I haven't gotten around to Pfitz yet - I'm going to try once the semester is over, but I love the Jack Daniels' book. I use it as my general reference. Daniels is The Guy, in that he pioneered a lot of the original running research - nearly every other coach derives from him. Nothing especially deep to add to what you said, except that I think everyone should at least give it a look over. It explains a lot of the whys and hows of all the different types of training.

I finally got this book and I'm really pleased with it. Like some others have mentioned, Daniels has a very scientific approach, which suits me well. A couple things I found which I hadn't seen before: •Table for adjusting T-Pace for tempo runs longer than the classic 20 minutes •Treadmill speed/incline pace equivalence table. I like this one because my treadmill tops out at 10mph (6:00pace), but now I know what incline to set it to to approximate faster paces. Not that I would need that, but it's nice to know. I have the 2nd edition which introduced the White/Red/Blue/Gold general running plans (non-race-distance specific training plans), which were new to me, and valuable for off-season non-racing training. One concern I had was the lumping of 5k~15k training plans together in one group, and the half-marathon and marathon together in another . In my mind a more sensible grouping would be 5k/10k, 15k/HM, Marathon. 5k/10k are both run above LT, so I think you should train for them a little differently than you would for a 15k and HM. As a person who trains primarily for 5k/10k distances, I would have liked to see a little differentiation between the two races in the training program. Same thing for marathon and HM -- HM is much closer to 15k than it is to a marathon, so group these together. (though I do see his point about HM being >2~3h for some runners, and thus grouping it with the marathon). Overall, an excellent book and fantastic resource.

I'm a big fan of this book. I've used it as a reference for a couple of years now. I’m even in the middle of reading it form cover to cover now for the second time. There are some interviews with him on flotrack.com check the links out, some interesting stuff. http://www.flocasts.org/flotrack/speakers.php?sid=38&vid=5676 http://www.flocasts.org/flotrack/speakers.php?sid=38&vid=5706 http://www.flocasts.org/flotrack/speakers.php?sid=38&vid=5707 http://www.flocasts.org/flotrack/speakers.php?sid=38&vid=5708 http://www.flocasts.org/flotrack/speakers.php?sid=38&vid=6894

those reading it might find this usefull http://www.electricblues.com/archive/DanielsTables2-9.zip it is a spreadsheet (excell) and it basically takes in some information and computes all your paces... allows you to use his point system for training intesity... etc etc.. it is pretty cool... I also found these other online vdot calcs... Here is a good vdot calculator... http://www.runbayou.com/jackd.htm This is a really nice calculator that calculates vdot more precisely and also has elevation difference calculators to convert a hilly course to flat or vice versa... http://www.runworks.com/calculator.html This one creates your vo2 table with associated paces http://www.attackpoint.org/trainingpaces.jsp?dist=6.21371192+&units=miles&time=51%3A30