Yet you claim that hard workouts are The Secret to your stellar racing career. But then you say all training is pretty much the same and it’s not a hard sport. What are you trying to contribute here? Did you just want to come in to the thread to tell everyone that you used to win races 25 years ago?
The last piece of the puzzle? 99% of runners here don't even have half the puzzle. The sheer aerobic gains that are easy to get training like this, are going to make an 19 minute runner a 18 minute runner, way before they see god in any workout. What you are saying is so laughable, it's beyond comprehension. Yet I don't think you are trolling.
EXACTLY!!!
I think a few people popping up on this thread seem to be forgetting the key component here - This is "Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage" - You hit the nail on the head, we are a gang of people, limited on time, simply trying to improve our aerobic engines. This, on the face of it, and from evidence presented by numerous people, including race results, looks like the best "bang for our buck".
I dont know why people are getting upset by this method. If they don't like it and they want lung busting V02 max sessions, hills and 100 mile weeks then go ahead. We won't stop them. We are going to be just here plodding along at a snails pace in our easy runs and then hitting 3 x 12 mins at just above a snails pace in our "sessions" - See you at the races!!!
This post was edited 57 seconds after it was posted.
I'm not adding to the recent conversation here. This is something that reading about this method that I'm curious about.
At the beginning of the thread Sirpoc mentions his belief that he's overweight for a runner but isn't losing or gaining weight anymore. Has this changed at all? Obviously this method is very effective, but I'm wondering his gains of this method could have been amplified by steady weight loss. I'm not in any way trying to discredit the method and I think that it works. Also, to clarify, I don't think that weight necessarily impacts performance that much.
This is something I wondered about on Strava. I asked him this. It's on a run of his from maybe quite a number of months ago, he usually replies openly, I guess he gets so many questions it's just a matter of if he sees it.
When he started running he was around 65kg and is 173cm. He quite quickly in the first number of months running dropped weight to around 61kg and +-1kg there since. He said at Christmas he went back up to 63kg recently but blamed it on beer and overeating. He replied again saying cycling he was around 58-59kg, but it was just too hard to get back down to that peak racing weight. That lines up really to the problems of being old and I guess his diet.
I would guess it's a small fator in the early days, but nothing major. We are not talking fat guy go skinny, just someone who started with a few extra kg for their height they didn't need most probably. Most runners in that kind of shape with 3-4kg or so to lose of fat, it usually has gone quite quickly.
I realise I spend now much too much time snooping on Strava that I know the answer to this.
The more pertinent question I am interested in is how much was his cycling background worth? This I do not know answer to and never seen an answer. Note, it was 4 years between cycling quit and starting running, direct from him on podcast and he did nothing in-between.
Is it worth anything? I would say yes, but also if it did, you would think why he did suck so bad to begin with? Earliest personal TT was very slow and even after a number of months training he sucked a bit and was running +21 minute for a parkrun. From the time frame, he was already running 6 month.
This is the biggest curiosity to me, as someone else mentioned. I think he mentioned that his untrained cycling FTP is 160w. This is very, very low. Maybe his secret power is he responds better to training stimulation more than the average person?
I think a few people popping up on this thread seem to be forgetting the key component here - This is "Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage" - You hit the nail on the head, we are a gang of people, limited on time, simply trying to improve our aerobic engines. This, on the face of it, and from evidence presented by numerous people, including race results, looks like the best "bang for our buck".
I dont know why people are getting upset by this method. If they don't like it and they want lung busting V02 max sessions, hills and 100 mile weeks then go ahead. We won't stop them. We are going to be just here plodding along at a snails pace in our easy runs and then hitting 3 x 12 mins at just above a snails pace in our "sessions" - See you at the races!!!
I count myself in this, full admission when I came to the thread. I was kind of mad it was so basic and didn't believe it could improve me compared to complex programs I have looked into before or that if I didn't go to well in workouts, I would suck racing. Obviously in retrospect, none of that is true and it's silly looking back to think about.
I think the most frustrating aspect for me is clearly it's the best start point for all amateurs. Of course, some will respond better than others, it will not be the best for everyone, but a large percentile. But it was hard for me to accept in early days of using method that my old training sucks. You become familiar of how you have been learned to train and you are quite difficult to accept your previous training wasn't optimal. This was difficult as I am old now and PBs probably impossible to come by, so the denial initially was in the fact that I choose to brush this method off and convince myself the seeing god workouts guy mentioned was why I set the PBs. Rather, it's in spite of.
I drop that training 18 months ago and now as an old master I'm relatively much faster than I was 2 years previous, training how I had on an off for 25 years. Different of course if you are elite like harrier guy, x factor is crucial (I would still like him to maybe give us breakdown of his training and PBs for clarification) but I think for everyone here on upper hours limit of sirpoc method and below, it's likely even basic version without digging in weeds here is probably more better training than your current.
Was anyone else hoping SP would be at Battersea last night alongside Felton and Bester? Felton DNF'd after 2km while Bester described it as "one of the top performances [he's] had," coming in slower than his PB. Of course, this is served up with two attached videos, front and side angle, of himself gulping air on a park bench, dressed to the nines in full Adidas regalia, exhibiting what may genuinely be the most enormous camera on the planet strapped to his forehead.
I'm not adding to the recent conversation here. This is something that reading about this method that I'm curious about.
At the beginning of the thread Sirpoc mentions his belief that he's overweight for a runner but isn't losing or gaining weight anymore. Has this changed at all? Obviously this method is very effective, but I'm wondering his gains of this method could have been amplified by steady weight loss. I'm not in any way trying to discredit the method and I think that it works. Also, to clarify, I don't think that weight necessarily impacts performance that much.
This is something I wondered about on Strava. I asked him this. It's on a run of his from maybe quite a number of months ago, he usually replies openly, I guess he gets so many questions it's just a matter of if he sees it.
When he started running he was around 65kg and is 173cm. He quite quickly in the first number of months running dropped weight to around 61kg and +-1kg there since. He said at Christmas he went back up to 63kg recently but blamed it on beer and overeating. He replied again saying cycling he was around 58-59kg, but it was just too hard to get back down to that peak racing weight. That lines up really to the problems of being old and I guess his diet.
I would guess it's a small fator in the early days, but nothing major. We are not talking fat guy go skinny, just someone who started with a few extra kg for their height they didn't need most probably. Most runners in that kind of shape with 3-4kg or so to lose of fat, it usually has gone quite quickly.
I realise I spend now much too much time snooping on Strava that I know the answer to this.
The more pertinent question I am interested in is how much was his cycling background worth? This I do not know answer to and never seen an answer. Note, it was 4 years between cycling quit and starting running, direct from him on podcast and he did nothing in-between.
Is it worth anything? I would say yes, but also if it did, you would think why he did suck so bad to begin with? Earliest personal TT was very slow and even after a number of months training he sucked a bit and was running +21 minute for a parkrun. From the time frame, he was already running 6 month.
This is the biggest curiosity to me, as someone else mentioned. I think he mentioned that his untrained cycling FTP is 160w. This is very, very low. Maybe his secret power is he responds better to training stimulation more than the average person?
Interesting, I’ve been wondering about this too. In contrast, much of Kristoffer Ingebrigtsen improvement came from massive weight loss. But sirpoc is tiny, so really he was pretty unfit when he started this. Weight wasn’t his problem, unlike how it may be for many of the people running 20 minute 5ks
Was anyone else hoping SP would be at Battersea last night alongside Felton and Bester? Felton DNF'd after 2km while Bester described it as "one of the top performances [he's] had," coming in slower than his PB. Of course, this is served up with two attached videos, front and side angle, of himself gulping air on a park bench, dressed to the nines in full Adidas regalia, exhibiting what may genuinely be the most enormous camera on the planet strapped to his forehead.
I was in a start last night at Battersea. Ironically, I sort of know sirpoc in real life through races and found the thread separate of that. Was kind of funny to read all this stuff then find out all along he was sirpoc lol.
All I can tell you is those races are very fast. I ran 17:08 last night. My best on the course recently that sirpoc holds the course record on, is 18:12, on the Southsea parkrun I have run 17:50 and on the Gosport 5k 17:56, all in about roughly the same shape. I actually think they might be the only 5k courses he's ever ran. The 15:01 on the Gosport 5k is ridiculous, considering it's just an OK course and he must have ran it totally solo?
The way these races are put together with groupings is so fast, drafting, massive groups etc.
Obviously he will break 15 at Battersea, not sure by how much. Just quite a trek, I only did it as a few of my friends from the running club I am in travelled up. But a long way to go for a 5k
Interesting, I’ve been wondering about this too. In contrast, much of Kristoffer Ingebrigtsen improvement came from massive weight loss. But sirpoc is tiny, so really he was pretty unfit when he started this. Weight wasn’t his problem, unlike how it may be for many of the people running 20 minute 5ks
Yeah it's pretty odd, how unfit he was compared to where he is now, without any real drastic changes in body type , just more. Honestly not a massive boast, but I was killing him in 5ks a few times. I have gone back and seen results, wouldn't even have remembered him at the time but then I do remember this guy seemed to come out of nowhere and be crushing everyone locally, yet to my surprise on the results sheet for parkrun he had been running a while. I was really in some of the days he was running over 20 minutes at parkruns.
Really top fella by the way, super helpful, chatty, good spirited and humoured even in real life. Can confirm he is a totally normal guy.
Use a field method to determine threshold. Not estimate it, feel it.
Then, you need to really do a good job of quantifying your past 3-6 months of training to get an idea of current long and short term fatigue (fatigue masks fitness) so you can seed your performance manager chart. The PMC only accounts for training stress (and it’s still only a model), so you need to account for life stress some other way.
Once you have your PMC, threshold, and scoring system set, you can either plan workouts to estimate scores, or look at past workouts to get an idea of how you need to set your progression to add more work each week while maintaining a ramp rate you can handle. This is the iterative part and you can only tell how the numbers scale to your feeling. If you’re more sluggish and tired, or napping when you didn’t nap before, maybe you’re going to hard. Just be mindful.
For your subT progressions, I wouldn’t even do short intervals. I would do 10-15 minute blocks at the lower end of threshold RPE and work on extending the blocks while controlling ramp rate in PMC. What paces you run are based on how you feel. If you know where threshold is, you know how to stay under it. I believe most people can do an hour at threshold, even untrained. Most just haven’t recognized the feeling yet and will run too hard.
You gotta have computer tools and gadgets to do this easily, in my opinion. Sure, you could do this by feel and a stopwatch, but that’s a skill that most will never have.
I endorse this message.
You don't agree with shortish intervals which is fundamental to the method?
Extending blocks of 15 mins is more like sustained running than intervals.
I'm going to sound like a real obsessive here but, page 237, post #4735 for the full 15 weeks of sirpoc's marathon build.
A lot of what goes on in this thread goes over my head. Seems a lot of people want to come to it to let everyone know how smart they are, yet never took the trouble to be the ones to lay all this "so called simple stuff that's obvious" out, but then turn up late to the party. Hey ho.
Anyway one thing I can contribute is the marathon. I'm slow. Slower than sirpoc, slower than Grandma's guy and slower than marky_mark from Reddit.
I have however, been doing this plan for about a year. And have progressed at all other distances. I jumped on the marathon adaptation, probably about 6 weeks behind sirpoc and just copied and scaled it for my hours as much as possible, virtually keeping it a 1:1 scaled replica. I was trying to break 3 hours, capping long run at 2hr 50 easy. Previously have done 4 marathons, last two Pitfz plan and Hanson and felt cooked like a goose! They are kind of insane to me, looking back now.
Peaked at 6.5 hours pretty much in all marathon builds, made it safely to just over 6.5 with this and the scaled plan. Never broken 3, or really come that close. 3:05 best effort on a net downhill. Recently ran 2:56 and paced it quite conservatively, maybe could have gotten another minute out of it. I'm older, 48 and pretty damn happy with that. Actually, ecstatic. I thought the sub 3 dream was gone. Can't thank the thread, contributors and sirpoc enough. Wish there was a way to repay him!
Used the plan for the special block identical as well (imho the most important bit) and 1:1 scaled the taper.
Easily the best I felt in the build, in the race itself I felt super strong and controlled and actually feel not to bad and back to training properly now after 10 days.
I wouldn't baulk at trying it. Very rarely does anyone seem let down by this sirpoc method in the normal sense, I don't expect the marathon will be any different, assuming you set yourself a realistic goal and target. Hope this finds it's intended target, maybe those who aren't sure
Great job! sirpoc is humble, he probably will fade into the background someday of his choice like Luke Skywalker staying on his little island...
Lesser influencers, some of whom are kicking themselves for not finding this, would say "please like and subscribe and donate..."
This thread should just stay pinned at the top of LRC. Along with the marathon workouts thread and Canova for beginners.
Again, this has been fully promulgated as a working person's running plan, the amateur runner with roughly 5-9 hours to dedicate to the sport. It is likely not going to take someone to the front of a race, at least a race of significant scale. That does not mean one cannot still run hard. I imagine the two folks, that we know of, that have run 2:2x in marathons this year were probably running pretty damn hard.
I'll just reply here to everyone who seems offended that I "questioned" St. SirPoc. I'd be stoked that he ran 15:01 if he were my mate, but since he lives halfway around the world from me, I don't care. I've run faster and won by more (and less!)...so does that mean you all should listen to me instead? No! Sample every kind of training you're able to try and make decisions for yourself. I'm speaking from my experience that, personally, I wouldn't be able to handle the structure and technology required for such a precise plan.
Running to win for me is more important than time trialing for a certain time. In my experience (again: *my* experience), focus on competing, and the times will come. Maybe I just got lucky with coaches who really focused on training you to be able to consistently run within yourself at certain times and really push yourself at other times. Those "seeing God" workouts are what help the most, in my opinion. Because at the end of a race, you need that knowledge that you can go deeper than what you think the well is in order to win. And winning can be anything from taking first place to beating your rival for 42nd. Doesn't matter.
And maybe it's because I started running 25+ years ago before technology was such an important factor. I didn't even have a Timex most of high school. You learned to run by feel or you didn't succeed. So maybe there's survivorship bias? I get that this method is simply adding metrics to the "feel" but I've never liked metrics for running. It's my escape, so having to run a prescribed pace every day would drive me batty. I let the runs come to me, and I mix in faster work when I feel like it. And competing to win (again, winning doesn't mean one thing) is more important to me than time trialing.
I know you got downvoted but I get your point about running by feel and not being TOO dependent on the watch. That said, sirpoc's plan is about sustainability and increasing load w/o getting hurt. You get better and faster without burning out. You're both right on your individual points.
And good point about "winning," in the metaphorical sense and beating your rival even if you don't win the race outright.
While I understand what you're saying re: fitness, there's more to it than that, and programs like this completely ignore it. Call it the X factor, call it racing mentality, call it whatever. Because if races were simply a test of fitness and metering effort during the race, the same people would always win, and the order would always be the same. Because, like others have said earlier, it's impossible to significantly improve fitness in a short amount of time.
And in principle I agree with the sentiment of having X number of hours to train, so maximizing that for performance. But these programs ignore that muscle between the ears. They outsource the processing power of our brain to external data devices/formulas. They provide consistent training, which, over time, is going to lead to improvement. But if you only stay in the little box provided, they'll get you 80% of the way there. The last bit can't be taught, it can only be learned.
I'll add: races are uncomfortable. These training plans try and maximize comfort and minimize discomfort, for the benefit of consistency. And yes, consistent training will lead to improvement. That's the basis for my general running philosophy, even if it's much more zen than a lactate meter. So if backing off and doing something like SirPoc's plan is the only way for you to be consistent over time, awesome! Go for it! But you're going to miss the last piece of the puzzle.
You're going to have to get used, one way or another, to managing discomfort. That feeling on the ninth lap of a 5000 when you feel like you're at your absolute limit, but because you've "seen God" in a workout or two, some little voice at the back of your head is telling you you'll be fine, even as your nervous system screams you won't be.
You bring up some good points; can you please post some aspects of your training block or a typical week? No public profile if you are uncomfortable with that, of course, we respect your privacy.
You're welcome. I apologize for coming into the temple of Single Norwegians and positing that there might be people out there for whom such training isn't THE SECRET and that there might be some components that, from my experience of 25+ years of running and racing, might be missing.
This is the thread that tolerates lexel and Coggan. You can come here and say what you want. But most of what you said was pure drivel, on absolutely spectacular level.
Start over again. Don't make any hyperbole claims and let us know what your training looks like and how it impacts on your racing and the times you produce. This is something people might be interested in.
Even lexel has backed off his CTL/TSS arguments and is chillin'!
Extraordinary claims, require extraordinary proof The guy made a quite ridiculous claim, got called out , couldn't provide any evidence for such claim and now has zero credibility.
This is Letsrun. Once your credibility is in the dumpster like this guy, you may as well just quit posting, you can't come back.
What he should have done, is actually just outline with facts, his training program and examples of what he meant. Rather than deliberately trying to pull the wool over people's eyes to make himself look clever.
What extraordinary claims did I make? I made an observation this type of training wouldn't work for me and shared what does: consistency, being able to judge how I feel and respond accordingly, something I think (again, I think, not making some definitive statement) these programs lack, and the observation that there is a connection between the work we put in and the mental side of the sport that, again, I think these programs ignore.
I'm not trying to win anyone to my side or act as a training guru. Not one of you should care about my training/results, because I'm not you. What I do works for me, but it may not work for another person on earth.
If this thread can't handle opinions without requiring a notarized five year training log, I don't know what to tell you.
I get your post here but some people want more specifics on your training so you can sharpen your argument, in that regard...you can say "I did this and even though it's not NSM it's still another way to skin the cat..." If anything they are trying to help ya!
You're welcome. I apologize for coming into the temple of Single Norwegians and positing that there might be people out there for whom such training isn't THE SECRET and that there might be some components that, from my experience of 25+ years of running and racing, might be missing.
There have many posts on this thread, where it has been questioned whether this method is good for more FT runners, and whether they need to add or modify some components.