Norwegian Training Approach - Threshold Focused

How this would apply to longer races also interests me.

if Jacob drops the 1500m, and concentrates on 5k/10k, presumably the threshold training phase would remain the same? Only the peaking phase would change?

Long runs of over two hours do make sense for middle distance athletes. Lest we forget the first guy to do it was Peter Snell under the direction of Arthur Lydiard in the late 1950s/early 1960s running 1:44.10 on dirt track, no drugs, no super shoes.

Olympic gold medallist, world record holder.

He ran up to 22 miles on Sundays. He ran 80, 90 and up to 100-mile weeks.

After he became an exercise physiologist, he was asked now that he is a scientist what would he have changed in his training under Lydiard his answer was, "very little."

He went on to discover (as John Hadd did also) that running a long run at +/- 7:00 minute miles when the glycogen gets very low, the fast twitch fibres become more engaged.

So, it does make sense.

It is estimated that the rubber track is 1 second (at least) faster than the dirt track per lap. That 1:44.10 becomes roughly 1:42.10 add super shoes and his world record then is as good as the world record now, 1:40.91 by David Rudisha.

It makes zero sense. Why do some long wrong to train your FT by depleting glygocen when you can train those FT fibers by just doing some threshold sessions. Other than feeding the ego of the middle distance guys(I am so tough by going out for a 2.5 hour run), what are you doing that can't be done more efficiently.

And note how piss poor Snell's endurance was. He was running 1:44 and couldn't break 3:37/3:54. With efficient endurance training he should have been a 334/352 type guy. Instead he wasted all that energy doing long runs...

So which workouts are they using to do this? how often /what distances/how fast?

You are out of your league kid. Stay in your lane.

absolutely long runs matter.

Only on LR would you see someone who no doubt wasn't even alive when Peter Snell was running write a post about what a chump he was.

Not for middle distance runners. You might feel good about your 20 mile run but if you go down the training schedules of most 1500m guys, not many are running over 90mins. The benefits aren't worth the cost. Bakken has commented that several times.

He wasn't avoiding 2 hour runs cause he was lazy. He avoided them cause you can't do them and still do your workouts and he found that the aerobic ability was improved more with threshold runs than long runs.

As have been coaching Asbel Kiprop, even if short time, he told me his longest ever run was a 18 k ( 11 miles) . Running 20 mile runs for a middle distancer is wasted time.

Norwegians train for the marathon by following Canova.

In an recent (nprwegian) interview Jakob sats he trains like a 5000 and only like a 1500 for the last months before the WC. Seems you are correct.

You coached Asbel Kiprop? That is super cool? When did you coach him?

Seems to fit well with his latest race results. Anaerobic system was well tuned for 5k but not optimal tuned for 1500m. Maybe that is very difficult to fit for both distances.

You gotta train like a distance runner

- Steve Cram

Actually they would change not much, Only the main difference to run frequent almost every week a specific long run .

You coached him?! Was that when you had a quick chat with him in an airport?!

Others have posted on here - stuff that leads to about 25-30 minutes of volume broken up into intervals (5 x 2k, 8-10 x 1k, maybe some 400m reps, etc.)

But I think you are missing the point if that is your only question. Jakob has said on a podcast his goal is to run as much mileage as possible as fast as possible. None of their workouts are key workouts (for most of the year at least). But they run a sh!t ton of workouts with fair volume at a fair pace. They run high mileage broken up over many runs so not focusing on a single "key" long run. And the goal is for it to be sustainable week after week, month after month, year after year.

I've read Marius' article at least twice now and I think everyone in this thread is taking away the wrong thing from his approach.

The important thing is not how you define threshold or how many workouts you do a week or long run length! It is monitoring!

The most important thing in his training is physiological monitoring and a scientific approach. Dude was basically a mini science experiment. Every run was tracked with heart rate and lactate and pace and considered in the context of his entire training. This "monitoring" allowed him to develop an incredibly refined sense of feel for his training. Most runners operate their training based on dogma (long run 1x/week, 2x intervals, etc...) and his approach to training allowed him to move out of that dogma using data specific to his body.

His approach is boring and unsexy and involves lots of data. Training logs and lactate levels and average HR, etc...is boring. But it allowed him to reach his max potential.

Having spent time racing and training in the cycling world, it gave me a peak into how cyclists and triathletes train and monitor training. They are a bit more sophisticated than us runners in terms of all the data they track, at least that easy the impression I got as a non-expert hobbyist. This exposed me to ways to track your total training load and use progressive overload principles similar to what weight lifters talk about but for your aerobic endurance training.

The thing that was common amongst cyclists and that I used to monitor training was the concept of tracking your daily TSS (training stress score) along with your CTL (chronic training load) using an app called training peaks. Basically, the idea was that each session produced a TSS as a product of your duration and intensity. This TSS score could then be used to calculated one’s CTL as a function of your TSS racked up over several weeks. As you increase the volume and/or intensity of each session that increases your TSS for that given session, and as you increase the TSS for your individual sessions then you’re CTL increases. This enables your CTL to serve as a proxy for your total training load, and you can use this work to progressively overload the system.

One thing I noticed when I trained this way on the bike was that (like you mentioned Jakob Ing. said) the goal is really to just do as much training at a higher and higher speed after you have achieved a solid volume. It also became clear that the best way to build on one’s training load after you have achieved a solid amount of volume was to focus rack up the majority of the higher speed training BELOW one’s threshold, (FTP in cycling speak). It was interesting, and am not expert enough to know why this is the case, but it was really easy to rack up a big TSS score (again, a proxy for total training load for a given session) doing a lot of training around 5% or so below threshold.
So, perhaps this is part of the rationale. This type of training is the easiest way to continue to practice progressive overload so to speak. You can accrue a higher total training load doing threshold focused sessions versus say “critical velocity” training or for us traditionalists “10k pace work”… Thoughts??

Should also add, the other interesting thing is how easy they take their easy days. Even though Jakob said he is trying to run as much mileage as he can at a faster pace, they still take their easy days very, very easy… anything particular about this? I am assuming this is just so they can do more total threshold training?

If you are trying to do more mileage faster, why are you not also making easy days at a steady clip? Jakob could probably run like 5:20 pace and still be at what would be an easier effort for him. Isn’t this how Rupp and the NOP trained, faster easy days? Seemed to work for them…