Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

shedford wrote:

xel wrote:

He's been steadily building fitness 3 times a week for hundreds of weeks.

IMO there's a misconception about marathon training that it has to involve deep fatigue. As though you can't train just to get fitter because that won't prepare you for some special aspect of running a marathon. So you have to disrupt optimal fitness improvement in order to experience deep fatigue with huge workouts and then continue to train while fatigued because you're going to have to run while fatigued at the end of the marathon in a manner that isn't like a 5k. It's all BS imo. You'd be better off using your training time to build as much fitness as you can and then simply run a smart race.

If you aren't burnt out headed into race day (and you run a smart race), when it comes time to do the last 10k with fatigue that you never experienced in training, you'll be ready to overcome it. It'll actually be fun. Like in a workout (I'm sure we've all done this at some point) when you feel great and you decide to race the rest of the workout at max effort - it's hard but it's exhilarating. You're thrilled by your performance. And somehow you mentally feel good even though physically it's very fatiguing.

These influencers doing such hard training and high mileage, racing HM/M so often, they might arguably be surviving. They might slowly be improving over the years. It doesn't mean their body is benefitting from all the training. Before they get all the adaptations from one effort, they put in another hard effort.

Their training log just shows what stimulus they put in. Recovering from the stimulus, adapting to it, is where fitness is gained. If you assume they're getting the max benefit from all that stimulus (fully recovering and adapting), then yes you'd expect a massive gap between their performance and sirpoc's. But they're not. They're not overtraining hard enough to have overtraining syndrome, but they are overtraining enough that many potential adaptations / fitness gains are going poof. So their training log is deceptive.

Talent matters for a lot. But having the right training load explains a lot too. People get trapped in a cycle of thinking that they're not improving because they're not training hard enough so they vow to increase mileage, they force the paces in their workouts, etc, and now they're even more overtrained. Eventually they've increased their training load to the max they can survive and then they plateau the rest of their careers - can't increase the training load anymore but don't have the wisdom to reset and try a new approach.

Good post. The thread has basically gone to the next level now and to finally be like an ATG. I put myself into the category of a sirpoc fan and actually have trained like this for my latest 10k PB. It works for the shorter stuff, no doubt.

But I would put myself in the category of being too scared to try this method for a marathon. I really didn't think it would work. In fact I was a little scared going into today as I wanted him to do well. This just carefully scaling the load higher and then basically a short, sirpoc special block I thought would leave him in a deep hole probably after halfway, way before the normal walk. Basically an even race when you consider the first part is downhill and it was a tiny headwind home so how wrong was I.

The question on this thread has always been , but what about the marathon? Well, apparently we know and if there was only one person to trust to carry it out, I guess it had to be the man himself. If you have only one run a day you can fit in and you aren't doing this , you losing out.

Also, does he ever have a bad race? Do you ever see a performance and think wow that was below par? Why can't we pace like this? Lol

falling into fall wrote:

shedford wrote:

Good post. The thread has basically gone to the next level now and to finally be like an ATG. I put myself into the category of a sirpoc fan and actually have trained like this for my latest 10k PB. It works for the shorter stuff, no doubt.

But I would put myself in the category of being too scared to try this method for a marathon. I really didn't think it would work. In fact I was a little scared going into today as I wanted him to do well. This just carefully scaling the load higher and then basically a short, sirpoc special block I thought would leave him in a deep hole probably after halfway, way before the normal walk. Basically an even race when you consider the first part is downhill and it was a tiny headwind home so how wrong was I.

The question on this thread has always been , but what about the marathon? Well, apparently we know and if there was only one person to trust to carry it out, I guess it had to be the man himself. If you have only one run a day you can fit in and you aren't doing this , you losing out.

Also, does he ever have a bad race? Do you ever see a performance and think wow that was below par? Why can't we pace like this? Lol

I remember when sirpoc posted this and I don't think he thought it'd garner more than 1-2 pages AT most, then be buried under all the political threads, etc. It took a life of its own and went viral.

Surprisingly other than that one guy on Reddit a few months ago going 2:44, AdvancedRunning hasn't touched on it much.

sirpoc84 wrote:

unbelief wrote:

And he probably didnt even get a free t shirt after all this

I wish we couldve all bought this man a collective drink for what has probably become more of a burden and annoyance more than anything at this point

This part made me laugh. Because I didn't actually get a free T-shirt. The queue looked too big at the expo ha ha If I had known people wanted to buy me beers, I would have had more than one the night before with dinner to calm the nerves 😅

I'll post some more detailed thoughts back up at some point today if I get a chance, but no rest for me, back to work this morning and life goes on.

Hopefully everyone is happy that some questions have been answered as to "do you have to train like a marathoner to train for a marathon?". I'll talk a little bit about this "special block" as people have coined it when I get a chance. I took a look at what a classic marathon plan looked like for the mileage I was on or could get to back in January. For me, it would have finished me for real. I wouldn't have ran 2:24 off it. I'm not saying others won't, but I know I wouldn't have managed it off hobby hours. My best guess is I would have got injured.

A marathon is hard. But maybe not quite as hard as I was expecting. Nothing basically training wise helped for the last 25 mins. (I somehow didn't have any gels left at 30k, so that was a psychological blow but at that point I doubt made a difference).

But up until that last 7-8km point everything was nicely in control and just as I expected with all the planning going into it. Aside from the training, I assume a lot of failure is unrealistic goals and pacing. Again, this was to my advantage. I knew I should be able to run sub 2:25 on paper, was just a question of putting it together.

Probably at least a couple of hundred runners went nuts and just vanished up the road. It's so easy to do that, but I just ignored it all and relied on my watch. Feel is a total lie. I could have done the first 5k in 15:30 yesterday and it would have felt easy in a big group. But I'd have walking by 30-35k like I saw an insane amount of people doing (or at best swaying on their last legs jogging). Luckily even though there were hundreds up the road, I just started talking to people and asking if there was anyone looking for low-mid 2:20s which there was. So I figured they knew what they were doing and we got a smaller group together.

Really it's just like any race. If you get one thing wrong, it falls apart. Pacing, expectations, fuelling during and before etc. But it's exaggerated. Jogging in a 5k the damage might be 30 seconds, a marathon is scaled up to the point it gets nasty quick and you are into the minutes you need not just fingers, but your toenail-less toes to count.

sirpoc84 wrote:

This part made me laugh. Because I didn't actually get a free T-shirt. The queue looked too big at the expo ha ha If I had known people wanted to buy me beers, I would have had more than one the night before with dinner to calm the nerves 😅

I'll post some more detailed thoughts back up at some point today if I get a chance, but no rest for me, back to work this morning and life goes on.

Hopefully everyone is happy that some questions have been answered as to "do you have to train like a marathoner to train for a marathon?". I'll talk a little bit about this "special block" as people have coined it when I get a chance. I took a look at what a classic marathon plan looked like for the mileage I was on or could get to back in January. For me, it would have finished me for real. I wouldn't have ran 2:24 off it. I'm not saying others won't, but I know I wouldn't have managed it off hobby hours. My best guess is I would have got injured.

A marathon is hard. But maybe not quite as hard as I was expecting. Nothing basically training wise helped for the last 25 mins. (I somehow didn't have any gels left at 30k, so that was a psychological blow but at that point I doubt made a difference).

But up until that last 7-8km point everything was nicely in control and just as I expected with all the planning going into it. Aside from the training, I assume a lot of failure is unrealistic goals and pacing. Again, this was to my advantage. I knew I should be able to run sub 2:25 on paper, was just a question of putting it together.

Probably at least a couple of hundred runners went nuts and just vanished up the road. It's so easy to do that, but I just ignored it all and relied on my watch. Feel is a total lie. I could have done the first 5k in 15:30 yesterday and it would have felt easy in a big group. But I'd have walking by 30-35k like I saw an insane amount of people doing (or at best swaying on their last legs jogging). Luckily even though there were hundreds up the road, I just started talking to people and asking if there was anyone looking for low-mid 2:20s which there was. So I figured they knew what they were doing and we got a smaller group together.

Really it's just like any race. If you get one thing wrong, it falls apart. Pacing, expectations, fuelling during and before etc. But it's exaggerated. Jogging in a 5k the damage might be 30 seconds, a marathon is scaled up to the point it gets nasty quick and you are into the minutes you need not just fingers, but your toenail-less toes to count.