Forums >General Running>Daniels 2Q plan
Dream Maker
I am looking forward on the Daniel's Plan. Whew, looks hard. Now in 2nd edition he suggests scaling if you are "slower." Instead of miles, follow a certain amount of time... i.e. 5 min for each mile prescribed of T pace running. I can't find that line in the 3rd edition... though maybe I am missing it. He does suggest capping all runs at 2:30 whether fast or slow which would end many of these workouts uncompleted for me, and short my weekly miles.If T is the pace you can race all out for an hour, 4 x 2 T with 3 min rest is an entirely different workout for a 3:00 marathoner than a 4:15 marathoner. In 2nd edition there was also a chart to scale down T runs over 20 min, but I don't see that in 3rd edition either.What are your thoughts? Do I follow the plan as written? Adapt? I have not followed a plan I didn't write myself before.I want a sub 4 in Dec which is pretty aggressive from where I am at but doable based on past experience. PR is 3:35. I'be ran 107 marathons but only trained and raced a few.
I have one of his plans bookmarked to start in July but have been dabbling with some of the workouts. I'm clearly not his target audience, there was some mention of a "slower" runner who is doing 1:30 R pace 400s. Lol, my R pace yesterday was probably slower than easy pace for those the book is written for.
In the 2nd edition, he used 6 minutes as the tempo time for those not covering 1 mile in that time. That's what I've been using. I also make some tweaks and will sometimes sub time for distance with R pace (45 seconds for 200, 1:30 for 400). I look at the workouts and guessimate it's for someone faster than 6mm and then scale from there.
I've looked at his marathon plan before too. I have also read the 2nd edition more than once and for some reason thought that I wanted the 3rd edition so got that too when it came out. I am not sure what happened exactly but someone must have told him to dumb down the 3rd edition considerably because to me it bares very little resemblance to the 2nd and seems written for a completely different audience (I'm presuming the audience for the 2nd is college runners and/or people that takes themselves seriously whatever that means). In any case, If you have the 2nd edition, I would follow that. Of course, especially given your considerable experience, you are going to have to modify his plan. I think for me the amount of modification necessary seemed excessive and I ended up turning to Pfitz at that point. But he did have some general ideas that I liked ( I did follow one or two of his plans for 5k or 10k or something at some point, I can't remember exactly now) including not doing more than x percentage of your miles at T pace (I think it was 8%) and same for I pace (maybe that was 5%?). Not to get too wrapped up in numbers, but it gave a sense of how much is appropriate. I think there is value in going through the motions of a different "plan" in that being immersed in it, you start to understand some of the thinking behind it. Just take it with a grain of salt. You know that your long run is going to have to be longer than 2:30, probably up to at least 3-3:30, right? So just do that. If it doesn't seem appropriate for you, modify it closer to what you think is appropriate. Maybe a hybrid. It's fun to try new things. Have fun!
I have one of his plans bookmarked to start in July but have been dabbling with some of the workouts. I'm clearly not his target audience, there was some mention of a "slower" runner who is doing 1:30 R pace 400s. Lol, my R pace yesterday was probably slower than easy pace for those the book is written for. In the 2nd edition, he used 6 minutes as the tempo time for those not covering 1 mile in that time. That's what I've been using. I also make some tweaks and will sometimes sub time for distance with R pace (45 seconds for 200, 1:30 for 400). I look at the workouts and guessimate it's for someone faster than 6mm and then scale from there.
Ah 6 min, that's what it was. I lent out my second edition and never got it back. Some of the workout pieces I doubt I'll have trouble with, like long marathon pace runs. I did lots of those training to qualify for Boston and found even in the thick of training them very doable. But over an hour in a workout running at hour race pace seems suspect. lol. The most I ever did with threshold before was 20 easy, 20 min threshold, 20 min easy, 20 threshold, 20 easy--- so 40 minute in the workout at threshold, which was quite doable without compromising the rest of my training. I just want good training stimulus for a successful race, not a hero workout, y'know? lol
Just take it with a grain of salt. You know that your long run is going to have to be longer than 2:30, probably up to at least 3-3:30, right? So just do that. If it doesn't seem appropriate for you, modify it closer to what you think is appropriate. Maybe a hybrid. It's fun to try new things. Have fun!
I get his reason for the recommendation, but yeah I wasn't going to listen to that. I prefer the - keep your long run around a quarter and no more than a third, of your weekly mileage for avoiding injury. Ignoring that is where I've ran into problems.