Jack Daniels' Running Formula

Jack Daniels' book, "Daniels' Running Formula" is without a doubt the best book about running and training that I have ever read. He has thought of, and addressed, nearly every question that a reader could have about training and attempted to make the book easy to use in the development of a training plan for anyone. Whether you are a collegiate 400m runner, a 10-minute mile 10K-er or a world-class marathoner his plans are adaptable to your individual needs and he shows you step-by-step how to build a plan that'll work for you.

All of that said, his outlook on training is a bit different that what I have been used to from years of triathlon training. To follow this plan I will be running significantly higher mileage than my body is used to and will be varying the training paces significantly. Daniels actually developed a VDOT table based on times that you have recently run in distances from 1,500m to the marathon. A reader is to plot out the distances that they have recently run and, assuming they don't all fall under the same VDOT value, pick out the VDOT value corresponding to their best recent performance. For me, his table gives me a range of VDOT's from 63-59. According to the book I should therefore pick the training paces corresponding to a VDOT of 63 and base my marathon training around it. (THIS IS THE ONE CHANGE THAT I AM MAKING TO HIS PLAN) I have looked at these paces and although I could hold them for training at sea level I am fairly confident that they would destroy me while training at 5,280 ft elevation. So, since this is the one area of the book that I think is lacking (he talks about the benefits of training at altitude, but not how to adjust training paces when living at altitude), I will make my own educated decision and alter my VDOT to use the lower-end of the range rather than the higher.  That said, my training paces are going to take some getting used to.  For example, over the past few years my typical easy run training pace has been somewhere in the 6:45-6:55 range. Tempo runs have been at 6:00-:10 pace and races (up to 10K) have been at 5:40-:50 pace, 1/2 marathons at 5:55-6:05 pace (all of this at altitude). My paces for this marathon training plan will instead be:

          Easy (E) Pace: 7:28

Marathon (M) Pace: 6:19

       Threshold Pace: 5:59

                         Interval Pace: 1200m - 4:07

                                                  1000m - 3:25

                                                    400m - 1:22

Daniels indicates that as training progresses and an athlete has better performances, they should feel comfortable increasing their VDOT respectively and taking on quicker training paces. I expect to see these results and be able to increase my VDOT up to 62 by mid- to late-September. My resulting Marathon (M) pace would then be 6:04 pace (at altitude). By November I should then be comfortable running just under this pace at sea-level, with the increased amount of oxygen there.

At the start of this plan (8/1/11) I weigh 170.2 lbs with 6.6% body fat. I expect that come late September or early October I'll be much closer to my goal race weight of 164 lbs and a body fat around 4.5%. Here we go!