Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

I don't understand how this guy knows when to race or doesn't. There's just races randomly thrown in and he paces it like I've never seen before with such strong finishes and then just clicks off PBs like it's nothing. None of this is starting to make any sense to me. The mf ran a marathon 16 days ago and almost breaks 15 I'm guessing pretty much solo on a course that doesn't even look like it makes sense. Make it all make sense. Please.

2 races in the 2 weeks or so following a marathon certainly isn't conventional. I guess most of what he's done falls into that category however! I'd be ruined

I would agree that the one thing about Sirpoc that is particularly unique is his ability to rebound from races.

He has nicely outlined a method which many can replicate (adjusting paces slightly). He must be human because he chose this method of training BECAUSE the more standard training was getting him injured.

Yet he repeatedly races with no recovery. Even a 5k ruins my legs for several days. A 10k at even longer. But he can bounce back from a HM with no issue and 2 weeks after a full, does a 10k and a 5k in succession, ending with a PR. That ability is not easily replicated.

No kidding. I was looking at his Strava graph from the race and thought the gradually rising line I was looking at was his heart rate but nope, it was his pace!!

Plus, he jumps into races without any taper.

This is a genuine post. Maybe it's just me, but can someone get this guy in like a proper race or something? One of the London ones? He's 41 and this can't last forever but this thread and this crazy MFs journey has me hooked. Must be one of those influencer types or something that can make this happen?

It's criminal he's running solo around courses that look like someone put a pin in a random map generator.

i can't be the only one who wants to know what would happen if you plonked him in the middle of Battersea park. I'm not even sure the guy knows how ridiculous at this point what he is doing is, given the pretty unique training, outsider approach and not forgetting again this is all happening at middle aged. That time today that he just ran solo , would win the British Masters National Championship in the 5k. He came to the thread as a average club hobby jogger. It's just wild.

I'm not really one for circle jerks, but hobby joggers gotta have someone to aspire to and if this seemingly really normal dude isn't it , I don't know who is. This thread makes me believe I can do all these things and run these times and not be a douche, have a normal job and be middle aged. I mean I know it's not going to be the case, but I also know looking at what this lunatic is getting up to is gonna serve me better than watching these idiots on YouTube flying to Keyna or worrying what Jakob is doing.

this angle is being pushed — stay tuned

Man, some people over complicate this thing. The beauty of this system is its repeatability from week to week, you don't feel too trashed from its 'workouts' and in my experience I always feel like I have a lot left in the tank when I come to the end of the workouts - except for if something else is affecting fatigue levels - like hangover, bad sleep, vaccine etc.

Why is there all of this paralysis by analysis. Just do 3 workouts per week:

1 with shorter intervals 3-4 mins or 1km

1 with medium intervals of 6 minutes

1 with longer intervals of 10 to 12 minutes.

Then do the easy runs at a pace which feels easy on that day. Don't force the pace.

Dude, somebody at a similar IQ level already cornered the “juvenile disparaging nickname” market.

It's kind of bittersweet in a way, running is just solved for hobby joggers? What do we talk about now we have the perfect formula? We all just run the same workouts week in week out and get incrementally faster. No more plans, peaking etc. I'm happy but also kind of sad?

Anyway - SirPoc deserves all the credit he's getting for articulating this system so simply. A legend for the running hall of fame. Thank you, Sir.

Interesting, since Superblast 2 is known as kind of a zone 3/dead zone shoe. The area NSM skips over. SB2 is best for faster paced long runs, or 10 mile tempo runs, or long progression runs. None of which are involved in the standard NSM plan.

Unless he used it for his marathon build workouts, or perhaps his easy pace is fast enough to activate the foam & make the shoe come alive, or he's a larger runner. Or he used the SB1, which was a much better shoe. SB2 is a stiff brick at zone 2/easy runs, & yet too clunky & boat like for the subthreshold workouts, especially at his quick pace. It's a controversial shoe though where some people love it & others hate it.

Just adding my experience to the pile. I had my first race since starting this “plan” 18 weeks ago. It was a 10 miler in 1:05. I PB’d the course by 5 mins. I also beat my training buddy for the first time in any race (of many) by a minute, and he’d been running 80mpw pfitz marathon block vs my 50mpw NSA. Felt like a major inflection point.

Im just plugging away and excited to test some more distances.

This is a pretty frustrating post. I appreciate you taking the time to offer some insight, but I basically asked "should I wear the blue tie or the red tie?" and you said "have you considered that you're just ugly?" You're not wrong, but that's also not an answer to the question that was asked.

To the specific points, sure 30-35mpw is not a lot, but just like my ugliness, this is all relative. Five years ago I couldn't run two miles without my left leg collapsing, so for me this is a phenomenal volume.

I don't think the HR target is wrong. Max HR is 180-185. In my workouts I'm never breaking 155, with the vast majority of time at 145-150.

Base fitness is quite obviously not good enough for these workouts. My whole question is the best way to address that deficiency -- change the pace, max out the effort more, or continue to adjust the workout on the fly in response to perceived effort. Open to another suggestion if you'd care to offer one.

And the long run being "way too long", I mean, not really? The long run is maybe a hair more than 30% of weekly mileage but that's hardly "way too long". Maybe it's not ideal but it's not reckless. 25-30% of weekly mileage is pretty normal.

How would a speed development day fit into this plan? With 3 workouts plus a long run, a speed development day would have to be sandwiched between two threshold days or a long run and a threshold day. Is it possible to combine threshold and speed development into one day?

The thing I don't understand in your situation is that these paces are meant to be roughly your 15k-30k race paces. We run far less than those distances in the workout though, and with frequent rest breaks on top of that. So these really should feel quite easy, I'm not sure why you feel so close to disaster with 1-2 reps left. All I can think of is that either your HR expectations are wrong (even though you said it shouldn't be off) or your HR measuring device is inaccurate. Have you tried ditching HR and focusing entirely on pace? How did you calculate your paces? Maybe double check your paces line up with your fitness by doing a 10k race or something? Otherwise I don't have many ideas

Oh man, thank you for posting this. The hundreds of posts I’ve seen here and the Strava group with people trying to “put their spin on it” is crazy. The common theme that is always stated is to keep this simple, don’t deviate. Yet, humans are bad at following clear suggestions, egos get involved, etc. and we get these posts ad nauseum. There’s even at least one of them on this very page of this thread. It’s absolutely wild.

30%+ of weekly volume LR is absolutely too much for someone still working into this style of training and trying to build volume. That functions as another hard day so you're running 4 hard days a week in a somewhat unfamiliar system -that's gonna leave anybody struggling.

You need to reduce something in the sub-T workouts -not sure it matters a whole lot whether it's pace, duration, or dropping to 2 sessions /week. In the spirit of this method I would choose a reduction in pace to keep up the session duration (would probably give the best training load). If you are not going to reduce the long run duration you should drop to only 2 sub-T sessions /week.

Also worth considering ditching the method altogether for a while and just building up more mileage with mostly/all easy running first. I bet your problems would resolve if you got comfortable at 45-50 mi/week and then came back to the method.

Do you have any recent time trial performance to cross reference with your HR target with? Sometimes HR alone can be tricky for any number of reasons.

What are your specific goals with "speed development"?