Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Thanks for your reply.

I am just scared loosing fitness and also crazy addicted to training, it is not healthy. For my first race 26th april I did a HM and had some pains in shins and some radiating pain from the hip flexor down the leg. But felt awesome running did HM. Day after I just kept pushing and increasing and the pain eased of quite a bit. Did a lot of glute activation and similiar. I appreciate the ideas and think for tommorow I just go easy.

You're better thinking in terms of time of rep rather than distance. How fast are you running the reps? What HM time did you achieve?

Yeah I know for sure after the marathon I am going do the regular max 30min subT sessions.

So HM was like 3 weeks ago at that time I was doing my 3x3000m at around 4.35min/km and the 2k's a bit faster. For the HM my time was 1.31,54 with good negative splits, first 5k was average 4.32min/km and the remainder like 4.16-20min/km.

Now last week I was doing 3x3000m at 4.25ish tempo and that felt really good. I did also last week the mega session 4x20min at 4.23min/km including 60s jog rest + 60s fueling rest. Session felt good. Easy day after this I still felt pretty exhausted. Now 12 days out to the marathon my original plan was a mix of sirpocs sessions and lower overall mileage and maybe 1 or 2 rest days.

I would love to go sub 3.10 for the marathon but they say have low expectations for your first marathon. The HM was my first race ever and had such an adrenaline and endorphine rush that it felt pretty easy only that my stomach cramped a bit cause I wasnt used to taking energy gels.

No, you do that after "specificity, specificity, specificity, specificity, specificity".

Coggan having fun? What am I seeing. The feeling in this thread is too good, I can't be on LRC.

Thanks for the reply!

I take it that means just easy running while safely adding time to weekly training? What speed would you chose for these runs? Go by what feels easy? Stay in zone 2? Go by some pace on Tinman’s calculator (easy, moderate)?

I’m probably overthinking this 😅

Hi all, I'm a pretty new runner so sorry if this is a dumb question. With this method, what is actually going on to make it so successful? You can't argue with some of the results. But a lot of what I read about training says specificity is important, and this method is obviously not very specific to any race distance.

So is specificity not actually that important? Or does training like this improve general fitness so much that training more specifically wouldn't add much more? Is it just that training moderately hard a lot is better than specific harder training with less overall volume because of increased recovery time?

Yep, I think this is basically it.

If you estimate what your absolute maximum aerobic fitness "could" be, if you could train like a full time athlete (and avoid injury) for a few years.

Then estimate how close to that you currently are...the closer you are the more benefit specificity will bring as it would be harder to improve much aerobically, whereas if you're nowhere near that level (the majority of us) then the increase in aerobic capacity this training provides far exceeds the benefits specificity provides.

this is pretty much what lydiard said around 60 years ago

I agree with the poster above.

If you can manage it, try to get yourself up to 3 hours of running a week across 5 days before you start adding in intensity.

And then, maybe just start with one Sub-T workout a week, potentially totalling 24 mins to start. e.g 8 x 3 mins, etc.

Then when you reach 4hrs a week, add in a second, and a third when you reach 5 hours.

It may seem quite monotonous, but simply running more is where so much of the low-hanging fruit is - in terms of gains. If you skip this step and jump straight into Sub-T workouts, it will make it much harder to actually build total volume. Which will ultimately limit your long-term progression.

As easily as you can manage.

The slower you go on these runs, the faster you'll be able to progress the volume.

When trying to significantly increase your training load, it's best to limit the number of variables that affect that load.

If you slow down, you can do more. If you don't slow down, and still try to do more, there's a far greater risk that you'll injure yourself.

I have not restarted the CV conversation, i answered. My idea with CV was always to have some kind of 'universal language' to talk about intensity. Btw even Sirpoc mentioned in his first pace description '99%CV for 400m stuff'. The UAE the strongest pro cycling team at the moment, uses it too. So good enough to mention it and to talk about. There are still, up to now, questions about the correct pace in this thread, that is a fact.

Yes, the 100% perfect system does not exist. Even if you do 2 time trials at the same distance, you get not the same result...

Not when most people don't (want to) speak the language.

I think what's going on is that specificity is actually important, but hobby joggers like us just don't need that much of it. For us, hitting 10K pace or close to it once a week, at least on a few reps, is specific enough to run a good 5K.

Good point

Has anyone experimented with continuous efforts?

For example instead of doing 3200 at 30k pace, why not 45 minutes at 30k pace? It's slow enough not to be exhausting.

One session on its own? You'll be fine.

3 sessions a week. Every week. You'll be struggling.

Splitting the sessions up and having walking/standing/light jog recovery will help increase the load you can handle

There's a reason broken tempos are, well...broken.

Good luck. Come back in 2 years and let us know how workouts 3 times a week works out, or 2 with a race at the weekend. If you manage this , congratulations you just improved the already carefully planned balance of this method.