Jack Daniels 10k/5K plan for Masters runners

What's your weekly mileage? Daniels limits workout volumes by percentage (3% for R, 8% for I and T, if I remember correctly), as well as some absolute limits.

In my late 40s, I'm trying out his 2nd ed. 1500/3000 plan, and getting in 3 workouts a week (which isn't actually required) is difficult. I've had to start at low volumes, especially for Q2 and Q3, and slowly work up to something approaching the described workout. I've also had to cut back mileage (recent max of 80+ for a marathon buildup, but 40-45 now), which also limits workout volumes.

Even if I had the volume to attempt them, both the workouts you describe would be doable but challenging for me, and definitely not something I could do 2 days in a row. As a masters runner, the overriding imperative is Do Not Get Injured. Do as many I-pace 1200s as your volume allows on Tuesday, then do as many T miles as you can on Friday or Saturday, and call it an excellent week.

The thing to remember with all of these programs is that they are guidelines, not assignments.

jwolff wrote:

Hello,

I'm following the Jack Daniels plan for 5k/10k and am entering "phrase 3" of build-up. I've noticed quite a few days where there are back-to-back very hard workouts - i.e. 6 x 1200 at I pace on TUE followed by 6 x 1m with 1 minute rest at T pace the next day. As a masters runner, (early 40s) this seems insane and guaranteed to cause injury. Are they any other masters runners following a JD plan that come across this problem? How would you modify - Back to back to hard days at +40 don't seem to work.

thanks!

Back to back hard days is not to recommend for any age.

I would do those as Monday/Wednesday workouts, using Saturday for either a long run or race. Tempos are not that hard if you are running them at the prescribed pace, but I would go with an easy day between.

Igy

This has always been my approach. But I do tend to do the tempo session early in the week and the interval session later as I figure that the tempo session will be less intense and thus easier to recover from. An argument can be made that since there is decent research out there that shows DOMS takes hold 48 hours after intense exercise, we might be better off with back to back days or with a Monday-Thursday hard schedule, but I think that experienced runners are probably pretty well adapted for recovery from hard efforts within 2 days. But as others have pointed out, following a plan day for day isn't the only, or even the ideal, way to do things. Also, I think Daniels may do the back-to-back thing in his plans with the thought that high school or college track athletes, or elite athletes will sometimes race multiple races (either multiple events or qualifying rounds) in consecutive days. This would prepare them for that experience.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

I would do those as Monday/Wednesday workouts, using Saturday for either a long run or race. Tempos are not that hard if you are running them at the prescribed pace, but I would go with an easy day between.

Igy

I’m 48 and followed Daniels 5K plan last summer. I was able to drop from 19:30 to 18:22. I started getting lots of overuse niggles, so I altered the plan to make sure there were at least 2 days between each hard workout.