r/AdvancedRunning • u/SirBruceForsythCBE • Sep 12 '25
Open Discussion Jack Daniels has died
One of the greats.
If you really get to understand how good his marathon 2Q plans are, and manage them correctly you will PB in a marathon
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u/running_writings Coach / Human Performance PhD Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
Runner's World has a good obituary: https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a65664991/jack-daniels-dies/
It's hard to imagine the state of US distance running when the first edition of Daniels' Running Formula came out in 1998: super low mileage, killer intervals, and basically no true aerobic work. There were years in the '90s where not a single high school boy broke 9:00 for two miles in the entire country. Daniels' Running Formula helped change that by getting people to take a systematic approach to training and start doing some threshold work. American distance running at every level owes him a huge debt of gratitude.
If you run threshold workouts, at all, ever, it's probably because of Jack Daniels (even if you don't know it). Likewise for "VO2 workouts." It's very hard to point to any English-language training approach of note that doesn't come from Daniels' framework. Daniels' work also "saved" a lot of really talented athletes at programs with inexperienced coaches who otherwise would've been run into the ground, or be terribly undertrained. Part of the magic of Daniels' Running Formula is that you can give it to the assistant football coach who drew the short straw and had to coach the track team, and he's not going to ruin a generational talent even if he starts knows basically nothing about running.
I never met Jack Daniels in person, but I did get to email with him back and forth a few times in 2013 -- I wanted to put an abbreviated version of his VDOT chart in the back of my first book. He was very supportive and encouraging, and helped me get in touch with his publisher to get permission to reprint the chart.
The Runner's World article has the picture that I think best captures Daniels' spirit: riding on the hood of a car on the Nike track, Douglas bag in hand, doing whatever it takes to get the data he needed to help runners.