Goal is a 2:28 marathon, talk me out of using Daniels'

When is coach JS when you need him? He allegedly coaches elite runners using a combination of Daniels and Canova, called DANCAN training system. I bet it contains the best of both worlds...

I plateaued with Daniels. Tried Hansons Marathon Method and it broke me through sub3 with a 15min PR at age 42. During training I felt better recovered, had more “breakthrough” workouts and felt less injury-prone. I won’t do another marathon any other way now.

dubs wrote:

I plateaued with Daniels. Tried Hansons Marathon Method and it broke me through sub3 with a 15min PR at age 42. During training I felt better recovered, had more “breakthrough” workouts and felt less injury-prone. I won’t do another marathon any other way now.

Interesting. Were you doing the same plan year after year?

jewbacca wrote:

dubs wrote:

I plateaued with Daniels. Tried Hansons Marathon Method and it broke me through sub3 with a 15min PR at age 42. During training I felt better recovered, had more “breakthrough” workouts and felt less injury-prone. I won’t do another marathon any other way now.

Interesting. Were you doing the same plan year after year?

I wondered that, too. You can plateau on any program if you do the same thing year after year.

Kipchoge would have run a similar time using Daniels is a good point.

Also, is there a progression to his fartlek work and intervals?

No secrets just train near MP as much as you can and recover properly.

2 days per week do something that is hard near pace or faster.

dubs wrote:

I plateaued with Daniels. Tried Hansons Marathon Method and it broke me through sub3 with a 15min PR at age 42. During training I felt better recovered, had more “breakthrough” workouts and felt less injury-prone. I won’t do another marathon any other way now.

Clearly you were experiencing some issues if you set a 15 minute PR by changing some small details. There's no way it would make that much difference unless you were just bad at racing before or had bad conditions.

Daniels is a great base, but I’ve really excelled using the Canova style approach tailored to improve my weaknesses. I went from 2:38 2016 Chicago to 2:19 at Houston 2018. Use Daniels as a stepping stone to Canova and you will be elite. I’ve posted my last two years to Strava, you can see it all there.

Mike deren wrote:

Daniels is a great base, but I’ve really excelled using the Canova style approach tailored to improve my weaknesses. I went from 2:38 2016 Chicago to 2:19 at Houston 2018. Use Daniels as a stepping stone to Canova and you will be elite. I’ve posted my last two years to Strava, you can see it all there.

Mike, can you talk about some of the modifications you made in theory?

Wrong... wrote:

running commenter wrote:

Every single person I know who "uses" Daniels changes and tweaks things here and there in the program making it no longer Daniels. Doing everything he says perfectly results in some epic overtraining. Nobody except the real elites or those whose lifestyle emulates the recovery of elites can handle the workload of a real Daniels system.

Maybe you should learn to read and then read the book.

Actually I've read the book, that's how I know people are tweaking the program and doing it differently.

This sounds a lot like what Bill Squires would do.

MIKE,

Wow.

Out of curiosity why was the biggest change?

The powerpoint slides the dril posts towards the beginning of the thread do a very good job of interpreting the Canova style. When I used the Jack Daniels schedule leading up to Chicago, I found that I was struggling too much in his early phase 2 workouts, and too much variation in pace. For example (all in miles with the prescribed pace), 2E, 6M, 1T, 5M, 1T, 1M and 2E.

The important parts of Canova I have incorporated are: More frequent shorter workouts, which helps as I have a full time job. I tend to do about 5-6 workouts every 14 days; I think Daniels typically uses 2Q days per week. I haven't done a true special block yet, but I have done a few workouts on back to back days which are important. Fartleks are sometimes inserted between two harder workouts, which are a "B" workout, but still give the body time at Marathon pace. I think in the newest edition of Daniels, he recommends an easy range which for me was 6:15ish to 6:40, but I found that too fast to properly recover. Canova has a regeneration pace so I spend a lot more time at 7+ per mile. This helps me to run faster on workout days. Another thing I did for Houston was a full marathon at 2:24 which was about 97% of marathon pace in the specific period, 5 weeks prior. He recommends up to 40km but I thought doing an actual road race with support/water stations was beneficial.

The biggest difference for me is I spend a lot more time near marathon pace per week with Canova than I would with Daniels.

Also, I am assuming you are doing the basics as well: Eating well, sleeping 8+ hours a night, drinking alcohol minimally, good recovery drink, etc.

Thanks for this analysis, Mike. I was poking around on your Strava and it helps to understand what you were doing with this extra-write up. One thing I'm curious about, when you do the fartlek workouts (which I think are the 15x1/1 or 8x3/2 and things like that), is the goal to make the faster portion close to MP? Or do you go a little faster than MP for the 'ons' and a little slower for the 'offs'?

Mike,

Just looking back to your strava you tried sub 2:20 pace at Chicago in 2016 and still went through the half at 1:08 so you certainly were in pretty amazing shape. I saw a 10k also in 30:00 which was a PR after college? Wow.

Your efforts look like they took some balls! Nice job.

I’m on the other side of that equation where I have a 1:11 half I need to drop to 1:09.

I typically start around 5:20 and work my way down to 5:00ish. Off is closer to 7, but you could make it an ‘A’ workout going 5:40-6:00 on the offs.

Daniels definitely got me in good shape for Chicago, but these small Canova style changes helped me improve from mile 17-25. Just chasing that last mile now.

My PRs in college are 14:57 and 31:45. Stay consistent and keep working and you can improve!

Good luck Gents!

That guy coached a few decent marathoners in his day

Mike, thanks again for the info.... Definitely crushing it for those PR's in college.

Thanks again for making it look possible... even though it looks impossible.

leekbow wrote:

I have run 2:31, am 27 years old, and have 22 weeks until my next marathon. In a way I don't want to use Daniels', but I've seen a lot of evidence of it working.

In all seriousness, why should someone in my situation not use a Daniels' approach.

Smoove seems to be killing it tho!

You should be able to run 2:28 without a "plan," whether Daniels or otherwise.