Who’s behind this review? Buena Vida is a running app made by David Cole, a Seattle runner & triathlete who led design and research for Amazon’s Halo fitness band. Every plan here, including Buena Vida’s, is scored on the same 30 measures, each tied to published research. AI does the first scoring and draft, then every claim is checked against its studies. No plan author pays to be reviewed, and we run no ads. See a mistake? Email David at corrections@buenavida.run · How we score →
This marathon plan from Jack Daniels is an 18-week build that measures every run in minutes instead of miles. Daniels was an exercise physiologist who studied under Per-Olof Åstrand and later worked as Nike's physiologist, and he won two Olympic team medals in modern pentathlon. Amby Burfoot, as editor of Runner's World, named him "the world's best running coach." In his book, every kind of run has a job in the body, and every effort is set by a race you've actually run.
If you've ever suspected that mileage plans keep slower runners on the road too long, this one agrees with you. Each week has one big day, set by the clock, with six easy hours around it, and the big day is well chosen. But through 17 build weeks the shape never changes and there's no lighter week, and the long run stops at 2½ hours, short of the marathon for most of the runners it's written for.
Decent
| Structure | 3 | |
| Prevention | 4 | |
| Flexibility | 4 | |
| Readiness | 4 | |
| Variety | 5 |
The plan runs 18 weeks, and the schedule prints a run on every day. Six of them are an easy hour. The seventh is the week's one big day: a Sunday long run of 2 to 2½ hours, or a hard session on Thursday. A few of those Thursdays carry a long easy run on the end, so the hard day and the long run become the same run. Each effort is looked up in the book's tables from a recent race result. The book lets you turn an easy day into a rest day now and then.
It's written for runners who already run about 40 miles a week and can handle 2-hour runs. There's no easing in: the first week is as full as the rest.
A week on the clock
Here is week 7, from the middle of the plan.
MONDAY is an hour of easy running, slow enough to hold a conversation.
TUESDAY is another easy hour.
WEDNESDAY is the same again.
THURSDAY is the week's one big day. After a 5-minute warm-up, you run 60 minutes at marathon effort, then go straight into 15 minutes at threshold, a hard effort you could sustain in a race lasting about an hour.
FRIDAY is an easy hour.
SATURDAY is an easy hour.
SUNDAY is an easy hour as well.
That's 7 runs and 1 hard day. This week has no long run at all: Thursday's 80 minutes is the longest thing you'll do.
Thursday turns on a single minute. At the 60-minute mark you've held a steady, controlled effort for an hour, and now the plan asks you to shift up a gear on legs that already have an hour in them. If you ran the first hour a little too eagerly, the last 15 minutes come apart. If you ran it right, you finish with the best preview of the back half of a marathon this plan offers: tired, still moving well, still in control.
The other six days are simpler, and that's their danger. Six identical easy hours invite drift, a little faster each morning until they're no longer easy. Thursday depends on them staying easy. Friday's hour, on legs still carrying Thursday's 80 minutes, is where you'll feel whether they have been.
A simple test: on Wednesday, the day before the big one, you should finish the hour feeling you could run another. If you couldn't, slow the easy days down.
Does it build you up smartly?
The right work is there at the finish, but the plan never moves from one stage of training to the next. That's its weakest area.
Most marathon training changes as it goes. Easy aerobic running comes first, harder work gets layered on top, and race-specific running arrives near the end. Shifting the emphasis from one block of weeks to the next tends to work better than holding one kind of training throughout, though the edge the research finds is small.
This plan rotates the same four kinds of big day from the first week to the seventeenth: a long run, threshold repeats with a long easy run attached, a long block at marathon effort, and a session that moves from threshold to faster repeats. The marathon-effort block stretches from 60 minutes to 80, and the long run settles at its full 2½ hours in weeks 13 and 15. From week 13 on, marathon effort and threshold running fill most weeks, which suits the last stretch before a marathon. But the training in week 15 is the same kind as the training in week 3. Several hard days also stop at the last hard minute, with no cool-down written in.
Daniels had a reason for building it this way. In his system every run has a named purpose, and here the stress comes from one purposeful session a week, with easy running around it rather than extra miles piled on. When the work holds steady, your body has weeks to settle into it. And the sessions are well aimed: each has a stated job, and the week 10 race, if you choose to run it, is a real test of where you stand. But a plan that asks the same thing for 17 weeks gives your body few new demands once the rotation is familiar.
Does it protect you from injury?
Mostly. Day to day the load is gentle, but the build gives your body no lighter week to step back in.
Much of it is done well. There's one hard day a week, so hard days never land back to back, and most of the running is easy. The weekly load moves in small steps, and no single run reaches far past the ones before it, so the plan stays clear of the sudden jumps in running load that tend to raise injury risk. The one week to watch is week 10: the load rises most there, and a new kind of effort, a race of up to 25K, can arrive in the same week.
The steadiness raises a different question. With a run printed on every day and no lighter week to break the build up, your heart and lungs tend to respond within weeks, but tendons and bone usually take months to catch up. Most plans back off for a lighter week every 3 to 5 weeks, a spacing that comes from coaching practice. The reason behind it is sound: load that builds with no relief tends to raise injury and illness risk, so a fixed plan needs that relief written in. This build has none, so taking an easier few days when you need them is up to you.
Two other protections sit in the book rather than on the calendar. Daniels set out a detailed strength program, but no strength session appears anywhere in the 18 weeks, so building it into your week falls to you. That gap matters, since strength training lowers sport-injury risk, and by more than stretching alone. The book also has clear tables for coming back after time off, but it says little about the moment before that, when a lingering ache first shows up. Early evidence, not yet from runners, suggests an ache like that may raise the odds of an injury that stops you running. With an easy hour printed on every day, it's tempting to run straight through one.
What happens when you miss a day?
When a week goes sideways, the most useful thing a plan can do is make the choice obvious.
This plan's shape does a lot of that work. With one big day a week, it's easy to see which run to protect, even though this schedule never sets out an order for what to drop. The easy hours are the give in the system, and running by the clock helps: on a tired day, an easy hour covers less ground than usual and still counts in full.
The efforts are a real strength. Every hard session is tied to a recent race through the book's tables, which turn one result into a full set of training efforts, from easy running to the fastest repeats. Effort zones anchored to your own physiology work better than generic formulas, and the book explains what each one does in your body. When you race again, you look up new numbers and the whole plan moves with you.
But the plan goes silent when the big day itself is missed. Nothing says whether to move Thursday's session later in the week, drop it, or repeat the week, and the book's tables for time off are written for longer breaks than a lost Thursday.
Will it get you ready for race day?
Not fully. The plan trains the right engine for a marathon, but the long run stops short and the taper is brief.
The long run is printed as 2 to 2½ hours and reaches its full length in weeks 13 and 15. For most runners who fit this plan, that covers somewhere in the mid-teens of miles. Week 16 adds a run of nearly the same length with 80 minutes at marathon effort inside it, and the week 10 race adds distance if you take the race rather than the workout option. But early evidence links longer long runs with faster marathons, though no study has tested whether shorter, harder sessions could do the same job. On race day, a good third of the distance will lie past anything the plan has asked of you. The clock is fair to slower runners, since no one is sent out for far longer than anyone else. But the slower you run, the fewer miles 2½ hours covers, so the runners the cap protects are the ones who meet the most new ground on race day.
But the taper is brief as well. The two weeks before race week still hold big days: the long marathon-effort run, then threshold repeats with a long easy run after them. Only race week itself backs off. Runners who ease off for 1 to 3 weeks before a race tend to race better than runners who hold their training steady, and a single week sits at the short end of that.
What the plan does well, it does very well. Threshold running appears in most weeks from week 2 to race week, alongside long blocks at marathon effort. For most recreational runners, marathon effort and threshold running are different kinds of training, and either is a reasonable way to prepare, with no study showing one beats the other. This plan gives you plenty of both. The long marathon-effort blocks that finish at threshold are true rehearsals: an hour or more of race rhythm, then a harder push on tired legs, the way the last miles of a marathon feel.
Are the workouts varied enough?
Yes. The big day changes character from one week to the next, and the easy days stay truly easy.
Some weeks it's threshold repeats with a long easy run after them. Others it's an hour or more at marathon effort with a harder finish, or a session that climbs from threshold through shorter, faster repeats near 5K and mile effort. Week 14 brings the hardest day in the plan: 73 minutes at threshold, in five blocks running from 20 minutes down to 6.
Around 87 percent of the running is easy, a sensible balance for an 18-week build. It follows the pattern trained runners tend to do well on, with easy days kept easy and hard days clearly hard, and mixing easy running with several kinds of hard effort may build endurance a little better than long stretches at a steady medium effort.
Because the same kinds of session come back every few weeks, you get to meet them again. The marathon-effort day returns in week 11, 20 minutes longer, and how those last 15 minutes at threshold feel after week 7's version tells you what the month in between was worth.
The good & bad of training from a book
Daniels' Running Formula is a teaching book as much as a schedule, and every run in it comes with a reason. The minutes version brings its own freedom: you need a watch, not a measured route, and any road or trail will do.
But the schedule is written in Daniels' shorthand, a string of letters and minutes for each big day, and the efforts behind those letters live in tables elsewhere in the book. Before each hard session, you translate: which effort each block asks for, how long the jogs between them last, where the easy running starts. After a few turns of the rotation, most of that is memorized. The book also asks for strides, short relaxed bursts of speed, on 2 or 3 easy days a week, but none appear on the schedule, so remembering them is up to you.
The week 10 race does double duty. Race it, and the result gives you fresh numbers from the book's tables for the last 8 weeks, so the hardest sessions are set to the runner you are by then.
Is it right for you?
Run it. That's the bar the book sets for this plan.
Run it. Every run is in minutes, so a slow day just covers less ground.
Look elsewhere. The long run stops at 2½ hours, short of that for most runners.
Look elsewhere. The schedule prints a run every day for 17 weeks, with no lighter week between.
Think it over. Every effort is read off a race. Run one first, or the hard days are guesswork.
Think it over. The same four kinds of big day rotate from week 1 to week 17.
A good alternative with an app
If Daniels' focus on threshold running appeals to you, Buena Vida has an 18-week plan for its members, for runners at a similar weekly mileage, with tempo running at its center. It asks for 2 hard days a week instead of 1, and it fills in what this plan leaves out.
Closest matchWhy this plan scores higher
- Training that changes as race day nears, from base building through a sharpening phase to a two-week taper before race day
- A lighter week every fourth week through the build, in weeks 4, 8 and 12, so the work never piles up for long without relief
- Every hard session written out in full, with a warm-up, the main work, a cool-down and a note on what it's for
- Long runs that build from 14 miles to 22, with seven runs of 20 miles or more before the taper
- Strides on easy days from week 3, already on the calendar
- Strength sessions on your calendar every Friday until race week, on the one day each week kept free of running
What the app adds
- No complicated lookup tables. Each day's workout is clear and easy to follow
- Paces worked out from your own fitness, and adjusted automatically as you get stronger
- Miss a run, move a run, and the plan carries on
- Voice coaching through every workout, and runs recorded from your iPhone, Apple Watch, or Garmin
Get more out of your running with Buena Vida
Buena Vida was built by a runner to bring the whole job of training into one place: a plan that fits your schedule and your fitness, coaching on every run, and food targets that keep up with the work you do. Members get personal training & nutrition plans, plus full access to the catalog of pre-written plans for every running goal.
In research studies, runners on plans fit to them improved as much as or more than runners on fixed plans, and fewer of them stalled.
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More plans like this
Each of these plans takes its own route to race day. Effort-based plans, like the Buena Vida plan above, set your hard sessions by feel, so you learn what 10K effort and tempo feel like, and your training paces grow with you as you get stronger. Time-goal plans set every pace from the finish time you're aiming for. Others trade days, weeks, or mileage to fit your life.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I need the book to run the Daniels marathon plan in time?
- Yes. The schedule gives each run a type and a number of minutes, but how hard to run each type lives in tables in Daniels' Running Formula. You look yourself up there with a recent race result. Without both, the hard days have no target.
- What is VDOT in the Daniels plan?
- VDOT is a fitness score Daniels built his tables around. You find yours from a recent race result, and the tables turn it into a training effort for every kind of run, from easy running (E) to marathon pace (M), threshold (T), and faster intervals and repeats (I and R). You need it for this plan, because the schedule gives you minutes but not paces.
- Why is the Daniels marathon plan measured in minutes instead of miles?
- Every run is a set amount of time, so a slower runner covers less ground and a faster runner covers more. Two runners on the same plan put in the same hours of work, whatever their speed.
- How many days a week does the Daniels marathon plan in time run?
- 7. Six of them are an easy hour, and one is the week's key session or long run. The book lets you turn an easy day into a rest day now and then.
- Is the Daniels marathon plan in time good for a first marathon?
- Only if you're already fit. It's written for runners who run about 40 miles a week and can handle 2-hour runs.
- Does the Daniels marathon plan include strength training?
- No. The book has a detailed strength program, but none of it appears on the schedule. Choosing the days and building each workout falls to you.
- Does the Daniels marathon plan have recovery weeks or a taper?
- There's no lighter week in the 17 build weeks. The running eases off in race week, after two of the plan's biggest sessions in the fortnight before it.
- What happens if I miss a week of the Daniels plan?
- Daniels' book covers longer breaks: its tables say how much fitness to expect back and how much to run when you return. For a single missed week, the plan leaves the call to you. With one big day a week, that's usually the run worth getting back to first.
Research notes
- Shifting training emphasis beats unchanging training
- Sharp running-load jumps raise injury risk
- The body adapts on a staggered clock
- Fixed plans need built-in lighter weeks
- Strength training lowers injury risk
- Niggles often warn of a bigger injury
- Build training zones around effort, not age
- Longer long runs go with faster marathons
- A real taper sharpens you for race day
- Recreational marathon pace sits below threshold
- Threshold or race pace: neither proven better
- Keep easy days easy, hard days hard
- Mix easy and hard instead of steady medium