Topics from my running reading - Daniels' Running Formula

[Michelle Lowry]

I bought Daniels' Running Formula book by Jack Daniels.  I think any running book can have some great things for you to glean from.  But here are some issues that I have with this book (which are not all necessarily unique to this book), which I would love people to shed light on--and you don't need to have read the book to give me feedback:

1) Most running books categorize your fitness based off recent race times.  I have different race recent PR's and each one puts me at a different fitness level.  So should I go with my marathon pace, but adjusted for sea-level and flat, since I consider myself a marathoner?

2) He says intervals shouldn't be any longer than 5 minutes, and that cruise intervals are tempo paced but only allow for one - two minute rests.  So what if I want to do 1 or 1.5 mile repeats but I want to do them at 10K goal pace?  Is there no value to this type of work out?  If I do mile repeats at 6:15 (5K goal pace) I will certainly need more than 2 minutes rest in between (I would do 1/2 mile easy or about 5 minutes).  I used to do mile repeats frequently in college with 1/2 mile rest but Daniels' only has "cruise intervals" at lengths beyond 1200m and they are at marathon pace with short breaks between these intervals.

3) He has no mention of hill workouts.  He must live somewhere where it is flat.  Since we have so many hills, and there are some hills in almost every race, I would think hill training is important.  I don't see alot of hill repeats on peoples blogs.  I consider uphills a relative weakness and want to work on it.

[Sasha Pachev]

Comments on the points:

1) This is a good guideline, but I would not hold to it religiously. Go by how you feel. This is particularly important in Utah where you have a variety of racing courses and training altitudes.

2) Good ideas, but other coaches recommend other forms of intervals which violate the guidelines of 5 minutes, and have you run them at 10 K pace. E.g. one of Haile's workouts is 5x2000 at 10 K race pace.

3) Hill running has been an odd ball, at least for me. If I train on the uphill too much, I get slower running on flat, down, or up. If I do 70% down and 30% up, I become better on both down and up. At this point, my opinion is that if your form is good, and you have decent leg strength, you do not need specific uphill training to do well on uphill.

[Dallen]

Most of us probably violate the 5 minute rule when we do mile repeats, which I figure is okay. I think Danials mentions somethin about that in the book. (Sasha-I bet Haile's 2000 meter repeats are only a hair over 5 minutes, like a mile is for the rest of us.)

I do think that once you pass the mile length you are entering tempo run zone. I think he says the cruise intervals are a tempo pace, but the ruest is very short, about a minute, and is therefore mostly psychological to allow mental a breakup of the tempo run.