Jack Daniels 2Q is insane

Hobo Mojo wrote:

I remember Steve Jones' training log from the week he ran the Chicago Marathon in the 80's. It was something like this:

M - felt like crap

T - felt like crap

W - felt like crap

T - felt like crap

F - felt like crap

S - easy jog

S - World Record

+1

If you're a serious runner get used to feeling tired.

my legs are tired :( wrote:

Stopcecil! wrote:

He's not insane. You just need to learn how to be flexible with your training.

So you're saying on a 70 mile week it's smart to do a 17 mile run with 10 miles at tempo pace?

Did you bother reading the book? He talks about flexibility of training, adequate recovery, and also about not running "True" tempo pace when going over 20 minutes.

The marathon is about logging consistent workouts. I don't think plans out of a book like Daniels or Pfitzinger (plans I've used but adjusted for me) are meant to be followed line by line. Everyone is different. The books provide a good framework to follow. The workouts, themselves, can be adapted as needed. Half the battle of the marathon is grinding through high mileage weeks and some tough workouts and being on the line healthy and ready to go. 4 x 2 miles + 2 x 1 mile is an elite workout. Recover today some more and give 3 x 2 miles a go. If you're feeling good stay in the workout. If not, six miles is pretty good why get to 10 if you're going to risk an injury. By all means get to 10 if you can but be smart about it. Trust that you've been putting in the work. Not doing this whole workout is not going to make or break your race.

my legs are tired :( wrote:

brain dead genius wrote:

You are overestimating your M and T paces and aren't as fit as you think.

My 10k pace is 6:05, my half marathon pace is 6:40. I do T at 6:25.

I know I have a lack of endurance, that is why i'm doing 6 months of marathon training. I'm running more miles, many aerobically, than I ever have in my life.

It is very unlikely that you will be able to only add ~10sec/mi from Half to Full Marathon (you said 6:40, 6:51), especially given the pace difference between your 10k and Half. 70mi/wk for a few weeks is not enough to build that kind of endurance. A realistic number is to double your Half and add 10min. A runner with years of good volume and consistent long tempo work might only add 5min, but that is a rare animal.

A lot of people make the mistake of training for a time in the marathon. You need to train your current fitness level and improve it. Daniels actually emphasized this in his book. While you may be a VDOT X at one distance, you can be a VDOT Y at another distance. You need to use the Half as your VDOT pace table lookup for your Marathon training and probably slow that down some based on your admitted lack of endurance.

You're not supposed to pick a time and then do the plan. A half from a year ago is not indicative of current fitness. I've seen this time and time again....

"I want to run a 2:55 marathon." *picks plan and then fails*

I think Daniels plans are garbage. everyone gets more tired than fit with the plans and under-performs. Just keep it simple.

You shouldn't feel trashed that much during marathon training if you aren't able to take a 2 hour nap every day like the Kenyans - i think that everyone perpetuates this idea that you should never feel good but that should only happen for a few weeks.

the only way Daniels is good is if you have been running 80 miles per week for a few months and you drop down your mileage to handle his plan.

it's way too confusing and complicated

What plan would you suggest is the best then? It's not productive to say JD plan is not good, but not offer a counter plan.

tired of this wrote:

I think Daniels plans are garbage. everyone gets more tired than fit with the plans and under-performs. Just keep it simple.

it's way too confusing and complicated

I really don't understand why anyone would say that Daniels' plans are complicated or confusing. Under his Training Plan A, for the 12 weeks leading up to race day, all but 3 of your workouts are run at one pace: threshold pace. The other three are run at marathon pace. The only real variation on the theme is how you structure your cruise interval sessions, and the cruise interval sessions are pretty much sessions of intervals of 1, 2 or 3 miles long. This is not complicate.

And I have had plenty of success as both a runner and coach employing a Daniels approach to marathon training, and none of those folks were running high mileage and the dropping down to lower mileage weeks for the marathon training cycle.

"Keep it simple" is great advice, but if you are looking to really perform up to your ability, it is hard to keep it much simpler than 1-2 workouts per week for 12 weeks, with all but the three workouts at marathon pace being run at threshold pace.

Just to chime back in, this thread was more popular than I thought it would be,

I was wrong when I said 6:40, I ran my half at 6:30 pace, it was 1:25:50 when I finished.

I signed up for that half on Wednesday, took one day off on Saturday, and ran on Sunday (Won it btw, but I live in a rural area). I did this with no real taper and no training for that race. I was running 45 mpw, Fridays were 5x1k inside of 6 miles, Sunday was 4T inside of 8 miles, and Wednesday was 13 slow.

Since then I've been following Jack Daniels 2Q plan, capping at 70 mpw, to a TEE! My intensity and mileage is WAY UP!

Sorry, I feel like I need to defend myself a bit. I'm not some idiot who picked 3:00. I ran a marathon 2 years ago shooting for 3 hours and BLEW UP! I was on pace until mile 18, then at mile 21 had to jog/walk to the end. Finished in 3:15.

I didn't follow a plan, I ran every single run at moderate effort. I did like 8 20 mile runs. No speed work, no tempo work, nothing, just ran pretty hard every day. After that race I picked up 80/20 running and some other books and trained off that ever since.

Again, my training has been going great, this post was mostly me complaining about 4x2t, 2x1t being insane, especially 3 days after 12M in a 17, which it seems like everyone agrees it is. I am going to shoot for 4x2T and leave it at that.

I think Daniels writes for pretty experienced runners, so to jump right into a plan like that having not had structured training it could be pretty difficult.

I do a little bit of Daniels mixed with some other workouts and an easier "easy" pace. I've run 2:20:11 and it has my "easy" at 6:09-6:33. Sometimes I'll run in that range if I'm pretty fresh/it's a good day, but the majority of my easy is a good 20-40seconds slower than that range and I've been fine. I feel 6:10 most days is way too fast, I think those are easy ranges for people who do nothing but run (I'm a teacher and run many runs at 5am, definitely not running 6 flat then)

The 12mi T in a long run is a very standard workout for Sub-Elite/Elite; there are videos/posts of the NAZ/BTC guys doing that stuff often. I'll go up to 12mi but not at "Tempo" which according to Daniels my "threshold" is like 5:10 which if I ran 12 at that routinely I would be exhausted. I use Daniels workouts but substitute my paces with Canova and I think it's a good blend. Link for Canova's workouts/Training Pace conversion:

https://runningscience.co.za/elite-athletes-training-log/renato-canova/

http://mymarathonpace.com/uploads/Renato_Canova_Marathon_Training_Methods.pdf

For reference my MP is 5:20, and when I do a 12-15mi LR tempo I usually will average btwn 5:35 and 5:40. I hear local marathoners (usually 3hr+ guys) running sub marathon pace for their 10-12 tempo all the time and I always ask why?

4x2 + 1x2 is a bit intense after, I'm not sure I'd have both in the same week, maybe I'd wait until the next week. Never think you have to 100% stick to a plan. Have a plan/goal and alter it as needed!

outlook wrote:

tired of this wrote:

I think Daniels plans are garbage. everyone gets more tired than fit with the plans and under-performs. Just keep it simple.

You shouldn't feel trashed that much during marathon training if you aren't able to take a 2 hour nap every day like the Kenyans - i think that everyone perpetuates this idea that you should never feel good but that should only happen for a few weeks.

the only way Daniels is good is if you have been running 80 miles per week for a few months and you drop down your mileage to handle his plan.

it's way too confusing and complicated

What plan would you suggest is the best then? It's not productive to say JD plan is not good, but not offer a counter plan.

I think you have to know yourself and experiment and not just follow one plan. I know that's a vague suggestion for what's best and I wish I could give more, but I follow some Pfitz, some Canova, some personal experience and don't really think successful running comes from a recipe or script. Even the 2:20 guy who just posted has to adapt the Daniels paces significantly...

I've NEVER heard of anyone following Daniels and not adjusting many of the paces the calculator/plan recommends. To me, that's a bad plan if the tool used to help you follow the plan won't help you improve.

Smoove - you have a hybrid training too I believe. I know you said it was "simple" but do you actually follow a plan?

I have based my training plans for my 5 marathon cycles on Daniels Training Plan A. Of course I make modifications based on my racing schedule, weather, travel plans, how I am feeling on a given day, injuries, etc. But I would say that 3 of the 5 marathon cycles were pretty close to the base plan. The 4th cycle was adjusted a bit more because of the vagaries of where I was in training. The 5th cycle, my current cycle, was adjusted even more since I am a masters runner training in Florida and needed more recovery time as a result.

So does that mean that I am no longer following or never followed a Daniels plan since I never did only the specific prescribed workouts at specific prescribed paces? Of course not. A plan is just that - a plan, and not a mandate. A plan is a starting point, it is not the end point. Taking a plan out of the back of a book and doggedly following it within listening to your body isn't going to work, and it isn't what Daniels or any other coach has in mind when they draft those plans. So to suggest that making some modifications to a plan is evidence that the plan itself is garbage, or too hard, or too complicated or cannot be followed really isn't accurate since that is both true and expected of all plans.

The purpose of a well developed plan is to identify and employ specific principles, to lay out a guideline for what someone would do during a training cycle if everything went perfectly, and to arm the athlete with the necessary tools to make adjustments as they proceed through the cycle and things are imperfect, as they inevitably will be.

So yes, I have modified Daniels' Training Plan A in each of my training cycles, and yes, I still train under a Daniels approach to training, and still train under Training Plan A (employing the core principles of an early-cycle vo2max phase, a main phase of 2 quality days per week with the first quality day being a cruise intervals session with a 5:1 work to rest ratio and the second being a long run (with tempo work mixed at the beginning and end in for about 1 out of every 3 long runs, a marathon paced session for about 1 out of every 3 long runs, and a straight long run at easy distance pace for about 1 out of every 3 long runs, having an inverted relationship between my intensity and volume each week)).

What works with most Daniels plans is to assume they were written for people in very good shape, capable of running close to 5 min/mile T pace (or even M pace). Follow the plan but replace miles with duration, e.g. for the 4x2 mile T run do 2x10 minutes T at whatever your T pace is.

Better to tread lightly or completely skip a workout than be ruined by one.

Look at the goal of that Wednesday workout and try to accomplish 80% of it in a way that works for you.

To me, it looks like a lot of miles total, plus a ton at Threshold pace.

Here's my advice for adapting: Go for an easy shakeout in the morning. Loosen you up, get some of the miles done. Then, shoot for 8 or 9 in the evening with a scaled back version of the workout.

Warm up. 3mi, 2mi, 1mi at threshold. Go home.

You've obviously put in a lot of training and this specific workout isn't going to make or break your marathon.

my legs are tired :( wrote:

Stopcecil! wrote:

He's not insane. You just need to learn how to be flexible with your training.

So you're saying on a 70 mile week it's smart to do a 17 mile run with 10 miles at tempo pace?

Here is something more insane. Never doing those kind of workouts and attempting to run a Marathon 6 weeks later.

The tip off is when people complain they are too sore for the workout 2-3 days before they have to do it. So, feel great all of the time in training and not during the race or for three weeks after.

My advice was to give it a try and if it was not going well try the next day. Don't make the workout wimpier. The race is not going to change from 26.2 to 23 miles. There is the problem.

otter wrote:

my legs are tired :( wrote:

So you're saying on a 70 mile week it's smart to do a 17 mile run with 10 miles at tempo pace?

Here is something more insane. Never doing those kind of workouts and attempting to run a Marathon 6 weeks later.

The tip off is when people complain they are too sore for the workout 2-3 days before they have to do it. So, feel great all of the time in training and not during the race or for three weeks after.

My advice was to give it a try and if it was not going well try the next day. Don't make the workout wimpier. The race is not going to change from 26.2 to 23 miles. There is the problem.

This is bad advice. I think the sentiment is right (don’t skip scary workouts in general), but this particular workout makes no sense given Daniels’s general guidelines for workouts, as explained earlier in this thread.

This 100%.

Still waiting for you to break 2:30... and you're times don't mean much honestly. as much as you like to tell everyone on letsrun what your prs are. you have a silly amount of talent. as soon as you realize this and stop telling everyone on letsrun to train like you, everyone will be better off.

THANKS!

Follow the plan wrote:

What works with most Daniels plans is to assume they were written for people in very good shape, capable of running close to 5 min/mile T pace (or even M pace). Follow the plan but replace miles with duration, e.g. for the 4x2 mile T run do 2x10 minutes T at whatever your T pace is.

Wrong. Most people over estimate their fitness and assume the plans were written for people in good shape. In reality they are written for people who actually know their shape, which is few of you autists.