If Daniel's and Pfitz are outdated..then where do I look for modern training plans?

Almost right HRE. The first chapter is 'Speed that Endures', but it does indeed include a section called 'How to Use This Book'.

I'd second any recommendations for Squires type training. I ran my marathon pb following the book for the last couple of months and I just felt smooth. In fact I'm in the process of rebuilding after some time out, and the book is literally right next to me as I speak to help me plan.

Hodgie-San had a collection of logs from Squires' coachees (himself included) that are very worthwhile perusing if they're still available on the wayback machine (can't remember the full link but pretty sure the hosting site was bunnhill.com or similar - hopefully somebody will chip in with the details).

Be quiet, Jan.

I would second this. I went into that thread with rolled eyes but came out of it with a new style of training that I am used to. I've been running 27 years and at 52 I'm as good now as I was in my 30s. After 6 months of following sirpoc84 and that thread almost stride for stride.

There's often people who whilst not pros, are way ahead of the curve, I think he is one of them. It helps that he is not a runner, so has none of the bias of the "BuT wHaT WoUlD DaNiElS SaY" attitude. Also, the best thing is you can literally keep it totally simple or if you strive for getting the absolute most out of things, you can look to delve deep into the metrics of it. There's something for everyone and it's as close to a one sized fits all approach as I've seen for the Hobby Jogger ™️.

There's very few who have tried this who haven't improved. Whereas coaching books, especially Stateside, tend to be more like a scatter-gun approach. Yes some people will get fast, but you break a lot of eggs along the way. For every success story there is someone who is broken by the fast speed work and too much moderate running, much like in the college system (as a generalisation). That just doesn't seem to be the case with the approach in that thread. For context, I'm 52, not particularly fast, but just recently set a HM PB of 1:19. Previously a huge Daniels guy, whose early edition had got me to 1:23 over a decade or so ago. I can legitimately say for me, that thread was the difference maker, but it took a lot to get past my hangups of a totally different mindset and to being a bit of a slave to my watch. But I can honestly say it was worth it.

My wife runs faster than those times and sometimes I wonder wtf her training plan is haha. Getting in the weeds about which training plan is best or the most “modern” is almost a complete waste of time when you could be out running! It’s the same in many sports (especially with YouTube/TikTok pulling your attention) where you have to choose between being into training/instructional theories or being into the competing. Take a training framework and commit to getting out and running a lot and it for it to be hard some days. You’ll keep getting faster, I promise.

Honestly, I think if you follow a simplified version of Daniels you'll improve (at your level).

Build a base, add in tempo runs, do hills, get into some track work.

Thanks. I knew I'd need to find the book to know for sure where that "How to Use" bit was. Hodgie's website is still around:

Related to the topic of this thread I remember Bob once telling me that running is a very simple sport that many people want to complicate.

I've always assumed that JD's training worked better the closer you are to elite. The "formula" was calibrated with data from elite runners of that era. People that say it works well with little modification, I assume are fast dudes.

it wasnt until my second decade of running when i realised that as long as you adapt to the following training schedule you dont really need a plan.

1 - slowly build your base to accommodate the miles needed to handle the training for the goal distance

2- build your long run while running as normal

3- once your long run is established add one day of fast running and one day of hills to your schedule. add recovery days where you feel comfortable: example: |sunday-long| |tuesday - fast| |thursday - hills| |saturday-easy| [monday or wednesday can be a recovery day]

this has always worked for me; pre-covid i was a competitive local runner. not fast by any means, but fast enough to place at races which was more than enough for me.

Appreciate this link. Great stuff.

Whatever, you read today will be outdated in 10 years. I would find something that works for you and stick with it. I still think Arthur Lydiard had it right. Daniel's is decent. I don't know pfitz. I also really liked Steve Magness' book Science of Running especially later chapters. The first chapters were heavier Science and I had to read them several times to get them.

What does Daniel have that is outdated?

Pfitz is basically Lydiard. He was even on the board of the Lydiard Foundation at one stage (and possibily still is).

I saw somewhere that Squires based a lot of his approach on Lydiard principles. From my experience of both there is certainly a large overlap in approaches, but I think Squires' surge long runs prepare you better for racing a marathon than Lydiard's approach did.

IMO Lydiard is fantastic for 10km down, but doesn't quite get it right over the marathon (something he acknowledged himself).

@HRE - thanks for the link. Good to know it's still around.

Arthur and Bill got along well and really respected each other. I remember Arthur telling me both of them thought it was funny that Arthur, who'd been a marathoner, had his best success coaching track guys and Bill, who'd been a mid distance guy, had his best success coaching marathoners.

Can someone please point us to a specific reply or replies in that thread? Or even just a page or two? It's 105-pages long!

Sorry, previous post didn't attach quote -- reference is to the "Modifying the Norwegian approach" thread:

For me, the real value of Daniels is not the formula tables. It's how he describes the template of building a training plan and the purpose for each type of training. He walks you through the purpose of each phase and how the work together and progress through the training cycle. So for me, the process is more relevant that the particulars.

Once you understand that, you can use these example workouts as potential building blocks, then start to experiment, evaluate, and refine how they work together.

Then you realize that there are others (double T, Pfitz, Lydiar, etc) that have their own ideas that can be mixed & matched with any of the others as long as you mostly understand their purpose and how they fit into a bigger picture.

P.S. I do like the Daniels tables to get you in the right ballpark. And I do think they are useful if you don't adhere to a strict horizontal line across the chart.

Great post.

To be honest, you should read the thread. It's as good as most books you could read on my own viee. Even if it takes you a few days. It's kinda of broken down into the principles of what to do, the theory behind it and why , then how you can use your own data to shape your training and then other general insights. It's as simple or as complicated you want to make it, but I think those who follow it have had the best results of seen in the history of LRC in the sense, just about all who followed it have improved in some way. Often significantly, or back to past beats that were behind them , or so they thought.

Do you mean twice a week, or every other week? If I could run my goal pace for 12mi twice a week, I would be making my goal pace faster.