Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

I'm entering my third week of training this way. Just a quick question for any Coros users, to gauge if I'm in the right ballpark for effort.

3 x 2mile yesterday, with 90sec rest. My HR zone breakdown is as follows:

31% (18:51) - in Aerobic Endurance (Zone 2)

41% (25:24) - in Aerobic Power (Zone 3)

9% (5:45) - in Threshold (Zone 4)

My question is to anyone using Coros and training this way for a while, does this look similar to your breakdown of zones? Also, these workouts tend to have pretty low Coros training load scores, is that the same for everyone and do I just need to stop caring about that?

Just trying to gauge if I'm taking it too easy, from everything I've read (first 25pages) I think I'm in the right ballpark. Yes, I know without lactate meter I'm never going to be 100% at the correct effort but I don't have one (yet).

I was also thinking it might be worth gathering the names of volunteers, good idea. I just sent a request to follow you on Strava (username is fdsfdsfdsd type of thing as I only joined to follow the group and don't put my real name online). Happy to switch to email after.

Clearly you need to be better educate yourself.

CV/CP is always very slightly above the intensity of the longest trial used to determine it. So much so, in fact, that some have labeled it a mathematical artifact:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Over 55 years of critical power: Fact or artifact? - PubMed

This report aims to generate an evidence-based debate of the Critical Power (CP), or its analogous Critical Speed (CS), concept. Race times of top Spanish runners were utilized to calculate CS based on three (1500-m to 5000-m...

Link:pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34618981/

IOW, the value you calculate is directly dependent upon the duration of the efforts used to determine it. This is something that has long been known...the paper I cited earlier is just a handy illustration of this fact (as well as showing how different models produce different results).

TLDR: there are just as many limitations to operationalizing the concept of a CV/CP concept as there are to operationalizing the concept of an MLSS. To claim that the former is superior in this regard is naive/disingenuous.

. . . which is why I more than half-jokingly credited Lydiard (he of "run as much as you can at 'max aerobic pace' " fame) a bit further up thread.

I'm not denying that. Honestly, I don't actually believe anything special is happening here (I've probably said this a million times but nobody seems to listen 😂), it's just shifting things back towards the basics, something I think has been lost in running training and literature maybe in the last few decades.

I think it's probably just packaged into a sensible way that is sustainable and understandble to non academics like me. That's it.

It is important to recognize that the PMC was developed for cycling, not running. Hence, the "ramp rate" suggestions we have in our book should not be applied to runners.

If cyclists increase their training load very rapidly, they usually just get tired, or they may get sick, but overuse injuries are generally uncommon.

OTOH, if runners increase their training load very rapidly, they often do get tired, or they experience maladaptive responses that last much longer than just, e.g., the week or so a cyclist might require from a major training "binge" (e.g., vacation in Majorca).

Just to reinforce what Andrew has said and I've said before, the reason I have been very careful is the risk of injury etc. I quite often went 6 weeks of no riding in late November, December - almost entirely detrained to some extent and just overloaded by way back to fitness by April, spamming sweetspot. This is where the PMC is golden, it'll roughly tell you based on your own past performance, where you have to get back up to. Whilst modern cyclists don't really do this boom and bust cycle anymore, it's way easier to do over and over as a cyclist, opposed to running.

You just cannot do that running. That's probably the ones specific that makes running different, in how delicately and precious load is to gain but also hold onto.

I meant injured.

You are doing yourself a disservice. I'm a published academic and we often fall into the trap of theories. What you have done is lay something out, outside of the lab and in the real world, for real people, with real problems when it comes to balancing life and load.

That is where the majority of hobby joggers sit.

In some ways it's more valuable than anything an academic can offer, as it brings into play all the variables and traps a runner can fall into when you actually put everything in the melting pot.

Sometimes the best that science has to offer, even if it's nothing new, is a simple and effective layout that the vast majority can understand and follow. This ticks all these boxes. Kudos to you and I hope you realise how much help this has been to runners old, fast, slow etc.

You mentioned previously another potential way to accumulate a high CTL in regards to best use of 5-8 hours a week of training would be more around marathon effort reps. What would a week look like based on this structure? Something such as:

3 days of 3-4x10-12 mins @ 45-50k pace

3 days of 2-3x14-16 mins @ 50-55k pace

70-80 minute easy long run?

and would you be looking to stay just above LT1 so more finishing in the 2-2.5mmol range and 10 bpm below LTHR?

Sharing this paper as an argument against, reveals your lack of knowledge about CV. In this paper they compared data stets including 10km, half-marathon, marathon paces which is just wrong as i outlined above.These time trials are not allowed to consider for CV, as the hyperbolic function lies above CV!

And for any lactate value, i guess you need a lactate meter. Not so for CV, which is obvious a big advantage and a big plus. A stop watch is all you need and everyone has, and you get real performance data, another big plus.

And what exactly has all of this to do with this thread? You just couldn't help yourself, could you. Tou just had to hijack this thread again with all your garbage.

I don't think you need to worry about subT at all just yet. Get yet your time/distance/# of days up first. Then start slowly adding in the intensity.

I've never seen anyone recommend increasing both time/distance/frequency AND intensity at the same time.

Hi,

So I planned on following sirpocs marathon block and think for me that was overcooking it a bit. Now I am feeling pretty drained and also feeling some overuse/pain in some areas of the legs. Thinking today I do crosstrainer instead of easy run. I have 12 days until the marathon. Any tips from more experienced practioners on how to approach the coming days?

I was thinking if pain eases I do one lighter subT session tues, easy on wed, light subT on thurs, easy on fri, then take it from there.

I am a beginner to running and uncertain about tapering and such but I feel I have loaded my body probably harder than I should have. Mostly because I had only a few months to train for this marathon. So far I have managed decent but yeah these last sessions I feel have been too hard.

Probably been doing too much of everthing tbf. Looking forward to having done the marathon then I will go by time instead of kilometers.

Thankful for any inputs.

Why on earth would you have copied this on only a few months to train for a marathon? This is a genuine question. This isn't supposed to be a marathon plan, but a top up to someone already deep into this method. This is wild if you are a beginner.

I would just run easy for the rest of this week and maybe up to the marathon day, better to be 5% undercooked than 1% over. Maybe 3 days before include a few k reps at M pace just to get the feel of it. Priority now is to feel good for marathon day not squeeze in more fitness.

I wasn't talking to you, I was replying to lexel. If you wish to remain ignorant, don't read my posts.

Did you not even read the abstract? They used data from races as short as 1000 m. More importantly, what the study shows is that CV/CP is always just above the intensity of the longest duration effort used to calculate it (ignoring measurement error, that is).

As for lactate measurements, my point was that there are limitations to operationalizing either the CV/CP and MLSS concepts. I didn't say that the limitations were the same, and obviously I am a long-standing proponent of "the best predictor of performance is performance itself".

And now everyone has to take a shot.

All joking aside, hope you take that in good spirit Andrew. You are correct. One of the things I like about what sirpoc laid out, your performance dictates your next move and so on. None of this messing around running however many time trials lexel will like us to ;)

Hard2find provided a spreadsheet with the most useful thing this thread has had, training paces in the spirit of sirpoc method based off 5k paces. This was incredibly useful in the sense it like anything else is just picking a point in time as a marker, but was actually useful in the sense most of us are familiar and run 5ks regularly.

Nothing is perfect, but this was useful , unlike this constant and incessant insistence on CS, which in practical terms is incredibly unhelpful to the average hobby jogger who just wants to get better, which is what this entire thread is about and seems almost certainly to deliver.