Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

On not getting injured/overtrained:

My theory on injury is that sub threshold speed doesn't need as much force from the leg muscles as vo2max or faster intervals, you can warm into threshold speed.

On overtraining perhaps because lactate production is low, therefore training weeks can be safely repeated and accumulated?

There is the neurological fatique i mentioned and referred a paper to it in this thread. It's seems to be not linear above some intensity.

As faster and longer you train as more strain/forces to the body. Shorter intervals seems to be better to avoid/reduce muscle damages with running. Possible not so crucial with cycling.

Fast twitch fibers need longer to recover, so the intensity matters.

And there is some evidence that too often high intensity training hinders mitochondrial development.

I don't actually think you have read the thread properly. Or don't understand it. Its way more in depth that that. There's no reps left on the table, they are being specifically targeted to work up to and finish around a certain mmol of lactate.

I don't think spoc84 who laid it all out on the table, runs anything marathon pace. It's quite a bit faster. In fact, some of it , maybe over half of it, is over threshold pace/velocity. But he's never going over threshold. This is very clever, measured and controlled.

Him as well have laid out ways , potentially runners can measure this training load and perhaps examples of why it's working. I don't think spoc, Hard2find, shirtboy, or others pretend to be scientists, but there's been plenty of citation of guys who are.

There is no backing off the quicker stuff. He doesn't do any apart from race. Again, it's not just a case of how most training works, where it's time to lay off the vo2 max stuff in training - there isn't any. At all.

This isn't double threshold. It's different. The intensity is probably even a little higher but a fraction, but still not over LT2. I personally loved the thread and while like others have mentioned I'm not convinced I could adopt it over night, it's one of the best laid out and clever repeatable systems I think I've ever seen.

I enjoy this thread. Very good. I have questions. You are hobby jogger, your times are better than a lot of lets run will run. I wonder, your age height and weight? It would give me idea of I think how good these times are. You say 17:27 and 35:50. I think this is quite impressive for times with no speedwork or vo2 specific sessions.

I hope you still posting in this thread. I have second question, you never tired and have to skip session? Or do you just do it anyway?

I agree with the sentiments expressed by a few of the above posters, this has been a great thread to engage in and read! Many of the best coaches are not academically trained in exercise science and it hasn't stopped them from developing their approaches and sharing that with others.

Regarding including VO2Max intervals or anything faster than LT (60 min race pace). I am not in line with sirpoc on that. I will include OCCASSIONAL workouts where I am running 5k-10k pace for 800m-1600m intervals, but this is usually when a few weeks out from a 5k-10k race and I have found that just 2-3 sessions are needed.

Regarding doing the threshold workouts, I think a way that people can conceptualize them is as follows. If you think of doing strides, say 100m strides at 1500m pace, in that 100m you build up very little, if any, significant lactate above your baseline, even though you’re running at 1500m speed. So, if the goal is to keep your blood lactate below your 60 min threshold level, say 3.5-4.0 mmol, you could construct a variety of workouts at paces faster than LT but done in short enough intervals and with proper recovery where your blood lactate never rises above your threshold but you accumulated a high volume of work at a speed faster than it.

I personally don’t take this approach as I find running at or slightly slower than LT is more productive for me, since I’m more 10k to marathon focused. However, it’s an idea to play around with for some, perhaps.

Also, in the least matter of fact tone possible, correct night owl!, I’m not a physiologist, but I am actually a scientist LOL

I really don't want to make this thread about me. I only really posted to serve as a guide of what works for me, now it seems to have taken on a life of its own. I didn't invent this training, I just laid it out in a way I think is probably understandable and doable, to an extent, even without a lactate meter. There will be guesswork involved, but for a hobby jogger I think you can get it good enough. For an elite, or sub elite, probably a little too much unknowns that I would only do it with a meter. But for 90+% of us, the way I laid out I think will yield good results. I combined how I trained as a cyclist to a pretty high level, to what I saw the older Ingebrigtsten brother doing. I didn't just make this up on the top of my head, it's a hybrid of stuff I've picked up over the years or just blatantly stolen, like how I came to the rep lengths for running.

I'm 39, almost 40. I'm 173cm and 67kg. Have been that weight since lockdown +-1kg, no change. I know I could lose weight. Peak cycling I was 60kg, sometimes slightly less. But I like beer, pizza and McDonald's too much ha ha

My local parkrun course has 3 dead turns and a long out and back stretch on gravel, if I can do sub 17 on this I'll be very happy. That's really my only training goal. The all time course record is a low 16 I think. I got my gun time for the 10k, was 35:41. So I would be quite happy with sub 35 maybe at some point as well as a target.

I don't think it's fair to say I do zero vo2 max stuff, as I do race parkrun quite often as has been covered. But no, I don't do any vo2 max sessions. Im touching on almost but not quite 10k pace in 25x400, but I don't run that very often. Maybe in the rotation once every 2-3 weeks. But, again, my lactate isn't crazy high for these or anything. Lactate very similar to the other longer reps but at a slower pace.

And I always do 3 sessions a week, no matter what. The third session is replaced on the Saturday by parkrun, if I do it. I added it up how often I did them the other day in post. Sunday my first ever 10k, was the session and did the rest of the week normal. I just actually had a rare occasion an extra easy day in a row before the 10k. Yesterday, was back to normal , easy day post 10k race and today I'll be straight back in later on with 6x1600 ready and loaded on my Garmin 😊

There's plenty you can learn from this thread not from me. There's a bunch of other guys who really know what they are talking about and have more running background than me.

And that VO2 work is probably a bit over rated for your average runner.

Which brings you right back to the schedule, philosophy and setup behind what we've used 14 pages describing in detail

What would you recommend for a 6 days a week schedule? Still 3 Q? Sounds a lot.

You probably could do 3Q for sure, but you could always slice that last Q up to be a long run with some faster pace in there Marathon/LT1 work.

Q, E, Q, E, Q, E, OFF is certainly doable.

I think it's been mentioned before, but give yourself a chance to build up to even this. It will take time to get the load and workouts correct and time for your body to adjust to the schedule.

Controlled threshold 3x a week is certainly doable. Most people might want to start with 2 Threshold and progress from that with a Third floater day if they are feeling good.

Shirtboy has given a perfectly good answer. He knows what he's talking about for sure so I won't add too much more.

Other than I would add, try and keep it in the 80/20 - 70/30 range of easy Vs sun threshold. I'm doing maybe 55 miles now I think at this point, but my sub threshold stuff has always been proportional to by easy work by somewhere between that ratio.

I've mentioned before, I've accounted for this as time in zone. Not by sessions as Seiler has categorised 80/20. He flip-flaps on this himself these days and seems even himself to accept either generalisation. For elites doing doubles sessions is probably a good guide, for hobby joggers on singles doing time crunched, time in zone probably just about works

Bro, train like a runner. On 6 days just do , tempo, long run and some vo2. Whatever really on the rest. Wheel doesn't need to be reinvented with this trash in this thread.

yeah train like a real man! someone seething with resentment for not reaching his full potential!

Dont listen to this actual trial and error, bro! Im still going through it myself because im going through it, too and need someone to talk about all the intense workouts and Strava accolades i once accumulated!

again, to the point of this whole thread, ‘tempo, long run and some vo2’

Why? why do you think that’s really worth your time? why do you need a long run or vo2? or for that matter a tempo run? start having some purpose to your runs and think about the actual demands of what your spending your time doing.

Unnecessary long runs and vo2 workouts a great way to dig stupid holes for yourself to climb out of.

Yeah that is the big take away of the last 20 years. More volume slightly slower. That is the bigger deal than if you do 2 30 min sessions or 1 45 min session.

I always found a very small volume of faster stuff (things like 200s at 1500m pace or even 15s hill sprints) once/week helped keep me feeling fast. But that didn't need to be a full workout. 4x200 at the end of a 30min temp or some hills after an easy run was enough.

Probably the best thread in 15 years, maybe 20. I started reading LRC around 2001.

I like the idea of gently pushing the envelope without getting hurt, and you can still get a LR in there for MP/HMP purposes.

Very informative and real-time training-based. Even for slower guys like me I can see the values of this, getting the 46 10k down to 42 or faster as a baseline with it over several months/years of training. And getting a 21 5k down to 18-19 and more competitive...

Glad I happened to visit LRC when this thread first popped up and have been following since.

I've been reading more and more lately emphasising the importance of LT-pace training, and taking serious interest in the Bakken/Ingebrigtsen approach. This discussion has generated some great lightbulb moments for me.

The talk of CTL, heart rate zones, maximising time at LT pace etc. has got me wanting to properly monitor changes in my own performance and fatigue metrics. Has anyone got any tips for how to get the most out of tools like Runalyze for this? I think it was sirpoc early on that mentioned he uses it.

Still a good track of your progress are time trials. Real performances. If you do that at different durations/distances you get a duration to speed profile.

Hi data nerd, your username suggests you have come to the correct thread 😂. I think there's quite a few people here who can help with different things, but I can definitely help with this.

I don't use runalyze, but I hugely recommend either Golden Cheetah for the PC version or use intervals icu for mobile (it's browser based, but works fantastic in mobile brave on my android).

This IMO will open things up to what is happening in your training. You'll start to see patterns and understand why you stagnate or when it's time to just do things like I suggested, like time to add on 5 mins here and there to easy runs before you add more reps. Intervals will also give you a visualisation and breakdown each week of your time in zone breakdown. This is hugely valuable. You can customise that breakdown in a number of ways.

I would suggest using time in zone, pace as the main metric, with heart rate as back up and also if you have a reliable and more modern watch, select in the pace settings in intervals icu , gradient adjusted pace.

You can use HR, I don't think it matters too much, you will see slightly different numbers. For me, it evens out (roughly) But the TSS per session seems slightly less for me in the easy runs by HR and slightly more in the workout sessions, than by pace. Overall, I mentioned the other day I have re evaluated the last few hundred runs and basically it ended up the same. Just stick to one though. Once you have picked , just stay with it.

Obviously pace isn't as good as a power meter in cycling, which is the ultimate tool , but I can still use the PMC (it's under the fitness tab in intervals, but the same thing) to index my current fitness) roughly to my training load. The main takeaway in basic terms for me, I could only make it to maybe around a CTL (FITNESS score in intervals icu) of 50, training a more traditional running approach, on around 6.5-7 hours a week. It was only as I started to train like this for the same hours, which made my CTL increase, for no more hours. So obviously I could experiment with how to push the envelope and understand why I have gotten faster.

You mention fatigue, FWIW, the fatigue/tsb score in general I've found quite accurate over the years. I once was cycling and really felt terrible from a training block, had a TSB of like -50. Over the years in cycling it gave me a pretty good idea of where I was at. I could train hard still on about -15 to -20 ish. So for me it was a good metric to use, as again I could index that score and use it for patterns over time. It was as good as telling me when I needed a break as my body. My issue was always I didn't want to believe my body, I was weak and could just push through. The numbers reigned me in. One more thing, training like this for running, you don't need to worry about this too much. I've never accumulated a fatigue score over -10, in intervals icu. That's primarily because this is so controlled, it's basically the same thing every week or at worst ramp it up a tiny bit. Cycling is a bit more variable, you might do some crazy 7 hours ride , it feels easy, but actually that load is huge under the hood and has trashed you in retrospect, more than your body initially tells you. You'd probably find this to be the case in running. That I could easy go out and run 75% of MHR for my long run, it might feel OK as an individual run in isolation, but actually if that becomes the easy standard over time, it will then grind you down (not horrifically I guess) but more than you realise.

Just make sure you are 100% sure you know your threshold pace to begin with and that you know your LTHR. Also, keep those updated the second you clearly know you have improved, through a face or time trial or whatever you benchmarks are likely to be.

Right, I was going to also post and bore everyone with what happened yesterday , as I got my wallet, bought some more lactate strips . Can't believe how expensive they have gotten 😭😂😂.