Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Contrary to the suggestion here and above, I don't think people need a long buildup before trying the NSM. I think its basic principles scale down pretty well for people who are starting out or coming back, and it could form the basis of a pretty decent couch-to-5K plan.

The basic principle is to introduce a sub-threshold stimulus three times per week, eventually comprising up to 20-25% of weekly time. For someone running 30 minutes per day, 6 days per week, all easy runs, you could start with 1 x 2 minutes at modest uptempo pace, 3 times per week, and then add a minute or two to the workout each week over 6-12 weeks, depending on age and preparation, ending up 2 x 6 minutes/3 x 4 minutes/6 x 2 minutes, for example, or 36/180 minutes = 20% of weekly volume at modest uptempo pace. It would be a perfectly fine way to approach a first 5K for an adult hobby jogger. And it would leave lots of room for the athlete to keep progressing.

yeah, people are doing this analysis of what their easy pace should be. Just do what feels easy. Some days that may be 6 min km pace, some days 5.20 min km pace. Don’t even worry about heart rate. Just do what feels easy, without ever feeling like you are forcing yourself to run at that pace.

this mentality is why most people run their easy days too fast.

Your theory sounds nice, in theory. In actual practice though, almost every single dedicated runner will end up getting greedy and overdo it, and thus straying from overarching principles of this approach.

It's just human.

There's a lot of great discussion about this early in the thread. Sirpoc himself wrote:

Unless you're conscious about where that limit is, it's very difficult to consistently stay within it that border that's required to achieve the kind of consistency that's the whole point of this approach.

In fact, just the other day sirpoc wrote this about easy runs in the Strava group:

Almost everyone will veer into that territory on their "easy" runs unless they're paying close attention to some guideline or other to help them stay within the prescribed zones.

Just to add to the discussion about the dangers of over complication

One of the main recent culprits for the advice giving in the Strava group (hops on to nearly every single post giving his opinion) has just posted an essay asking "why he didn't hit a 5k PR"

From reading it you can clearly see that he is doing multiple things wrong, hasn't broke 20 for 5km and has only been running 5 months (as per his own admission), yet this guy goes around acting like an expert on training and wading in constantly on topics he doesn't seem to actually understand. This is why things get muddied.

Totally agree with podcast critique and yeah yeah yeah's posts above, stick to the principles of the training and stop trying to put your own mf spin on it

I would agree with most of this. I'm in the Strava group because there are some nuggets there and I want to follow sirpoc. But, let's be honest. Why would anyone really tweak anything? He was running enough a year ago, he worked out how to spread the time more on singles. He got faster. He wanted to run 2:25 in a marathon on debut (still crazy if you ask me) so he worked out how to do it. He wants to keep improving , he's spreading some of the easy mileage as he said he would like a year ago if he ever got to this point.

People can debate this, or that. People can downvote me if they want, but ultimately there's really only one person who should be tweaking anything. The rest, we may as well just copy him and enjoy the ride. The irony being, those who have wanted to get better HAVE just copied him as closely as they can and they are the ones winning. The guy does not care what people think when the wisdom says you need to do this or that, yet I don't think has a failure into his name and clearly knows better than just about anyone what is going on here. He's always steps ahead. The NSM thing is the confusion. What people think it is versus the sirpoc method have totally become different things. That's simply due to the success and him not being out their shilling all of this etc. I do think get this man on a couple of the major podcasts, I think if you did that we could just say "go listen to this" when people ask about it. People want to mix and match this training then with what they then want to do . To me then just do something else. That doesn't make sense? The actual success of this is down to it's out of the box thinking ,

The part that you should all be listening to basically, might get a tattoo of to remind me. Training is made up 90% of the impact of load. Composition doesn't matter nearly as much as we think about and none of us have really reached that 90%. Although the talk about responders is interesting, I think in my view the ones it hasn't worked for seem to have natural talent, peak early and just the greater increase of the impact of load isn't what they need. But that seems to be a significant minority.

Also, add me to the list of people wanting to get this man in a proper race. The London scene is where he would absolutely run sub 15 and I would say more a 14:30 range. Hope he turns up to the 5k masters nationals which is itself round Battersea, probably hang a medal around his neck now.

Have you been following the thread? A guy is basically running sub 15 5ks with zero and I mean ZERO traditional "speed" work

Double threshold, Norwegian approach, whatever you want to call is works because your main aim in all sessions, easy and "workouts" is to MANAGE TRAINING LOAD. The whole point of each run is to get the desired stimulus for the minimum amount of effort, this then allows a runner to stack week upon week of multiple workouts. Even people like Nick Bester and Ben Fenton who try double threshold then go and run a "steady" run the next day. They miss the whole point.

Too many people seem to be failing to understand these basic concepts. Sirpoc has managed to run nearly every day for 3 years by managing his training load and reducing the risk of fatigue by running easy on his easy days and well within himself on his workouts. The evidence is all there but people keep asking "should I add a speed day?"

Sirpoc runs a lot of this easy runs at 4:20 per km - This is similar to a 20 min 5k runner running easy at 5:47 per km -The reason he does this? So he can run everyday, so he is fresh for his next workout, so he can stack week on week of quality work on top of each other for 3 years. I see so many people on here and Strava running way too fast, they just dont understand how little is gained on easy runs by running 10 or 20 secs per km faster.

Look at Sirpocs threshold reps. Every single one is controlled and well within his threshold, many are slower than his HM pace. The reason he does this? So he can run everyday, so he is fresh for his next workout, so he can stack week on week of quality work on top of each other for 3 year.

Running 10% faster on an easy day or a workout may gain you 1% of performance but drain you of 20% more energy, This is the point of this method. It is not hard to grasp. Manage the effort, make smaller gains but over a long period. There is no need for down weeks or even tapers because you are fresh all the time.

People need to gain some sort of understanding of this method before attempting to give advice or add in extras that simply arent needed

I think this actually confuses people a lot, especially the people newer to running. They look at his easy runs at 4:20 min/km and don't realise just how slow that is for a guy who is for all intents and purposes in sub 15min shape. And they also don't realise just how much better at running someone who is running a 15min 5km is than a 20min 5km runner.

I reckon I am currently in about 17min 5k shape, maybe a tad under and I am doing my easy runs around 5min/km and often have to slow down from that, and to be honest, that really isn't very enjoyable a lot of the time.

I genuinely being disciplined on easy runs is the hardest obstacle to overcome for most people I think. It really hurts your ego to run that slow, it can often just feel crap to do, and running too fast on easy runs really has a completely unnoticeable effect on training in the short term (running easy runs fast probably even increases your fitness a little bit more quickly in the short term), and it only really messes you up after doing it for weeks or months in a row. Then people think they have plateaued (or become injured) because of the sessions, or because there is no speed work or no hard long run but it was really doing all your easy runs at 4:30 min/km when you should be doing them at 5:15 min/km and never really recovering from any of the work.

Agreed on the easy runs but when it comes to workouts, I'm still not entirely convinced the method entirely works for slower runners -- at least not as commonly prescribed.

When Sirpoc does 5x6 or 3x10 or whatever, he's often just a bit slower than HM, which is more or less his 1-hour-pace. So he basically spends at least 90 minutes per week close to threshold.

If a 20 min 5k runner copies this and runs the same workouts slightly below their own HM pace, that's probably closer to 2-hour-pace. Hardly the same.

I do agree with this to a degree and the intensity needs to be played around with a lot depending on your fitness level. And really, just feeling out those efforts mid session is going to be very difficult to do for an inexperienced runner or a much slower runner because you have effectively less "gears" to work with.

I do think the base idea, 3 subT sessions, 3 easy runs and an easy long run is quite an advanced plan but people don't seem to be treating it as such. Like you should probably be pretty fit and committed to do the plan properly (even if your available hours per week are limited), and in reality if you are a lot slower or just a beginner just focusing on increasing frequency, volume and consistency of your running is going to be the main focus.

I don't believe it is really important to run at "slightly below HM pace". The pace should be a pace that takes you around 2.5-3.5 mmol/l lactate in muscles.

For less fit athletes/"slow" runners, in fact, this pace is much slower proportionaly. Sirpoc is fit asf, and in fact, the pace who correlates with 2.5-3.5 mmol/L is just below HM pace, but that does not mean it should be exactly this proportional pace for a slower athlete.

There are no rules about "pace should be this below HM or M or 10k pace"..... It should be at a controled lactate value, and in fact, if a slower runner want to be sure to be in this spot, then a lactate meter should have great value. But again, as Sirpoc has stated, even if it's closer to 2.5 mmol/L, the benefits are still huge, so better be slower during sub T sessions, and it will still work.... in theory.

It is not about pace - It is about EFFORT. Forget about the pace sirpoc runs. Forget about distance as well. The easiest way to think about structuring a week is about time

60 mins at less than 70% of max HR is the same effort level, for the same amount of time for me, you, Mo Farah or sirpoc. Pace and distance is irrelevant.

If the goal of the workouts is to stay below, let's say for argument's sake, 2.5 mmol of lactate, then the pace doesn’t matter. Whether you're running 3 minutes per k or 7 minutes per k, as long as your lactate concentration is around 2.5 mmol, you're subjecting your body to the desired stimulus

This is why running your reps based on time is better than distance. Sirpoc runs, roughly, about 100 mins of sub threshold a week. If you ran 6 x 1.6 and your sub threshold was 6 mins a k then you'd be running nearly 1 hour of sub threshold in one session. This is probably not sustainable. 6 x 5 mins is probably better and will see long term benefits.

Maybe I phrased it poorly because I mostly agree with this.

My issue is with what's commonly prescribed on Lactrace and in the Strava group which more or less boils down to: Run 10x3 minutes at LT, 5x6 minutes at HM pace, and 3x10 minutes at 30K pace.

Most people won't be able to measure lactate so they just roll with that, but to me it seems highly unlikely that 3x10 at 2:30h pace (for a 20 min 5k runner) or 5x6 at 1:30h pace would get you to 2.5-3.5 mmol / the same effort. So they might actually often run the easy runs too hard but the workouts too easy.

For me (a 22 min and change 5k runner at age 50), thinking about this in terms of time makes a lot more sense. Ultimately, the whole point of this routine is around time management (maximizing stimulus and recovery in view of limited hours per week), so making it a "60 min easy run" and keeping the HR low enough is a better way to think about this for me, than "I have to hit [x] miles today." I'm applying the same to the workouts as well.

Having said that, and as I'm improving, the temptation to up the pace on the easy days is very high when you're feeling good.

Even the lactrace numbers don't make sense for slower runners such as myself (22+ min 5k racer), they suggest running 8-12 X 1k at 4:42-4:52/km OR 8-12 for 3-4 mins at the same pace.

It doesn't take a math genius to see that these are not at all equivalent, even though they are presented as such.

I dont know what point you're trying to make here - For a 20min 5k runner the paces would be

3-4 min reps @ 4:15 to 4:25 per km

6-8 min reps @ 4:21 to 4:31 per km

10-12 min reps @ 4:27 to 4:37 per km

To me these seems very reasonable paces for reps with 1 min walking recoveries. The paces themselves in 1 or 2 reps arent the "silver bullet" it is the continuous 3 sessions a week, week over week. You ideally want to probably want to be closer to the 2.5mmol than 3.5mmol as you want to feel refreshed in 2 days for the next workout

It is very difficult to create a "cookie cutter" plan that fits everyone. Some people like to see things in terms of distance and others time.

I think time is 100% the best way to measure the reps.