IRONMAN Run Training Q&A: M-Pace vs E-Pace, Managing injuries, Carbon Shoes & Cardiac Drift | Ep 596

All right then, let's get right into these questions and start talking about Ironman 70.3 run training.

Okay, so first question.

Is M pace going to be the same as my Ironman race day pace? So a little bit of background here, let's rewind.

The coaching system I use, uses legendary running coach Jack Daniels' VDOT run formula.

And all you need to understand about this is, He was an exercise physiologist who specialised in coaching runners and he found a way to backwards work athletes' fitness from their race results.

So rather than going into a lab and have your VO2 max tested and that then predicting a race score, he worked it the other way.

He studied literally thousands of runners He recorded what their VO2 max scores were.

He recorded the run paces that they produced in races and kind of did backwards analysis on those numbers.

And so he's got a really great system for two things.

Firstly, if you're wondering what would be a reasonable, you know, 10K time based on your 5K time, You can look at those in Daniel's run formula tables and it gives you a really good, pretty accurate lead as to how fast you can expect to go if you are properly prepared.

Very important thing.

And secondly, you can then train at some very specific paces that have got very specific rules.

reasons for doing so so just like you might train to power zones on the bike you can train to run paces on the run and typically the two kinds of run paces that are most specific to our 70.3 and our ironman triathletes are jack daniel's m pace which stands for marathon pace and jack daniel's e pace which stands for easy pace or endurance pace so a really common question here is It's called marathon pace.

Is that going to be the same as my Ironman race day marathon pace? So the answer here is no.

And this is an interesting aside with Daniel's running formula.

Daniel's marathon pace is a pace that you train at in training to prepare or you do sort of tempo runs at that pace to prepare for the demands of your marathon.

It is incredibly challenging for any age group athlete to run a marathon at end pace.

So I encourage you not to think of that as a realistic goal pace, if you like.

None of the runners I ever trained ever managed to hold end pace for a full marathon.

It's really useful to do blocks of tempo runs, if you like, slightly above what you'll end up running on marathon race day.

You'll do 20 minutes, 40 minutes, maybe 60 minutes in training if you're training for a pure standalone marathon.

But again, we never saw any of the marathon runners actually reach that in training.

And I think the reason is Daniels was a run coach working with elite marathon runners.

And so these guys were running 120, 140 miles a week.

If you are incredibly well conditioned like that, then I think it's possible for you to hit M pace in a standalone marathon.