After reading through the entire thread and joining the Strava group, I decided to do an audio summary of this method of training for The Running Shorts Podcast. I know it’s not as exciting as getting to hear from the man himself but I’ll leave the interviewing to someone more skilled than me, with a better voice, and with a more technical/professional setup.
At age 39, Sirpoc’s story has directly impacted and inspired me and it’s great to see so many others having success with it too. Thank you sirpoc and thank you LR community.
Good old. You should get sirpoc on. Have a Q&A. Something like that. I think it would be really good. Questions are going to keep arising. Some with more merit than others. You have done this thread justice up to this point IMO would feel like a natural progression.
This thread isn't about your useless method. Reported.
I just answered a post in the thread who asked for the best way to handle the recovery ' interval' when running threshold intervals.I have of course the right with my longtime expertice to comment such a post/ question. My comment was not about my successful method, just refered to what I have found out by long experience is the smartest and most effective way to handle the recovery 'interval' between the threshold reps.What I told can help alot of runners reading this and maybe test it out and even more get more success with their running.Won't cost them a penny to try it out.
I just answered a post in the thread who asked for the best way to handle the recovery ' interval' when running threshold intervals.I have of course the right with my longtime expertice to comment such a post/ question. My comment was not about my successful method, just refered to what I have found out by long experience is the smartest and most effective way to handle the recovery 'interval' between the threshold reps.What I told can help alot of runners reading this and maybe test it out and even more get more success with their running.Won't cost them a penny to try it out.
Sad to see a great coach such as JS not get the respect he deserves. His long time African stars show his method can work even remotely.
Of course, sirpoc does not tell the whole story and unfortunately you all fall for his tricks. With the Dancan system being the successful approach we know works, it is for sure known the British fraud sirpoc will be doing some of this magic pace work. Even then, 15:40 is very unimpressive. Even for a 40+ master very average at best.
Sad to see a great coach such as JS not get the respect he deserves. His long time African stars show his method can work even remotely.
Of course, sirpoc does not tell the whole story and unfortunately you all fall for his tricks. With the Dancan system being the successful approach we know works, it is for sure known the British fraud sirpoc will be doing some of this magic pace work. Even then, 15:40 is very unimpressive. Even for a 40+ master very average at best.
I don't know what competition is like in your country, but in my country in central Europe 15:40 on the road in 40+ category would put you in position to podium at masters champs. Maybe my country is weak?
I've still got some confusion about the paces I should run (for example a 4 minute rep).
For 17:52 5k daniels threshold is 6:10 and tinmans is 6:10, but going off the below my 12-15k pace is around 5:55-6:00.
25x400 is probably around 98-99% of Tinman's CV. 10x1k is around 12-15k pace. 5x2k is around HM pace. 6x1600 right around 10 mile pace.
If this thread shows runners one and only one thing, it is to err on the side of caution. Remember that in the Norwegian method (or this adaptation) it's NOT about threshold running.
It's sub threshold running that is sustainable over the long term. . So why not run 6:20 for those reps ?
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
I've still got some confusion about the paces I should run (for example a 4 minute rep).
For 17:52 5k daniels threshold is 6:10 and tinmans is 6:10, but going off the below my 12-15k pace is around 5:55-6:00.
25x400 is probably around 98-99% of Tinman's CV. 10x1k is around 12-15k pace. 5x2k is around HM pace. 6x1600 right around 10 mile pace.
The confusion is from people not using a universal system. Since we are of significantly different capabilities, especially when we look at world class athletes too, the comparisons to race times fall apart. The more important metric is what paces you can hold for certain durations like 30mins (CV pace), 60mins, etc.
Like look at HM pace. For a world class runner that’s very close to a 60min race. So their HM pace is the pace they can hold for 60mins. If you run a 90+ min HM, then your HM pace is a significantly different intensity and will have a significantly different effect when you train at that pace.
When people here are putting workout paces in terms of race paces, it’s inevitably individualized, not a flawless universal recommendation.
Similarly, if you measure the intervals by distance rather than duration, then you are running much longer intervals than the elites. A 400m rep can end up being nearly 2mins long for a runner in this thread, whereas Jakob is running it in just over a minute. You’d be nearly doubling the volume of the workout by going by distance rather than duration.
As a starting point I prefer converting everything to duration and completely forgetting about distance. So think about what pace you can hold if you go all out for 30mins, for 60mins, or for 120mins. And for the workouts, measure intervals by time, not distance, so 25 x 1min instead of 25 x 400m.
I personally do:
10 x 3min (1min rest) @ 60min pace
5 x 6min (1min rest) @ 120min pace
25 x 1min (30s rest) @ 30min pace
And I sometimes do continuous marathon tempos integrated into a long run (a notch slower than the 6min reps) for some race specific work.
But it’s not like I’ve run time trials and really know what those paces are, so in the end I am looking at race paces and estimating a pace a bit faster or slower than them. The approximations you’ve written (like doing 1600’s at 10mi pace) are accomplishing the same thing if they’re done appropriately for your race times.
So that gets you closer to doing known effective workouts. Now I personally only do two of these a week. Whereas Jakob can do 4 as well as another race specific day of work like hills at mile pace or whatever he does. I’m hoping over time I can increase workout frequency and/or volume, but until my fitness plateaus it’s not a priority. The only thing I need to be careful of is increasing the paces of the workouts too much and making them too intense. I’d rather increase mileage or increase workout frequency than change the nature of the workouts.
IMO a number of people are doing their reps too long and too slow (because they’re copying elites but they’re copying distance instead of duration and they’re copying paces in terms of race distance rather than race duration), but if they’re happy and they’re improving, good for them.
I've still got some confusion about the paces I should run (for example a 4 minute rep).
For 17:52 5k daniels threshold is 6:10 and tinmans is 6:10, but going off the below my 12-15k pace is around 5:55-6:00.
25x400 is probably around 98-99% of Tinman's CV. 10x1k is around 12-15k pace. 5x2k is around HM pace. 6x1600 right around 10 mile pace.
The confusion is from people not using a universal system. Since we are of significantly different capabilities, especially when we look at world class athletes too, the comparisons to race times fall apart. The more important metric is what paces you can hold for certain durations like 30mins (CV pace), 60mins, etc.
Like look at HM pace. For a world class runner that’s very close to a 60min race. So their HM pace is the pace they can hold for 60mins. If you run a 90+ min HM, then your HM pace is a significantly different intensity and will have a significantly different effect when you train at that pace.
When people here are putting workout paces in terms of race paces, it’s inevitably individualized, not a flawless universal recommendation.
Similarly, if you measure the intervals by distance rather than duration, then you are running much longer intervals than the elites. A 400m rep can end up being nearly 2mins long for a runner in this thread, whereas Jakob is running it in just over a minute. You’d be nearly doubling the volume of the workout by going by distance rather than duration.
As a starting point I prefer converting everything to duration and completely forgetting about distance. So think about what pace you can hold if you go all out for 30mins, for 60mins, or for 120mins. And for the workouts, measure intervals by time, not distance, so 25 x 1min instead of 25 x 400m.
I personally do:
10 x 3min (1min rest) @ 60min pace
5 x 6min (1min rest) @ 120min pace
25 x 1min (30s rest) @ 30min pace
And I sometimes do continuous marathon tempos integrated into a long run (a notch slower than the 6min reps) for some race specific work.
But it’s not like I’ve run time trials and really know what those paces are, so in the end I am looking at race paces and estimating a pace a bit faster or slower than them. The approximations you’ve written (like doing 1600’s at 10mi pace) are accomplishing the same thing if they’re done appropriately for your race times.
So that gets you closer to doing known effective workouts. Now I personally only do two of these a week. Whereas Jakob can do 4 as well as another race specific day of work like hills at mile pace or whatever he does. I’m hoping over time I can increase workout frequency and/or volume, but until my fitness plateaus it’s not a priority. The only thing I need to be careful of is increasing the paces of the workouts too much and making them too intense. I’d rather increase mileage or increase workout frequency than change the nature of the workouts.
IMO a number of people are doing their reps too long and too slow (because they’re copying elites but they’re copying distance instead of duration and they’re copying paces in terms of race distance rather than race duration), but if they’re happy and they’re improving, good for them.
Excellent post, it's tempting to jump in and do 8x1k sessions when you're new to this method without realizing that it's closer to the load of 12x1k of someone faster. Easy way to dig yourself a hole.
Probably got lost in the shuffle or the sheer scale this thead has become, but I believe sirpoc himself mentioned do something like 1k repeats or cap it at 3-3.5 mins if that comes first. Same as you scale up the distances and so on and so on. So even early, time was the preferred marker especially ally if you were on the slower side for now.
I think people are also forgetting the clear advice given that 1. There is no threshold pace here, we are just looking to create the state of threshold and 2. Still the vast majority of your running is going to be easy 75/25 split. Sirpoc last week for example ran only 22% by my calculation of his weekly minutes at sub threshold according to strava. The rest was very, very easy for his level, just look at the very low heart rate, hugely under the 70% cap he mentioned. I see a lot of people in the Strava group doing a lot and in some cases, way more than 22%, probably north of 30+ and their eaay runs do not look easy. Food for thought when it comes to sustainability as well.
I've still got some confusion about the paces I should run (for example a 4 minute rep).
For 17:52 5k daniels threshold is 6:10 and tinmans is 6:10, but going off the below my 12-15k pace is around 5:55-6:00.
25x400 is probably around 98-99% of Tinman's CV. 10x1k is around 12-15k pace. 5x2k is around HM pace. 6x1600 right around 10 mile pace.
The confusion is from people not using a universal system. Since we are of significantly different capabilities, especially when we look at world class athletes too, the comparisons to race times fall apart. The more important metric is what paces you can hold for certain durations like 30mins (CV pace), 60mins, etc.
Like look at HM pace. For a world class runner that’s very close to a 60min race. So their HM pace is the pace they can hold for 60mins. If you run a 90+ min HM, then your HM pace is a significantly different intensity and will have a significantly different effect when you train at that pace.
When people here are putting workout paces in terms of race paces, it’s inevitably individualized, not a flawless universal recommendation.
Similarly, if you measure the intervals by distance rather than duration, then you are running much longer intervals than the elites. A 400m rep can end up being nearly 2mins long for a runner in this thread, whereas Jakob is running it in just over a minute. You’d be nearly doubling the volume of the workout by going by distance rather than duration.
As a starting point I prefer converting everything to duration and completely forgetting about distance. So think about what pace you can hold if you go all out for 30mins, for 60mins, or for 120mins. And for the workouts, measure intervals by time, not distance, so 25 x 1min instead of 25 x 400m.
I personally do:
10 x 3min (1min rest) @ 60min pace
5 x 6min (1min rest) @ 120min pace
25 x 1min (30s rest) @ 30min pace
And I sometimes do continuous marathon tempos integrated into a long run (a notch slower than the 6min reps) for some race specific work.
But it’s not like I’ve run time trials and really know what those paces are, so in the end I am looking at race paces and estimating a pace a bit faster or slower than them. The approximations you’ve written (like doing 1600’s at 10mi pace) are accomplishing the same thing if they’re done appropriately for your race times.
So that gets you closer to doing known effective workouts. Now I personally only do two of these a week. Whereas Jakob can do 4 as well as another race specific day of work like hills at mile pace or whatever he does. I’m hoping over time I can increase workout frequency and/or volume, but until my fitness plateaus it’s not a priority. The only thing I need to be careful of is increasing the paces of the workouts too much and making them too intense. I’d rather increase mileage or increase workout frequency than change the nature of the workouts.
IMO a number of people are doing their reps too long and too slow (because they’re copying elites but they’re copying distance instead of duration and they’re copying paces in terms of race distance rather than race duration), but if they’re happy and they’re improving, good for them.
Great point about taking time into consideration, not distance. That's why I do 25x300m instead of 25x400m, because my 300s in 10K-ish pace take similar time to Jakob's 400s in his 10K-ish pace.
Probably got lost in the shuffle or the sheer scale this thead has become, but I believe sirpoc himself mentioned do something like 1k repeats or cap it at 3-3.5 mins if that comes first. Same as you scale up the distances and so on and so on. So even early, time was the preferred marker especially ally if you were on the slower side for now.
I think people are also forgetting the clear advice given that 1. There is no threshold pace here, we are just looking to create the state of threshold and 2. Still the vast majority of your running is going to be easy 75/25 split. Sirpoc last week for example ran only 22% by my calculation of his weekly minutes at sub threshold according to strava. The rest was very, very easy for his level, just look at the very low heart rate, hugely under the 70% cap he mentioned. I see a lot of people in the Strava group doing a lot and in some cases, way more than 22%, probably north of 30+ and their eaay runs do not look easy. Food for thought when it comes to sustainability as well.
I was just going to come here and say similar, but this post does the job.
I know sirpoc has mentioned he doesn't want thread to be made about I'm, but he has no choice. He has progressed and we can relate to him and in my opinion he's still one of the only ones following his method true. I think there are too many people changing too much. But that is just my view. One thing I learned the hard way, was the easy runs really you should listen to this 70% max HR guide. I go by feel, what feels easy to me actually isn't. The first few months 76-78% max HR really caught up with me. As soon as I checked my ego in and went slower, I started to really progress. If you look at sirpoc easy runs, aside from after that usual 10-15 mins everyone gets where your body starts working, there's almost no cardiac drift. Even by the end of an hour or 90 mins run. It's quite remarkable. Easy really should mean easy. If you look at what Seiler says, despite his limitations, basically if you are truly below LT1 you should see a pretty flat HR plot after the first 10 mins. I asked sirpoc this direct on Strava, he says still even to this day he will very slowly run or even walk up any steep inclines he encounters. If that is good enough for a 15 min master 5ker then I can certainly check my ego at door and do the same.
Obviously with my experience I am slow, but just used the paces sirpoc mentioned but did as suggested, moved them from distance to time. Tbh, maybe I won't even get to 3k repeats but the 12 minutes mentioned by sirpoc instead will work just fine. As do the 3min repeats instead of 1k. I am improving massively, that's all that matters.
Also, to the guy who made the pod. Very nice. Nothing wrong with that at all. Honestly, there's other places you could take it and if you could convince sirpoc himself the actual first hand background and story of him and his success is incredibly interesting, that's totally aside from the fact of all the interest he's shown in the what works, doesn't work etc of all this.
We are completely fed up with you, Jan. You are a mentally deranged clown.
I think this is unfair comment. It is totally legal for people to come here and share there experience with the great swede. His results are remarkable and it's truly inspiring to be coached by someone with international recognition. yes his methods maybe eccentric, but long time now he has coached many runners to success in particular Africans. Anytime reading this thread in democracy it is fair to let them know there is no doubt a long time proving alternative to this very weak method in this thread. I agree with others, magic is of course not real but that doesn't mean those hundreds of us coached by the ever youthful Swede can't share out success. 🇸🇪🤝🇫🇮
We are completely fed up with you, Jan. You are a mentally deranged clown.
I think this is unfair comment. It is totally legal for people to come here and share there experience with the great swede. His results are remarkable and it's truly inspiring to be coached by someone with international recognition. yes his methods maybe eccentric, but long time now he has coached many runners to success in particular Africans. Anytime reading this thread in democracy it is fair to let them know there is no doubt a long time proving alternative to this very weak method in this thread. I agree with others, magic is of course not real but that doesn't mean those hundreds of us coached by the ever youthful Swede can't share out success. 🇸🇪🤝🇫🇮
The confusion is from people not using a universal system. Since we are of significantly different capabilities, especially when we look at world class athletes too, the comparisons to race times fall apart. The more important metric is what paces you can hold for certain durations like 30mins (CV pace), 60mins, etc.
Like look at HM pace. For a world class runner that’s very close to a 60min race. So their HM pace is the pace they can hold for 60mins. If you run a 90+ min HM, then your HM pace is a significantly different intensity and will have a significantly different effect when you train at that pace.
When people here are putting workout paces in terms of race paces, it’s inevitably individualized, not a flawless universal recommendation.
Similarly, if you measure the intervals by distance rather than duration, then you are running much longer intervals than the elites. A 400m rep can end up being nearly 2mins long for a runner in this thread, whereas Jakob is running it in just over a minute. You’d be nearly doubling the volume of the workout by going by distance rather than duration.
Lol. For over 100 pages it try to explain that to the people here, in vain. Haha, i laugh my ass off, this thread is really entertaining in this respect. There are still questions about the correct pace...
Better is, yes you guys know the answer (right?), to provide the intensity in %CV. Sooner or later we get there. Sooner or later some use a language transferable from athlete to athlete. The life is hard in the mountains, but not hopeless.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
The confusion is from people not using a universal system. Since we are of significantly different capabilities, especially when we look at world class athletes too, the comparisons to race times fall apart. The more important metric is what paces you can hold for certain durations like 30mins (CV pace), 60mins, etc.
Like look at HM pace. For a world class runner that’s very close to a 60min race. So their HM pace is the pace they can hold for 60mins. If you run a 90+ min HM, then your HM pace is a significantly different intensity and will have a significantly different effect when you train at that pace.
When people here are putting workout paces in terms of race paces, it’s inevitably individualized, not a flawless universal recommendation.
Similarly, if you measure the intervals by distance rather than duration, then you are running much longer intervals than the elites. A 400m rep can end up being nearly 2mins long for a runner in this thread, whereas Jakob is running it in just over a minute. You’d be nearly doubling the volume of the workout by going by distance rather than duration.
Lol. For over 100 pages it try to explain that to the people here, in vain. Haha, i laugh my ass off, this thread is really entertaining in this respect. There are still questions about the correct pace...
Better is, yes you guys know the answer (right?), to provide the intensity in %CV. Sooner or later we get there. Sooner or later some use a language transferable from athlete to athlete. The life is hard in the mountains, but not hopeless.