Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Excellent post!

i do think strides are a good addition, though, as they come with little added fatigue, and give the neuromuscular system a boost, that racing at the slower speeds of 5k/10k don’t.

It's legit hilarious that not just sirpoc is a 15 runner which you claim isn't possible as a master training like this, but there's also a guy stateside in the Strava group who pretty much has 1:1 copied sirpoc or close to is also a masters runner, who has ran 15s training like this.

You think you know what you know, that's fine. But most training programs you are familiar with are probably sub optimal for most guys and gals on limited hours a week, compared to this. Good luck finding another thread with one of these new crazes as you call it, with as high a strike rate and positive feedback. Some guys are fast, some guys are not. That's not the point.

If you can actually see through and past what you think you know, you will see how many people this has allowed to breakthrough a stagnation and really push on. Here and on Strava look at so many guys in the 19-22 min range in particular, who are now well under sub 18 or even better. This is after years and years of training in most cases. Not just new runners, making instant gains. That, to me, is what takes this from a good idea to potentially one you could hang your hat on and say it's probably the best option for most?

Just because coaching has been done a certain way , certainly since Daniel's has popularised mass market coaching, doesn't mean it's the best way. Lots of sports in recent years have been doing sub optimal things in their coaching , scouting of talent etc mostly out of habit or just because they weren't aware of a better way. Or a particular way just stuck.

For real, I have ran many Daniel's plan in my 20 years training. Tried others, always went back to him. Is it probably the best one on the table now? I would argue not. If I had someone come to me and say what is my best option as a hobby jogger who is prepared to run almost every day, I would almost certainly link them to this thread.

Considering virtually nobody here is elite, or a tiny fraction of us are or perhaps looking to become elite, it's applicable to probably 98% of us here.

Didn’t read it all. What did the guy say that was so dumb? Something like “has ran”/“have ran”?

Yes, there is X factor, but it is not every week, it is approximately every 4 weeks, it is about the competitions. Sirpoc competes more than 12 times a year.

If you are talking a out Kristoffer Ingebrigsten then he is very fast hobby jogger. He is sub 1:13 and sub 33 10k. Very fast on modest mileage. I doubt many faster at his age to compare to with no little training. Very impressive. Undoubt ultimate hobby joggers hero 👏👏👏 He shows you can get very fast. Irrelevant who other guy is , nobody cares definitely not.

Who is this other 15min 5k master ?

The most sense that's been posted in this thread for a long time. Couldn't agree more.

I am keen to start trying this approach but I am wondering if you can add more easy mileage if you have the time. Apologies if this has been covered somewhere in here already. I have read maybe about half of all this and still chipping away at the rest. So:

• Is there any reason not to add more easy mileage if you have extra time?

• If you do add extra easy mileage, should you always increase the amount of time at subT to keep it at consistently around 25% of total time/volume?

• If the answer above is yes, can someone explain why? I would have thought it's easier to add some extra mileage but increasing the volume at subT is risky, no? Maybe there is no real value in adding extra easy mileage with this approach. If that is the case again could someone explain why just so I understand it.

Thanks!

1. Potential injury risk if you can't handle it yet. But if you can, and have the extra free time, just slowly increment.

2. Yes. Keep it scaled at around 25-30% subT volume by time, best bang for buck to get in quality while not overtraining.

3. There is value in adding extra easy mileage, but there is more value in adding extra subT time, it is just adding beyond 25-30% total volume becomes very risky for injury/burnout so to keep it sustainable that is the range you keep subT volume in. So if you scale up easy and have more subT volume percent to work with, you do that percent and get it to around 25% again. Better gains than only adding easy.

Generally you can add a bunch of easy mileage, adjust to it over a week or two, then scale your subT volume to match it.

Calculator website says -- "Quality work comprises 20-25% of weekly running time"

I read on page 60 pasted below it should be 10% of weekly volume. Or is quality work different from sub threshold volume?

jiggymeister wrote:
Establish your threshold pace from a recent race.
Run as much easy mileage as healthily possible.
Build towards 2-3 sub threshold sessions per week. Sub threshold volume can be up to 10% of weekly volume.

I'm an idiot. I just realized one wrote weekly running time & the other says volume.

What you are confusing is 20-25% by time for the whole week vs. 10% by distance for one session. 20-25% by time will be roughly 25-30% by distance. Since there are 3 sessions per week, 30%/3 = 10% for each session.

I can add an anecdote / data point for this style of training. I’m mid 40s M, averaging 100 km / week on singles. Have typically followed Pfitzinger training plans for the last few years (rotating 5/10/15 km type training plans). To be fair they have worked OK for me, have seen steady improvement.

Was targeting a 10 mile race, so thought I would trial this type of training. Also fulfils the specificity argument as I run 10 miles in under an hour, so good threshold kind of pace - hence plenty of work around threshold can’t be a bad thing.

Simply rotated 5x 6 mins, 8x 1 km and 20x 400m workouts every third day for the last few months. Having said that, depending how I’m feeling I still like longer progression runs and tempo runs so still getting a balanced diet so to speak.

I found the workouts manageable, obviously easier than some of the Pfitzinger VO2max workouts which can leave me a bit dead. Always tried to keep my HR not getting much higher than 85-87% of max. Took 2 mins off my 10 mile time. Whether that can be wholly attributed to this style of training, not sure (I’ve had a very nice steady 6 months of 100 km/week which can’t be a bad thing), but I found it OK and easy to follow - and felt less beat up than Pfitzinger. I’m generally sceptical that any training plan is massively efficacious compared to any other, but I certainly didn’t regress using this approach. I did a 5 km TT a month or so ago and my pace had improved slightly, so still some gains even though I wasn’t doing anything specific at that kind of pace for quite a while.

I do have my own prejudice that you can gain some psychological strength from really hard workouts, which this style of training doesn’t really get you to. That might just be my own mental myth.

I’ll probably continue using approach for a little while longer.

You have basically discovered what sirpoc said from day 1, it's simply the consistency to be able to push the load slightly higher, week to week, month to month, over other systems - without the need for down weeks. That is it. The lack of specificity is what allows that. Event specificity is what virtually all other training programs, include - yet it's probably the least value for money training for a hobby jogger.

The vast majority of people who have stuck to this, have improved. Two mins off your 10 PB into your 40s is huge.

People who try and get cute with the absolute basics have tended to be the ones chasing their tail and something goes wrong, when training to the spirit of this thread.

Let's not forget sirpoc broke 19 off a couple of years normal, textbook running training. But the fatigue, the impact and the need for down weeks was probably overall what capped him at a certain point.

To put my flag in the ground, I was one of the many near the start of the thess, totally unsold on this and thinking pure nonsense. Well over a year later, clearly I have to hold up my hands and say I was wrong, based on my own experiences and the literally hundreds of others.

I know the guides say easies below 70% MHR, but I have a high MHR (~196) 196*.7 = 137, so below 70% puts me in zone 1. Not that zones matter, but this effort is way easier than what I consider easy easy. If I use Karvonen Formula THR = [(MHR - RHR) x %Intensity] + RHR, it would be zone 2, which seems more appropriate of an effort. Can anyone clarify?

Post your training if you want better advice.

Perceived effort doesn't matter. It might be helpful to drop the "easy" label and think of it as your non-workout pace. Staying under 70% MHR is a good guide for keeping this pace at an optimal fatigue/benefit ratio. It should feel easy, but it's also possible to go unnecessarily fast with it still feeling easy, thus the cap on the HR as a guide.

If your workout paces are correct but you're finding your overall training too easy, you can progress by adding volume. Add volume to your workouts as well as increase overall mileage. If you're already using all your allotted running time, take volume away from warmup and cooldown to increase the volume at workout paces. And if it's still too easy, then only do two of these workouts a week and have your third workout be a more intense race-specific workout.

Maintaining a certain easy run pace out of fear that any slower will be ineffective has been a mistake made by countless runners. You are primarily recovering on non-workout days, not building fitness. But putting all that time in at 60-70% MHR in fact does increase your performance significantly. There's a mountain of evidence for this. And those benefits are not increased by much (some of them are even hindered) when you run those days at a higher intensity (say 70-75% MHR). But there are big downsides.

My recent easy as an example was 6.4mi @ 9:23/mi pace, and 147bpm avg. 147/196(mhr) = 75%. It's a z2, "all day" effort for me. I'm currently doing this plan at ~ 7hr, 50mpw and happy with the difficulty. My recent marathon was 3:18, and a 41min 10k, just as a point of reference so you don't think I'm a lump of fat. My concern is that if I try to get under 70% of MHR (137bpm) I'd have to run like 11 min/mi pace or something, and it's a "walking but make it look like running" that just feels crappy. No friends will tolerate running with me if I need to go that slow. Do I really need to go THAT slow?

Maybe your max heart-rate is wrong. Without a good heart rate monitor and just going off of watch heart rate it is quite possible that during your races you never measured a proper max heart rate. SirPoc easy kinda pace for a 41 minute 10k runner seems to be right around 8:34-9:34.

Quite frankly , this method isn't for you if you care what others think. It's probably why a lot of runners fail, trying to train with the cool kids of make it look good on Strava.

I've been following sirpoc84 from the thread for ages now. It's the most unglamorous, boring training I have ever seen. But, there are also very few guys out there running 31 and 15s into their 40s on hobby jogger hours who have stayed healthy for such a long period of time.

Someone asked him on Strava recently about easy pace and if you look at his easy runs, if there are hills or steep road furniture inclines, he is basically walking up them, if that is what it takes to keep HR low. If that's good enough for a guy 10 minutes faster than you in a 10k, then dude that's good enough for you.