Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

You called?

Just to let you know, I gave this an upvote. I always reserve one for you and lexel for morale support.

Never Coggan though. He likes the heat and wears it with a badge of honour and doesn't need my charity.

Anyway sorry I have only just seen your message, I was too busy with my secret speedwork sessions but I would hate to stand in the way of a true full house.

As longer this thread goes, as more you hear about people where this method does not work or does not work so properly.

So basically back to individual training.

This man is not only a training machine who cannot be broken. He is impervious to trolls as well.

Trolls? He's literally responding to himself. Who do you think came up with the whole sirpoopy thing? IT WAS HIM!

The way I understand this is it only is useful for 5k to 13.1, but I may be wrong. My guess is that people could train this way for a 5k/10k/13.1 block for the summer, get the respective paces they need based off that goal race time, then use that time and associated paces to jump into a marathon block using a trad program like Pfitz, Hanson's, JD, etc. in the fall.

i.e. shoot for 1:30 1/2, 41 10k or 19 5k using NSM, then using the associated paces to train for whatever you need for your fall "A Race" marathon.

That's wild...48 down to 43 for the 10k in 90 days?

I expect the same about this method as up to the half, but I don’t know what you’re getting at in “shoot for” times with this method or do whatever “based off goal race times.”

Whether one measures lactate or tries to approximate that with HR/pace, my understanding is about the appropriate pace, which is based on current fitness and can vary a bit day to day. I am not currently nearly as fit as I was for my last “A” race and not nearly as fit as I expect to be when racing in late spring. I have vague goals in mind, but while they help motivate me to train each day, they have basically no bearing on what I’m running in training each day.

Whether with this method or another, if I were to run a 1:30 half, I’d start the next phase of marathon training as a 1:30/3:10 runner, see if there’s improvement over the next several weeks to adjust paces, and find out as I near race day where in the 3:06-3:10 range my goal pace will be.

Question for sirpoc -- I've been using the singles approach for a while now. How do you know when it's time to increase stimulus? What are the cues you are looking for?

I know you want to stay at the same CTL until performance starts to plateau. Would that simply be something like running 2 parkruns a month apart and seeing no improvement? Or do you give it more time before increasing stimulus?

Not sirpoc but When your RPE or HR or Power is easier/less or when you CTL starts reducing, or time trial/race is quicker. These suggest you can increase pace per rep. This could be between 1 month or 6 months depending on person and their aerobic fitness

Early September to 31st December. So, closer to 120 days.

Not sirpoc either but you are way off the mark here my friend. You do not want to stay at the same CTL at all. Ever. Your goal should be to increase this as much as you can, even though you won't be increasing it much as this system is not promoting overload at all.

It's not the perfect metric, but works well to measure against yourself as you are doing the same thing over and over.

It's actually the opposite, your performance shouldn't plateau over a reasonable ish period, because you have increased load. If you think about it in terms of every 6-8 weeks, it'll give you an idea.

Sirpoc shared something on Strava which was the absolute biggest eye opener to me, it was roughly linear and a graph of his CTL and 5k performance. It was cool to see, as it was over the around 2 straight years he's been training like this.

Coggan gets a ton on internet forums and his stuff still works well, whilst he never intended any of this to be converted to rTSS etc. I can only imagine, someone like sirpoc who obviously knew how to make it work with power data, has adapted it well in my opinion to how it can be applied to a hobby jogger.

It's also another reason for my money as to why you shouldn't deviate away too much from the paces sirpoc laid out. There's a corridor where rTSS seems to represent very well that he has hit upon. The harder runs , let's say a 5k pace is clearly underrepresent and it's harder than the rTSS model thinks. On the flip side, really easy running is probably easier than it represents. The big thing here though, is if you roughly stick to 75%-25% and split in the easy paces suggested and roughly around sub threshold paces suggested, even if the rTSS scores aren't exact, the repeatable nature will even out and you can compare apples and oranges with yourself. Say you throw in 5k repeats regular, you would have to keep doing them long term, as they will give you a far less rTSS score than you deserve. If it's not part of your regular schedule, over time it'll distort the data. But you also have to remember, the absolute CTL value is irrelevant to compare person to person.

I went into this thinking it was pretty simple, but it's actually not as easy as you might think. If you have not got understanding how you can use all the data you can collect, you won't know where to go next. I've picked up a lot of what sirpoc has said on Strava lately. He's good at answering questions there, although I don't know how he has time, he gets so many!

Great post. Has CTL been discussed on this thread? If not, is there another resource to learn more about it?

For people who know very little about CTL, it looks like Sirpoc has done the exact same thing for about a year and half or so, up until recently where he has increased the long run and changed 3 x 3200 to 4 x 3k. Other than that, he did 3 x 60 easy, 90 min long run, 3 x3200, 6 x 1600 and 10x1k. The paces changed as fitness improved but the number of hours remained pretty constant. Despite the hours remaining constant, the CTL was increasing, presumably due to pace increasing, as HR was about the same for the durations. His time at sub-threshold was actually decreasing over time, as the rep length remained the same but the paces got faster

Having jumped in on conversations with him on Strava, things learned. He's quite often pushing to the limit of sub on last reps, which increases maybe session TSS by a few points. Every other week, adding in an extra 3k. Slightly faster pace, but still under 70% max HR for some easy, this is pushing up LT1 from below, in turn helping LT2. Long run increases in duration. Sometimes around the 8 hour week now instead of 7 a year ago. This sounds like small change, but if you see the data he shared it all adds up to a mere CTL increase in a year of 10+ more. This sounds like not a lot, it isn't, but the performance also increase in that year in smooth fashion. Gains become harder to get for him the second year training like this.

Things like this is why he is one step ahead. Sounds like small details. It is. But over year, add up very important. This is very far from norm of how a runner things.

The Strava group has more than doubled in size over the last couple of months, so popularity brings its own problems. Unfortunately Strava is rubbish for searching past posts so a lot of repetition. Personally, I like reading about how individuals have progressed (or not) after a solid chunk of time following the method, but posting weekly updates from week 1 is tedious; I don't care! Come back after 8-10 weeks of consistent training with an accurate CTL.

Ahh. I now feel cleansed after shouting into the wind!

I've been off for a bit with injury and already forgetting things. While you're getting fitter/faster and updating your training paces you're still running the same no. of hours per week at the same % of LT. So TSS and CTL would stay constant, no? What would make it go up other than running more hours a week?

CTL is just the average of your last 42 days training.

No this isn't true. I think this is where a lot of people are getting confused. It's a exponentially weighted average, about 90% over that time frame. But all the data you have ever put in, contributes to it, just the further you go back the less weight it carries.

It takes a long time, but eventually for the most part your CTL will just become your TSS average for the previous 42 days.

But imagine you started at zero, the way it works is let's say you did 100 TSS a day. After 42 days your CTL would be 63.7. It would take you 316 days to finally reach a rounded figure of 100 CTL. After that, your choices are do more intensity, do longer durations, or both. If you stick to 100 TSS at that point, in simplistic terms , then you have plataued.

I've mentioned before, this is why the second year I trained like this, the gains have been harder to get. You have to be creative and try and do more. But still, essentially every session ever still contributes, it's just the stuff i did 2 years ago is now minuscule in the calculation.

I will also add, it's probably only useful if you are trying to compare like for like. If you are really mixing up your training outside of what I am doing, rTSS probably isn't going to tell you the whole story anyway. The consistency of it (much like with power) seems to really work around the sub-threshold level. Of course, I have said before probably easy runs are over represented in rTSS. But again, assuming you roughly run them at the same % of intensity relative to your current fitness you input, it'll stay consistently over represented in time, so doesn't really matter if our intention is just to use it as a practical tool (which is all I care about). I'll happily leave the science to the much smarter guys than me.

It's likely why the graph I shared on Strava fit so neatly, in terms of load versus performance, because my sessions are still for the most part comparible in intensity going right back (with a few changes to sneak in extra load) but also a decent invease in overall training time.

In absolute simple terms , my daily average per session a year ago was 60 TSS per week and now it's 70. There's probably no real suprise that I'm fitter now, because I'm doing the same thing with a sprinkle of pushing the limits of sub threshold intensity, or just more or the same but longer. How you make up that increase is for you to work out, but that comes with experience if training like this.

This method is aimed at those who can only fit 7ish hours per week, and probably older runners who are time restricted because of job/family commitments.

it is also recommended not to deviate from the general structure.

I am not convinced that it is a good idea for the older runners to run 7 days per week every week. Also jumping into races while maintaining the structure, means no taper and little recovery. A rest day now and then can work wonders for everyone.

is the user "Alfie" Alfie Manthrope from Trackstaa? I know he is a big double T guy and has been doing it for multiple years.