I’ve thought “no way I’m gonna be able to do today’s workout”, and I go into it planning on doing 80% of it, and I absolutely nail it… and I feel great afterwards.4 - I use this book as a guiding principal. Sometimes life happens, or I throw planned workouts out the window for long slow runs up high with a group of friends. That stuff is more important to me, so it takes precedence. That said, I enjoy a structured workout, and find it results in having even more fun in the hills. After I’m recovered from whatever I did, I return to where I was at in the training.5 - I get overwhelmed with tempo vs threshold vs cruise. I find seemingly contradictory statements. I’m confused by it. JD does have you do T (threshold) pace for 4 miles at a shot in 5-10k phase 3. That puts me way past the 20 minute mark.Thanks for the suggestions and input. I’m actually not sure what my takeaway is from it all though…Any insight from experts is appreciated.

Jimmy21 wrote:

You are basing your marathon pace off of 5k/10k times. Do you honestly think you could finish a marathon at that pace?

Vdot M pace is not the same as the necessarily the same pace as the pace you can hold for a marathon.

well,. wrote:

Jimmy21 wrote:

You are basing your marathon pace off of 5k/10k times. Do you honestly think you could finish a marathon at that pace?

Vdot M pace is not necessarily the same pace as the pace you can hold for a marathon.

fixed

team 1 wrote:

I've ran the M workout but barely was able to running through the finish, and my body was totally runned down the next day. I mean wrecked! I run yesterday an M workout, for example, and today I barely ranned from my house to the mailbox. I'm hoping to ran a 5K this weekend but my ranning has been going so poorly, I might not ran at all.

The present participle form of the verb "to run" is rimming.

run-job wrote:

team 1 wrote:

I've ran the M workout but barely was able to running through the finish, and my body was totally runned down the next day. I mean wrecked! I run yesterday an M workout, for example, and today I barely ranned from my house to the mailbox. I'm hoping to ran a 5K this weekend but my ranning has been going so poorly, I might not ran at all.

The present participle form of the verb "to run" is rimming.

Oh, sorry. My mistake. This is more embarrassing than watching re-rans of Night Rider.

What would an experienced professionall coach say about this?

I only use Daniels paces for maxVO2-pace intervals , threshold pace intervals and best individual easy steady run. When it comes to marathon pace I just put it in a long run sometimes as a fast finish in intervals or sustained pace....sometimes I use the marathon pace at a long run just in intervals f.ex 1 min fast - 1 min slow for total long distance run .

"The Wizard"

B-i-n-g-o, and Bingo was his name.

That is best definition, hands down.

FastJogger wrote:

i was 1:01/400 2:26/800 5:40/mile 19:45/5k 40:30/10k. never time trialed past those distances. ever. at the moment, i'm about 2 vdots stronger than that.

Definitely more FT, judging by those times. I can barely hit 63 for 400 flat-out, and have never ran faster than 61 even after a few weeks at working towards a better time trial for the distance.

However on the other side of the coin, my pace per 5k for a half marathon is 18:45, a full minute faster than your 5k alone. Your 10k is slower than I would split in a full marathon.

Looking at all this, I'm guessing it is quite difficult to get your VDOT numbers right, and I'm not surprised that you struggle with the longer, faster stuff. What race distance do you use to determine your VDOT? Looking at the huge disparity in the numbers as the distances increase, coupled with the face that I am assuming you are training for a marathon, I would consider jumping into a HM to get a better idea of how much more you drop off past 10k.

You're feeling trashed after the M pace runs because your weakness in running is long distance, both in terms of a single run, and weekly mileage. You need more endurance, to point out the obvious. The "trashed" feeling will go away for the most part as you build up more mileage and include more longer runs in general.

Whose philosophy do you follow? Not being contentious, genuinely curious.I think it is common for people to criticize Daniels, but by and large those criticisms don't really stand up to scrutiny. Mostly they boil down to "Daniels was big in the 90s when American distance running sucked", which leaves me unconvinced.I also think that the most vocal critics are those who haven't read the text of Daniels' book, but focus only on the training plans and the formulas that he includes. I have personally trained in accordance with Daniels' principles and had a decent amount of success in doing so. On top of that, I have coached quite a few people to PRs by employing Daniels' underlying principles. Note that I use the term "Daniels' principles" and not "Daniels' training plans." That is intentional, because life gets in the way and there is no way to make a training plan from the back of the book work for you when you have a particular race calendar; family, work and travel obligations; injury, illness and days when you just feel off; etc, But employing the underlying principles (periodization; appropriate volume of reps, intervals and threshold work; appropriate amounts of recovery; the appropriate type of recovery), I can pretty much adjust to whatever circumstances might pop up during a training cycle or during an individual workout.I would submit that most of the coaches out there today are still employing a significant potion of Daniels' principles. The biggest deviations from those principles that I tend to hear about are (i) mixing work at different paces (tempo work and interval work in the same workout), (ii) in the case of Tinman, employing CV pace, and (iii) doing workouts with much short recovery periods between work bouts than Daniels would prescribe.

Where he belongs wrote:

If you're smart you'll leave Daniels in the library or bookstore.

I don't think he's training for a marathon when on a 5k/10k plan. In that case, I wouldn't even worry about M pace, it shouldn't matter. On that note, what do you guys think about Daniels' comment that M pace does not really provide any benefit compared to E pace? I mean, for someone training for a marathon, that comment surely doesn't apply. But for shorter distances, would you agree with him that there's no need to train anything between T pace and E pace?

Also, I would like to add: I don't believe in M pace, and I feel it isn't an essential pace.

L runs, Easy runs, T runs, I runs, and repeats, to me, cover everything that is needed to be a solid runner.

Long runs are heart workouts, prepping the body to endure long distances with a controlled heart rate. Tempo builds endurance , and stretches a runner's lactate threshold, so that the runner is comfortable running fast during a long distance. Now M pace is supposed to be somewhere in between.

Well, that sounds like a Middle man....so I cut out the middle man and reap the same benefits with a faster easy run ( if needed) and a slower tempo run ( if needed).

Actually, I had never heard of M pace until I started reading Daniels, and immediately I said " that's a bull crap pace". ..

I love the book and the man, but I don't follow all of his rules and recommendations.

I agree with you 100%. Daniels never used it in prior editions. At lease he seems to admit that there is no physiological basis for incorporating them.

My 400M was about 15 minutes after my 800M. Was panting like a tired dog at the starting line of the 400M. Ran both on a bit of a whim. Not real rested going into it all. Hadn’t ever tried to PR on a 400 prior – or since.Vdots are based on a recent mile. I’ve done legit time trials for a mile and a 5k. My 10k was a T pace run turned 10k time trial, cuz yolo or something. So if I rested and planned, could probably take some time off 10k PR. Absolutely not training for a marathon. My favorite type of run is jog for a bit, hammer for 20-50 minutes (hopefully in the woods), cool down. Gets me all zen. So I decided to pick a training plan for that. Really? 18:45 5k pace while running a marathon?! And barely 63s on a 400? Wow. To be honest, I’d trade that 5k pace for my 400M pace, but not sure how. I don’t even care about the 400. I recall in 8th grade I ran 59s in the 400M without a warm up and zero training. Bit of a guess, but 5:40 in the mile back then? Not sure. It was like a million years ago. I do recall breaking 60s on the 400 though.Assuming I’m way more fast twitch, what does that mean in regards to a 5-10k training plan with those M pace runs? Or occasionally wanting to bang out 15 miles in the mountains at a casual social pace?

above_average_joe wrote:...what do you guys think about Daniels' comment that M pace does not really provide any benefit compared to E pace? I mean, for someone training for a marathon, that comment surely doesn't apply. But for shorter distances, would you agree with him that there's no need to train anything between T pace and E pace?

As reference, 3rd edition, page 51: "... the main benefit of M running is mental, helping you gain confidence at the pace you plan to race in a coming marathon. Physiological benefits are really not different from those gained during E running. However, some runners who are not training for a marathon may find that M-pace runs build confidence that they can handle a prolonged run at something a little faster than a typical E-pace run."

Pretty passive tone for the value of M-pace runs for non-marathoners.

Agreed. May be one of the worst sentences in his long and distinguished career. The guy has predicated his entire philosophy on the idea that we shouldn't tax our bodies more than is necessary to attain the desired adaptation. His entire book hits on that theme over and over. And at the end of that long and distinguished career, he devolves to the "it will make you tough and build confidence" mentality that less knowledgeable folks use as justification all of the time. All in an effort to try to be relevant in a changing world and to sell more books. It is kind of like the Godfather III for me - I am choosing to make believe that it did not happen and focus instead on the masterpieces that preceded it.

Steve Magness also writes in his book the boy gets the same benefits from running broken tempo as it does unsplit tempo runs. Perhaps you get mentally tougher from running them unbroken, but the physiological benefit is pretty much the same according to him.

I disagree that there is no value in a marathon paced run, at least for a fast twitch guy like me. For context, I'm a middle distance runner. Recent bests:

800: 1:55

1500: 3:58

5k: 15:25

My easy pace is like 7:30 pace. Once I start hitting 7:15 or 7:00 I'm not going to feel fresh in my next workout. I know that sounds slow for a guy like me but it's true.

Then tempo pace for a 4 mile tempo is 5:30-5:40. Mile repeats 5:10-ish and then faster for shorter stuff.

But it is a running desert for me from 6:00-7:00 pace. This past year my coach started having me really work in this range and I think it has been beneficial. We call it "medium" pace, and I think it would correspond to Daniels M pace. Lots of runs at 6:40 pace. Then cutdown runs starting above 7 and finishing below 6. Eventually I could do 5 miles at 6:15 pace and still call it medium. Then 5 miles at 6 flat. Finally worked up to 10 miles at 6 flat, then eventually 10 miles in high 58 all while the effort felt medium.

Did this like all fall and winter and had a terrific spring, pr'ing at 5k even while only running 5 days per week (cross trained the other 2 days because I'm injury prone).

I'm now a big believer in medium paced runs. I think of it this way - if it's harder than easy, it's doing something.

For some people unbroken tempo is what works best for them, any theory about not needing it has to be discarded if you can prove the other method works better.

Fast Jogger-

I used Daniels this spring for the same reasons as most- it was easy to follow and prescribed what I needed to be done. And yes I read the book cover to cover as well, but the primary reason for me to try to stick to those vdot paces was that I thought I could run a huge range. I improved in the 5k but as it got longer I was not matching any predictors. Then I realized I just didn't have enough miles under me since I was only running a year.

For the rest of the year, I'm applying Steve Magness's principles and created my own plan. His book talks about us FT runners... I ran a 11.2 100m and 51.x 400m in HS off really poor training (only now I realized my coach may not have known much about training). I'm hoping I can leverage these strengths for the 5K