Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

I've always assumed English isn't your first language, Lexel. So I hope you know what irony means with your first line, coming from you.

Having said that, I agree with most of what you say. You've definitely helped show Andy up for the absolute fraud he is. Note: I've been around a lot of forums, cycling, running, Tri forums, over the years, he doesn't usually need any help making himself look as bad as he has here, if not worse at times! But you have done a good job.

I hope you will take that on as a lesson yourself, maybe over time. You can be a good poster . You aren't as bad as Coggan but you do anchor yourself to some positions you also can't be shifted on. But props where it's due, you've performed well here.

Im not sure if I was meant with the 21 to 19 guy but on the day of the post I PRd from 21:35 to 19:45 and thought I could add my thoughts about this method im using for 8 months now.
(the PR was in a big parking lot so I take it with a grain of salt if maybe GPS tricked me. But either way, I definitely PRd with quite some margin)

-I’m 38, running for a bit over a year now while having a 10 hour job and a 18 month old daughter.
-running got really important for me but obviously ranked behind family and work which I need to feed my family 😂

-the 2 PRs had 5 months inbetween, I don’t know if that’s good or bad, just a fact

-it took some months to really feel the improvements where I also feel like I made a huge jump last 4 weeks out of nowhere (stuff like easy pace going down 20 seconds at same hr <70% within what felt like from one day to another)

So my thoughts are not about a random PR where most will laugh about the time, it’s more about a method which is suitable for time limited people like me who still want to be in shape and get their „best bang for the buck“ (it’s not like I wouldn’t care about progress, I really do care but only vs myself)

I just can say that I’m able to run 7 days a week (I do the exact plan laid out on page 1) with around 75-90km a week without needing a single rest day last 6 months cause of being tired. The only times i made a break was illness.
I also didn’t have any injury.

Another great thing for me is that I don’t need to think about what I „need“ to do the next day or if I’m able to hit my peak workout paces that day.

I just put my 3 pre set workouts (10*3min, 5*6min, or 3*10min) on my watch and press start.

With a lot of stuff around running I’m also not in the same shape every day (sometimes 5 hours of sleep-sometimes 8, sometimes bad hydrated and whatever else life brings) so I obviously have days where my paces feel super easy and others where it doesn’t. But on all days it’s „easy“ enough that I’m recovered enough to go again 2 days later. (1 misconception is often that it’s super easy, it’s still work to do 3 times a week)

That also leads to not overthinking things like I would tend to do (hitting a bad workout which was a „key one“ would make me overthink it, with this method I’m also not happy if I had a bad one but I just go again 2 days later)

Long story short:

i know that my personal progress can have different reasons (especially with only running for that short time) ,but I’ve learned that consistency is probably one of the main things to get better at running.
This method allows me to be as consistent as I probably could be (1.500km as per today for the year) without burning out or being injured.

This thread and especially the community on Strava helped me tremendously understanding a bit more what I do(sub 2:40 marathoners and sub 16 5k guys take time out of their day to help random Internet guys like me getting better)

I didn’t wanted to interrupt the conversation about different studies, stuff I don’t know any about or don’t want to follow exactly, but maybe I was able to help a person like me (hobby jogger who didn’t knew what to do exactly) to give this method a go.

shoutout to all the legends in this thread like sirpoc, hard2find, shirtboy, jiggy etc (I forgot names of some more guys so sorry for that) to help out other people like me with their enormous knowledge for free!!!

This right here is what this thread is all about. Forget all the noise lately. You must be the parking lot 5k guy, poor man track lol I saw it in Strava group. Very nice. I think it's within a hundred meters or whatever, so as you say, you PB for sure no matter what.

Great post. Awesome. You sum things up very well. Hopefully you continue to progress I will look out for your progress myself.

Would be cool to match up guys who post on here on Strava. Probably easier to do register on Strava with real names there you cannot hide and match up to our username we sometimes post under. I think that is why Strava group is better now, if you be an a**hole you cannot at least hide behind username. Of course, I think Hard2find make me laugh. He is the easiest to find as he just use his username. Maybe it would be a cool post for someone to do on Strava board where we all real, I would be very curious who is who. Like who is Shirtboy etc . Maybe I am just being nosey and I am only one curious?

Now that's hilarious.

I have been thinking about running form quite a bit lately. It has been mentioned , but I think we can mostly agree sirpoc and KI (due to them sharing all their training) are the best hobby jogger examples of this method and very successful.

But I will mention again a point brought up. Why so much difference in cadence? Does it matter? Sirpoc I think must surely have terrible maybe awful running from? The cadence is just crazy. Would he be any better with a sensible cadence? Just look at his easy run yesterday for example and crazy cadence. Does it even matter?

Genuine questions.

What does sensible even mean? Some magic number that got ingrained into your brain through years of reading running message boards? I'd say that cadence that feels natural and doesn't cause you any injuries is more than sensible. sirpoc's cadence ticks both of those checkboxes.

As someone who is stuck in the low 21s, your post is awesome. I'm very grateful for this thread. It's the best-kept secret in the running world. Not many people know about LRC where I live...

Indeed, the same can be said for any other aspect of running form (gait mechanics). Differences between individuals (generally invisible to the naked eye) explain only a tiny fraction of differences between individuals in the energy cost of running. Furthermore, while gait retraining is possible, altering an individuals natural running form generally leads to an increase, not a decrease in energy cost. Those who think that they can coach running form ("Pick your knees up!" "Stop over striding!" "Drive off your toes!" Etc.) are just fooling themselves.

(Even in the far more technique dependent sport of swimming, people have come to realize that self-optimization has a significant influence. Instead of trying to alter basic stroke mechanics of long term swimmers, the focus is on things like how many dolphin kicks to take off the wall.)

196 cadence in his easy run. Agree it's ridiculous. Totally poor form and a total waste of energy. Someone coach the clown how to run. Please.

I'm not sure what you mean when you refer to being "stuck" on any time for a given race distance. If you wind up caught in a cycle of running a particular time in a race, then encountering problems or just lapsing into inconsistency that causes you to be severely detrained, and then rushing to get into "shape" because the calendar says another race is coming up, any runner is unlikely to see much progress under those circumstances.

Consistent, smart training over time is the answer.

FFS PLEASE NO DOXXING

What's your "<70%maxHR" pace currently? Could you provide it? I'm just curious how well it matches up with Tinman's easy pace, thanks for your post and all the best with further progress!

That was poor wording on my part.

I should have said consistently in the 21-22 5k bracket, based on training inconsistencies.

LOL this is great!

5:45-6:00min/km

current „goal“ isn’t to get it faster, it’s to get HR even lower and not come close to 70% max HR

90km for a 19:45 5k is ridiculous. You are wasting a lot of time and energy.

I started running a bit over a year ago with not being able to run 10km in under an hour.

For me personally I’m happy to even be able to run 90km a week and I enjoy it and enjoy getting fitter.

So it’s okay for me if I waste time and energy in you‘re opinion especially since you haven’t told me a better way to do it while this thread has.

Have a nice evening :)

Yeah it looks like you hover at the slower end of Tinman's easy (and faster end of Tinman's recovery), makes sense. Just keep up good work, don't listen to those morons saying 90 km is too much, if you're recovering for your next session then it's all OK and ACKCHYUALLY more miles = more gains, according to this training philosophy, because you're getting larger weekly TSS and larger aerobic stimulus in result.