I've talked a few times about running by distance. Here's a clearer explanation of it all, and a comparison between Cloutier's paces and Daniels'

A local running coach, Jean-Yves Cloutier, has written a book about his training philosophy and has programs for running 5k, 10k, 1/2M and marathons. Basically his philosophy is similar to that of many other coaches: run mostly slow with a rather small percentage of total volume running faster, at different speeds. What sets him apart from other coaches is that the runs are always dictated in time, and pace. Never in distance.

A program based on distance will not work the same for runners with different conditioning. A 20 miles run is not the same training if run at 8:00/mile as if it is run at 10:00/mile.

Like most programs, with Cloutier, you run at different paces. You get these paces from a recent race time. Just for fun I made a comparison table of the paces Cloutier’s charts give me and put that same 10k time (42:30) in Jack Daniels’ running calculator (http://www.runsmartproject.com/calculator/#modInt)

With the exception that Daniels’ easy pace is slower than Cloutier’s R1 pace, both authors prescribe almost identical paces for that given 10k race time.

Then I made correlations between some of Cloutier’s typical workouts and their equivalent using distance and Daniels’ pace chart.

Again, numbers speak for themselves.

To me it is simpler and more practical to run by time than by distance because the intervals can then be run just about anywhere. No track needed.

In Cloutier’s programs, unless specified, all running is done at R1 pace. That is warmup, rest between intervals, and cooldown. Rest time between intervals are almost always the same length as the intervals themselves.

For example, Tuesday’s workout was 40 minutes total, 4x90s reps at R4, 90s rest between intervals. This means I warmed up at R1 pace for, say, 12 minutes, then ran my first 90s interval at R4 pace, rested for 90s at R1 pace, did another repeat of 90s at R4, rested for 90 at R1, and so on until I was done with my 4 repeats. Then I ran at R1 (cool down) until I reached around 40 minutes. The equivalent workout in Daniels’ programs would have been something like 5 miles total, 4x200m at Interval speed.

The book is only available in French. At first I found it awkward not to think in distance. So I changed the default display on my watch to Pace and Time. Now, I don't miss distance anymore. But distance still makes sense to me in total per week or per month. I prefer to know I ran 74.3 km in the week instead of I ran for 6:26 hours.

That’s it. Just wanted to share this.