Anybody tried this training on hills? I live in a hilly area and I would have to drive a ways to run on flat ground or a track. I got a heart rate monitor which I’m using to estimate easy effort and subT effort, but I’m not sure HR is a good proxy for lactate on hills.
Someone said marathon pace is perfect sub threshold training. But won't the gap between, say, 5k and marathon pace become very big if you improve? How can, for example, 2:45 marathon pace (6:20 pace) prepare you to run a sub 17 (5:25 pace)?
Think of it like this. Your goal is to run 17 flat or just sneak under. You run 17:50. Nobody in the history of running failed like that, due to what they lacked being speedwork. Their limiter was their aerobic capacity is not yet up to scratch and should have worked on that, rather then killing themselves doing 12x400 or whatever things I see fellow 5k enthusiasts doing at my local track. That is a very basic example, but essentially the simplistic version of what is going on here.
It's much easier to push your ability up from below, until you run out of room to do so. Spoiler, I doubt most in this thread run enough to get to that point. The other as advantage is you are basically ready to just hop in a 5k-HM at literally any point.
If you are in this thread, you are a hobby jogger. We are in races that are just essentially glorified time trials. Everyone is for the most part doing their own thing. If you pace it correctly when training like this, the absolute last thing going through my head in the last 400m is me thinking in a 5k "oh wow I wish I had some of that top end speed right now".
Unless you are racing at a high level or really care about just 5ks, you are probably only giving up a handful of seconds at worst training like this. If you also consider the fact everyone is dying at the end of a race, this will probably counter that by keeping your strong and dying the least by the end.
There's a guy I race against sometimes. He has ridiculous raw speed naturally, or whatever you want to call it. He sat on me in a half once and I'm not joking, basically spirited off like he was usian bolt compared to me in the final stretch. Flip it my recent 10k I won. I am one of the slowest speed guys on the planet. But with not long to go, I pulled away from him with a tiny increase in pace. If he didn't know me, he would think he got out kicked by a monster. All that happened is he slowed down more and I sped up slightly - I was just aerobically stronger to maintain pace. That's basically all that is happening at the end of a race at this level, anyway.
A bit of a tangent, but I get questions like this a lot with people messaging me, scared, saying "BuT WhAt AbOuT SpEeD?!"
This is an excellent post.
I do think though, that there is a neuromuscular element to racing. With a cadence well in excess of 200, Sirpoc is not lacking here. However adding strides can be helpful to those with a much lesser cadence.
Is there a reason you need to run faster, ie strides, to improve cadence, and not just turn over legs faster at the same speed? Why not just practice high cadence during easy runs?
I did this, erroneously, when I was first learning to run distance and heard higher cadence was more efficient; now I occasionally practice periods of faster cadence or longer stride during my easy runs.
Thank you again for being awesome and breaking down the marathon-phase of SubT. This thread should just be pinned at the top with the "join LRC club" and be required reading for ALL new LRC posters!
Hey all, looking for a little advice based on my experience with NSA.
I ran a HM at around 6:15/mile pace this December just doing mileage, strides, lifting and a few 6 mile tempos within a long run. Over the next couple months I started training NSA building my overall mileage and Sub-T time. I ran a few 10 mile races including one in February and one in April where I ran ~6:05 pace in each. According to online calculators that's about an equivalent performance, and the elevation and temperature profiles weren't substantially different. I'm a little bummed after 5 months of NSA training I'm basically no faster than when I was just doing mileage and strides. My fitness score on intervals.icu went up over that time. I know that's not a lot of detail, but curious about thoughts.
If it's worth anything I'm in a pretty different spot as a runner compared to Sirpoc. I'm a little heavier for a runner, I have a low cadence even though I'm not tall. ex. Ran 7:45 pace yesterday and cadence was 157. Sub T pace is in line with the race pace above and cadence is ~165-170spm I've been running on and off for a long time and I'm typically better over shorter distances.
Hey all, looking for a little advice based on my experience with NSA.
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You provide some good details and obviously pay at least pretty good attention to detail, so maybe that gives me an indication, but how about this? You mentioned your attention to paces. But apart from that, have you been following this method very, very carefully? Monitoring training load carefully? Are easy days truly appropriately easy?
The easy days feel easy and I make sure my HR stays less than ~75% of max. on the sub-t sessions I kept the volume in line with the 25-30% recommendation. I was definitely running right up to the line in terms of threshold heart rate, especially as I was building towards my goal race. My 3' rep sub-t workouts were around 6:05-6:10 pace so it's not like my race times didn't match my training. I just didn't get faster over the months.
I want to stick with it but add in easy long runs. I'm hoping I just need a little more volume and patience. It's hard to consistently fit in 3 long workouts and a long run week after week, especially when the payoff isn't there. I just wonder if my physiology is built for a slightly different training style.
The easy days feel easy and I make sure my HR stays less than ~75% of max. on …
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the recommendation to stay under 70% of max? Hasn’t sirpoc done his easy runs almost bafflingly easy at times to ensure adequate recovery? Do you use hard2find’s spreadsheet or something similar?
The easy days feel easy and I make sure my HR stays less than ~75% of max. on …
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the recommendation to stay under 70% of max? Hasn’t sirpoc done his easy runs almost bafflingly easy at times to ensure adequate recovery? Do you use hard2find’s spreadsheet or something similar?
Because I thought “easy days feel easy” has of course been standard advice in all kind of running training, but one takeaway I’ve had in reading about this method is that its easy days need to be even easier than most runners are used to, but again, I could be wrong, and I’m not going to claim any special knowledge.
And another thing I think I’ve seen is that most people who struggle are ones who say they’ve followed the method basically correctly or mostly correctly, rather than having followed it truly as closely as they can manage.
Ithink the likeliest case for anyone making individual modifications successfully is that they have to do so very systematically, understanding why they’re doing it, and having a good sense of the repercussions of any modifications they might make. That is, in making modifications, they are basically being as analytical as sirpoc was in setting up this style of training for himself and as he’s been in modifying it. And so I’ve been thinking that if I decide to use this method, if I don’t feel like devoting that amount of mental energy to sort things out exactly, my best bet would just be to follow the trails others have blazed and not to dismiss details.
I aim for an easy effort, but if i notice its getting a little high (above 145 for me), then I slow down. Most days never get there. Sub-T days are based on HR and feel. Garmin and Apple put my threshold HR around 172/173, intervals.icu puts me around 175. I keep it below 175. most workouts get to 170 after a rep or few and stays around there.
As another poster pointed out, those say days are way too fast. You said that you ran 7:45 pace for one of those days? I would expect you to be quite a bit slower than that on easy days. Wear the Hr monitor and stick to under 70% MHR for the easy days. It doesn’t matter if 75% max “feels easy.” It’s not, at least by the definition for this method. You could probably go a bit slower on some of the workout days too. If you’re getting close to 175 HR on workout days at the moment, I would stay under 170.
You also went from easy mileage, strides and one workout to three workouts in a week. Combined with the too fast easy days and perhaps pushing the workouts a bit too much, it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise that you haven’t improved. I’ve seen this happen with people adjusting to three workouts a week - the paces slow down a little at first but fall back in line after a few weeks, if they’re following the method to the T. Believe it or not, most people are changing things and that will lead to stagnation or slower improvements.
If yall say so! If the answer is to run easier on my easy days AND workout days that would be pretty fun. Just hard to believe that occasionally jumping above 70% maxHR and pushing up to LTHR on workout days would be that big of a deal. The 7:45 pace run is just dicking around since I dialed back training after my goal race, not my normal easy days in between workouts.
I aim for an easy effort, but if i notice its getting a little high (above 145 for me), then I slow down. Most days never get there. Sub-T days are based on HR and feel. Garmin and Apple put my threshold HR around 172/173, intervals.icu puts me around 175. I keep it below 175. most workouts get to 170 after a rep or few and stays around there.
Yes 70% max HR for easy and 175 seems a bit high, what is your max? subT should be more around 80% max HR
If yall say so! If the answer is to run easier on my easy days AND workout days that would be pretty fun. Just hard to believe that occasionally jumping above 70% maxHR and pushing up to LTHR on workout days would be that big of a deal. The 7:45 pace run is just dicking around since I dialed back training after my goal race, not my normal easy days in between workouts.
I’m not sure where you’re getting a sense that you should never push up to LTHR at all on workout days. But if the vast majority of the people having success with this are doing super-easy days, then I’d follow that. I don’t think this method works much for those prone to just dicking around every once in a while.
"I’m not sure where you’re getting a sense that you should never push up to LTHR at all on workout days." Just look at the other posts.
"I don’t think this method works much for those prone to just dicking around every once in a while." I followed the method for 5 months leading up to a goal race and I'm taking two weeks off workouts after the race. Any method that can't handle that isn't very practical.
To be fair it sounds like you've been pretty true to the system. The main reason for keeping the easy, super easy, is to ensure you're recovering for the next ST session, but if you did a 5 month block without injury or excess fatigue then it seems like you've handled it well. I think people can be a bit too defensive of the system. Most people would expect to see gains in the 6-12 weeks region so I think 5 months is more than enough of a test to see if it works for you. Whilst this method may work for most there is no reason why it should work for everybody, maybe you do better on less hard volume for whatever reason. I guess the one thing I'd ask is whether you've continued to increase the load through the 5 months? E.g 8x1 to 9x1km to 10x1k etc?
Did you see any physiological changes when comparing the races? Eg lower average heart rate? Changes in stride length? Or much of a muchness?
I aim for an easy effort, but if i notice its getting a little high (above 145 for me), then I slow down. Most days never get there. Sub-T days are based on HR and feel. Garmin and Apple put my threshold HR around 172/173, intervals.icu puts me around 175. I keep it below 175. most workouts get to 170 after a rep or few and stays around there.
Yes 70% max HR for easy and 175 seems a bit high, what is your max? subT should be more around 80% max HR
Yeah I progressed from 2 sessions of ~24‘ of SubT to 3 sessions of 36’ each week. I definitely felt fitter and more able to handle training load by the end. It is what it is, the fact I could train for 5 months without getting injured and run 3 good races is a huge win for me. I just wanted to see if anyone saw any glaring issues or had similar experiences and figured out their way thru it.