Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

If it's to avoid injuries, there's a good chance you're doing it wrong. One workout a week with 3 x 10 minutes is a huge effort compared to the easy days the rest of the week. By shifting to 3 subthreshold workouts a week, something like 2 x 6 minutes to start off, each workout would be closer in intensity to your easy runs, you'd have a higher amount of work for the week, and the frequency would force you to keep the paces honest. With a week between workouts, you get lots of rest and it's easier to push yourself beyond what your body is ready for.

I totally understand being careful about injury, but one workout/week might actually be the higher-risk approach. Something to think about.

I will do this every 3rd workout.

10x 1 min Uphill @ 3k 2 min jog down

Or 10x 1 min on 2 off fartlek

I don't lift weights so I just think I need it for preparation for track and muscular strength.

I think of the hills or short track intervals, also referred to as the X-factor workout, as the workout that provides whatever needed stimuli isn't accomplished by all the easy volume and threshold work. What exactly that needed stimuli is here is specific to the development level and goals of the athlete. Part of it is target event -safe to say X-factor work is less relevant if you're priority races are 10km+, more important races 5km-. That being said, I'd say a larger part is the athletes development -what are someone's current performance limitations and what's the most effective way to address those. Threshold and easy volume are the meat and potatoes, X-factor is the sauce and seasoning.

What a lot of people in this thread seem to be experiencing is that they don't have much need for anything beyond volume, threshold, and maybe some strides, or at least that they can still make good progress without much of anything resembling X-factor work. Most of us are running up against predominantly aerobic limitations so it makes sense to throw most/all of our workload towards addressing that limitation.

Myself I don't really follow the "method" of this thread or the Bakken training exactly, but I do use a lot of the same guiding principles and my weekly structure looks somewhat "Norwegian". For background: formerly ran a lot and ran pretty fast in college several years, got really out of shape since then and now am a little over a year back into serious training again.

Typical week I've done recently is ~130km, running twice/day 5x/week.

• Easy + strides
• 30-35min of short intervals @ LT2-10km effort session,
• Easy + strides
• 45-50min of longer intervals @ ~MP effort
• Easy
• X-factor
• Medium long run @ ~LT1

All this is context to set up how I approach the X-factor day. Thanks to my talent and running history my innate speed/speed-endurance is pretty good, or at least relatively way better than my current aerobic fitness, but there are still some specific non-aerobic weaknesses I've noticed that I try to address. Among these are the skill of maintaining relaxed biomechanics while running 5k pace or faster, central max VO2/max HR ability, and just the mental toughness of being able to hurt.

I've come up with two general workouts to address these aspects for myself.

• 3-4x (5x200m hills), cutting down from 5k to 800m effort, jog back between reps and walk between sets. It's not a very challenging workout because the whole focus is just practicing good biomechanics at a range of paces, and at my current level I need to do that without running through too much fatigue.
• 2-3x (600m, 400m, 200m hills), running very hard, jog next rep distance. Targeting central VO2 max/max HR, glycolytic capacity, and mental toughness. It's a very hard workout in the moment but with the low session volume and utilizing a hill my legs don't feel beat up after.

You'll notice these are not as hard/long as the X-factor sessions in the Bakken/Ingebrigtsen -given that I'm not a world-class 1500m/5000m runner and not training at their workload I don't need as big of a stimulus as those guys do.

I do feel like this stuff has complemented the threshold running nicely and helps add some more fun to training. Funny enough though I'm now being forced into an all-sub-threshold scheme for a little while -I somehow got myself an intercostal muscle strain during some beer-fueled 4th-of-July swimming and currently can't breathe deep enough to run faster than MP without my chest feeling like it's going to explode. It will be an experiment to see how much X-factor work really matters.

Non-Specific Lactate work: Why you need it! – Science of Running

That´s a link (google it)

For me the main reason todo the X hills is to prepare for hard track sessions in case one wants to peak. I got injured before when I did just tempos and then moved to long 3-5k pace reps.

My question is how much X one needs ?

Once per week ? Once every 2 weeks ?

Many old schedules have short hill reps every 2 weeks. Maybee it is enought todo only one X every 2 weeks which leaves space for 5 LT sessions

Ask yourself if 40 to 45 miles per week is a worthwhile investment for 20:01. In my opinion it is very inefficient and not something I would commit to. Of course if you’re just running for fun then it doesn’t matter.

Are you considering 20:01 the endpoint/ultimate goal here?

And how do you determine what a reasonable goal is? Doesn’t that differ for different people? Here we have a master’s runner (who was never a collegiate runner) who gets out of shape, improves fitness and gets in a decent half while getting back to consistent running, sets a marathon goal and ramps up mileage, then runs a 20:01 without 5k-specific training and without a taper in humidity. If you’d do better, fine. Since this guy just cut a minute off his recent years’ best, I’ll call it a good job.

And what would you expect it to be, other than “just running for fun”?

I expect the following hold for many runners: You run for fun and fitness X hours per weeks because it’s fun. You set goals because that’s also fun and fulfilling.

Hi,

If you injured yourself with hard track workouts, why do you want to prepare for hard track workouts? Maybe it is smarter to actually do easy or medium track workouts and see where consistently doing these workouts brings you? It will being you pretty far...

I like the philosophy from well / well now...

KR

3 reasons:

- I don't race frequently, if I had frequent races I would just do LT and these races.

- I had mixed results from only running treshold in the past, doing 2 track 800 or k reps before races always gets me races ready

- I don't do strides etc

The track workouts are not that hard they are just 3k pace

I agree on this.

Better to run 2-3 LT per week and less milage if you want to improve 5k ! Q

Running 40-50 miles not breaking 20min means speed or speed endurance is the limiting factor.

You are basically training for an ultra or a trail doing so much milage and so little faster running.

Do you still add to your group on strava?

Thank you!

You said it better than I could have.

And before anyone else will say it, 20:01 isn't fast and I know that. It is just a midpoint on my way to the A goal this year of running a strong marathon. I honestly felt with the heat on 7/6 that I'd be in the 22s...

When I'm done with road racing just running for fun and seeing new neighborhoods/trails will be my next goal. It's cool just jogging around and looking at architecture.

John, as always, great post. I’ll be really interested to see how it plays out when you remove the X factor. Please keep us posted!

There was a post in the Strava group about the hills. Seems like people only swapped a threshold day for a hills day if they had a mid distance race coming up. Some people ran short track races without the hills and seemed fine. I wonder if adding in hard hill/flat strides on the easy days would be enough? Something like 6-8 x 15-20s fast with walk/jog back recovery. You may struggle in an 800 off that training but a mile could still go pretty well. Another alternative would be to race into it. The first few short races might be tough, but if you can plan to do several of them, hobby joggers will probably be fine. If you’re trying to run 1:45 for 800, maybe not.

3 k pace is a hard pace. Stay with 5 k pace and you get better results and reduce injury risk.