Daniels' Running Formula (part 1)

I've been reading "Daniels' Running Formula" (the second edition), by Jack T. Daniels, Ph.D. This book has been out for years and really doesn't need a critical review at this point - you should just accept it as a classic guide to effective training for runners.  I would like to share some thoughts and observations I made when I rediscovered this book over the recent holidays.

Coach Daniels has gotten plenty of accolades as a coach.  As an athlete himself (a pentathlete at the 1956 and 1960 Olympic Games) and with a long history of coaching and helping a lot of runners perform their best, it's great that he managed to capture that experience and training philosophy so well in this book.  I get special pleasure from the fact that that he coached at State University of NY Cortland for years - my wife's family lived in McGraw, NY just on the other side of the highway, and our visits to the area always included visits to Cortland.

As a sports physiologist, Coach Daniels uses VDOT as a real-world metric of an individuals ability to perform.  Over the years I've been tempted to visit a sports lab and discover my own VO2 max level, knowing it correlates with the best possible performance I can expect to achieve in my own running.  Coach Daniels' VDOT number incorporates VO2 max and also includes the runners pace (velocity) at VO2 max to come up with a more useful indication of a runner's ability.  VDOT takes the scientific purity of a laboratory VO2 max measurement, and adds all the other variables in - especially how efficient a runner is, and the terrain, weather, ability to manage physical resources during an event, emotional state-of-mind, willingness to suffer discomfort, and others.

You can determine your own current VDOT number based on recent best performance (no sports lab visit needed!) using tables in Coach Daniels' book, and then use your VDOT number to determine your most effective training pace and level of effort for optimum improvement.  The core of this book is about using VDOT - actually planning training efforts measured as time spent at some percentage of your VDOT - as the basis of developing training plans for distances up to the marathon.

The last few years my own training has been centered on recording mileage. This book has reminded me that I might be able to train a lot smarter than just continuing the quest for higher weekly mileage totals.  I'll continue in my next blog with some 'bullet' points sampling some of Coach Daniels' insights, and possibly my efforts to translate it all into an effective training plan.