 It's time for another book review. This time we're reviewing one of the most important books ever written on running. We are looking at Daniels Running Formula by Jack Daniels PhD. Let's get it on. All right guys, you know I read a lot of books and that's why I want to share them with you and I think you should read a lot of books too. That's it's just an excellent way to learn and be inspired about anything really. What I do is I go through a lot of books but there are a few books that I keep looking back to, keep referring back to and the main one is this one. Jack Daniels is one of the most legendary running coaches in history. You know his principles are building, you know, he has his own principles to a large degree, but it's it's similar to Arthur Lydia type principles. Without getting into that, he's a renowned coach and I personally believe in his methods a lot and they've worked for a lot of people and those methods are explained very well in this book. So let's talk about the book. Daniels Running Formula. Why is it called a formula? Well, you know, there are different types of books. Some are for just beginners, just wanting to get into running, learn some basics. Others focus more on exercise physiology, hard core science and this one, I would say, is a very practical book for the series runner. Particularly if you're into track, but all the way up to the marathon really, there's training plans in here from, you know, 1500 meter training, 800 meter training even, up to the marathon. So it's really for all types of long-distance runners, not really for sprinters, but for middle to long-distance runners and starts out by just going through some basic principles of exercise physiology, the contents, the names of the chapters are as follows. One, the ingredients of success. Two, training principles and running technique. Three, aerobic training profiles. Then training runs and intensities, V dot values, season training, fitness training, 800 meter training, 1500 to 2 mile training, 5K, 10K, cross country, half marathon, marathon, etc. So there's a lot of stuff to learn here. Chapter five though, V dot values. That's probably the core of this book and the core of Jack Daniels's coaching philosophy. V dot refers to essentially VO2 max, the maximum amount of oxygen that your body can use for for running or for performing muscular work. So when you're talking about VO2 max, maximum aerobic sort of capacity, we're talking about milliliters of oxygen per kilo per body weight and there's a little dot across over the V there, indicating that it's a minute volume and that's the dot. So Jack Daniels basically coined the phrase V dot, but essentially refers to VO2 max. And what he has done is that he's looked at statistics over for a lot of runners and he's just and coupled that with his knowledge in exercise physiology, he's an exercise physiologist. He's come up with these tables called the V dot tables. And they are the core of this book because they predict based on your race times all the way down to like a mile time, based on your mile time, you can essentially predict your marathon time. And this is this is a well known fact with an exercise physiology that there is a correlation between race times. So if your mile time, for example, is, you know, 457, if you can run a sub five minute mile, then chances are you can run a marathon in 243 approximately. And your VO2 max is likely around 60 milliliters of oxygen per kilo per body weight. So these tables, super cool. I refer back to them all the time. They're awesome to refer to. And based on those, based on where you fall within that table, you can then take a look at your training intensities, you know, where what's my pace for a threshold session? What should my pace be for an interval session, training VO2 max, that sort of thing? It gives you a starting point. You know, everyone's different. And based on your economy, how much oxygen you use to run a kilometer, for example, you might not fall exactly on those numbers, but it gives you a starting point to start thinking somewhere around this type of pace is probably my marathon pace, for example. And then you keep adjusting it as you learn more about your body. So basically, the book, as I said, just goes through some basics in exercise physiology and starts talking then eventually about training, right, like easy running. What does it mean to be running easy? What does it mean to run at threshold pace? What does it mean to run at interval pace, repetition pace? He talks about different paces and different types of workouts. And one of his key principles is knowing the purpose of a workout rather than just doing a lot of things. You want to know the purpose of each workout and then work specifically on those systems that you're looking to stimulate. So, you know, when you're when you're training threshold, you don't want to run at the other max, then you're not going to be able to accumulate enough time at your threshold. You want to run a little easier and find that perfect threshold pace. So you can hold that for 20 minutes in a tempo run or something like that. Right. So he's very particular in that sense. And this book will really show you have to do that. Also talks about how to build a training plan for yourself or someone else. If you're a coach. So I use this all the time when I'm coaching people up so far. I've done a few coaching sessions with three people so far that I've, you know, created training plans for and help them, you know, train towards a half marathon or something like that. And in that process, when I'm building training plans, I'm using this book as a guide, you know, referring to those tables and that sort of thing. By the way, if you're interested in coaching via Skype and you can just send me an email at coaching at sweet natural living.com. Coaching at sweet natural living.com. Just write running coaching in the, in the, in the subject line. And we can talk about some prices and stuff like that. You know, this book, I wouldn't really say that maybe this is the book to get if you're not so ambitious runner, just looking to run for fitness, just running for health. You just like to run. But if you're looking for performance, if you're looking to, you know, optimize your training, and especially if you're a cross-country athlete in school, like high school or something like that, or track and field, that sort of thing. This book will really show you how to plan a week, you know, with all the cross-country races during the fall season and how to sort of, how to put those races into your week and used them as a workout. And you know, if you have a race during a week, should you do other quality sessions that week, or maybe you should do less, you know, trying to sort of juggle intensities and, and mileage and all that stuff. That's, that's, that's a really valuable point that you'll learn from this book. Preparing for the race, marathon training. And also it's very specifically based on your mileage, which is obvious. Like Jack Daniels knows that, you know, depending on your total mileage and depending on your speed, there'll be different rules to follow. Right? Sort of guidelines like interval training shouldn't make up more than 8% of your total mileage, for example. That's a great guideline. Okay. I'm not going to go above 8% of my total mileage for the week in terms of that type of intensity and et cetera, et cetera. I'm not going to go through this whole philosophy. We could do that in another video, but really just excellent, excellent book, really well written, really enjoyable to read for me anyway. That's, you know, I'm a super exercise physiology geek, so I like reading it, but it's practical. You know, it's not overly focused on the physiology aspect of running. It's practical. It gets into those how to train type of questions. And certainly now that I'm just starting, you know, I've just started my first half marathon build up ever for me. It's nice to just have something to go by when I head to the track and, and run intervals, you know, how, how fast should I run a 400 meter? Well, okay. My mileage is, you know, I'm running about 60 kilometers per week. So the session can be this big in terms of volume and my current, my last 10 K I ran this fast. Okay. So my VO2 max is probably around there. And then, okay. So this type of pace, that's what I should aim for. That gives me a lot of, of, of guidance. It's almost like having a coach, right? This book is a coach in itself. So get the book. And of course, if you want to buy this book, I'll put a link in the description. There's an affiliate link. You can buy it off Amazon. I'll get a little bit of a commission for sending you there if you choose to buy, but the price remains the same for you. I bought this book by my own money. It's not sponsored or anything like that. I'm not sponsored, but I love this book and I would recommend it to anyone serious about their running. Go ahead and check out that link. Let me know in the description if you read this book. And if you haven't, maybe you have another book that you really like that you want to share with me, tell me all about it in the comments. Please subscribe. Of course, if you want more book reviews, more gear reviews, more training talks, running blogs, all that cool, good stuff. And I wish you happy running. Feel free to contact me for any questions at any time. You can do it in the comment section or you can send me, as I said, an email at coaching at sweetnaturalliving.com. If you're looking to get some advice, maybe a coaching session, just talking about some general stuff that you can do to improve your running fitness. Hope you're having a good day. Thanks for watching. Bye now.