Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

In all fairness, as the reps get longer, the paces get slower. Personally, even as a slower runner, I never feel the need for longer rest intervals.

I actually originally followed KI for years and kudos to him, but I don't think he's really controlling intensity the same way as sirpoc. His easy runs especially are quite a bit harder than this method if you go on looking at HR for easy days as a % + the workouts not quite as aggressive. Then he started the pro brothers workouts or at least incorporating the same ideas and the wheels have fallen off. It's actually a shame to see actually. KI for me is actually the specific example of what happens if you try and be too clever with it, especially when he was still improving.

Maybe that is quite controversial to say, but I think it's a lot of the facts are there for all to see.

Don't disagree with that. No real idea what KI is doing lately. You aren't the first one to point this out, a lot of the good posters have probably gone onto different things, forgot about the thread but Chillruns posted something similar as an observation around 6 months or so ago. Unfortunately the thread is likely far too big to find specific posts.

KI ran a 1:12 HM in Feb - If that is the "wheels falling off" then let me join that club!

My own NSA update. Good progress!

Background: I'm 57, and have run for a number of decades. PRs I achieved when I was 20: 15:50, 26:06, 32:55, 55:26 (10 miles). Over the years, I've on occasion upped my training. Biggest blocks were marathon training in my 30's (2:57). Last year at age 56, I ran an 18:29 5k on a relatively fast course. But at my age, injuries inevitably creep in, and I've had the classic missed periods of running as I've had to recover. This had stymied progressing.

My mileage over the year prior to starting NSA varied between 30-44 mpw, subject to missing weeks due to injuries.

NSA: I came across NSA via a post on Reddit Advanced Running. I then inhaled this thread, which took several days. Immediately two things appealed to me: (1) Lower risk of injury, something appealing to us older runners. (2) Use of sub-threshold. I'd become a fan of Steve Magness's Science of Running, and he's big on use of threshold training. Sirpoc's sub T immediately made sense to me.

I began NSA on June 2 this year. I'd been upping my mileage in the weeks prior from low 40's to 50 mpw the week before. So I was doing higher mileage as I began NSA. After a bit of experimenting, I settled on these three sub T workouts each week: 4 x 2000, 8 x 1000, 5 x 1600, done on the track. I had been doing my distance runs in the low 8:00 to 7:45 per mile range. I immediately slowed to 9:15 per mile on the easy days.

The first 4 weeks were rough! The higher mileage and the three sub T workouts were really taxing. I had no interest in doing my easy days at a faster pace because I needed them slow. Leg fatigue was a real challenge.

Then at week 5, I noticed I was recovering from the sub T workouts much better. My easy day pace dropped to 8:40 or so, with the same low heart rate. I ran 58 miles that week.

Week 6, I got that sub T pacing bump I've seen others mention. In week 5 my 4 x 2000 workout was right around 8:03 per rep. In week 6, I found myself running 7:53 on the opening rep, and my heart rate was the same as before. On the 5 x 1600, my first rep was 6:11, and it felt about the same as the 6:17 I had done the week earlier.

Due to the missed training and injuries, I haven't raced often. My last race was a Turkey Trot in 2024.

5000 m race: In week 7, I had signed up for an evening track race, the Tracksmith Twilight 5000. My understanding is that the effects of NSA really take 3 or 4 months before you see meaningful benefit. But the improvement in pacing week 6 gave me some confidence. Based on various methods (including the Lactrace pacing calculator), I guessed I was around 18:00 shape.

My heat had an 18:00 pacer. I settled on how I was going to run it: stick to that pacer. The race itself was typical crowded track racing. There was bumping, I found myself boxed in and losing ground to the pacer. I busted out of the box and pushed up to run behind him, along with several other runners. We were just going round-and-round following this pacer.

We were 9 seconds behind 18:00 pace after 4000 m, so the job was to push hard on final K. I did, and ended up running 18:01. This is a personal best in my over 40 running career. NSA delivered, even early in my training cycle.

A couple post-race notes: In reading others' race reports here, I saw people describe the feeling like they were actually slow, and then being amazed at the times they ran. I never felt that way. It was all just keep pushing through, even as it got tougher the final 1600.

The speed (or lack thereof) aspect of NSA. My final 400 was a respectable 81 seconds to close. Relative to my fitness, that was OK. Looking at my 18:29 5k from last year, when I was doing hard 200's in my training, I also closed in 81 seconds.

NSA is working: better fitness, injury free. Looking forward to finding another race in a month or two.

Yeah I think maybe whoever said that is a bad phrase. The progress seems to have stalled. There was a time where KI would have crushed sirpoc, now it's the other way around and not even close. I do actually agree with the above points. Consistency over changing it up and definitely it's clear his easy runs are quite a bit harder as a %of LTHR or whatever marker we want to use, than this system provides. Did he go too early on x factor workouts ? Hard to say . Maybe lack of a plan?

One thing that stood out to me today as a matter, was on Strava. The crazy fan girl asked sirpoc what he's up to now. He said he's increasing load and adding in really super easy doubles now, but won't the focus on the benefits being next year. That really is a crazy but stark reminder of how you can't rush this and need to work out and manage what you can and can't control, recover from etc, before you drastically change and of this up.

Some really good posts though the last few days from all quarters.

Noticed that sirpoc waited a while to introduce easy doubles. Was this more an issue of schedule (no time for 2 runs) and would doubles complement the fatigue-management goals of this method even early on?

I'm asking to avoid the drawbacks of tampering with a system that already works, but can't see a downside to doubles. I guess the typical 25/75 threshold to easy volume distribution would have to be altered, but am I missing anything else?

Not trying to be rude but if you’re asking this question, you don’t understand the principles of the method yet.

Sirpoc waited until now to introduce doubles because he hadn’t reached the limits of sustainable growth with singles until now. The whole thesis of the method is trying to find the most efficient, sustainable way of maxing out load, on under 10 hours per week. There’s no need to introduce doubles until you have increased intensity and/or volume up to the maximum amount that you can handle without hitting the point of increased injury risk.

in his own words “ Just seeing what works and doesn't , as probably reached my peak on just singles, albeit took literally years to get there. Can't see myself doubling anything more than easy though and just playing around to see if the slow increase of some extra volume might do something by next year.”

I think this is a fair question. But, if you are thinking about doubles you already must have a pretty big week. Certainly upwards of 6+ hours to even consider it. Sirpoc started on around 5 and slowly built up load consistently until 8+ before he's even considered that. Maybe it's schedule, maybe it's other things, but I would imagine it's something to consider down the line for most. None of this happens overnight. Ive been guilty of myself wanting too much, too soon. If you get to 4x easy and 3x workouts and that's the limit, obviously easy doubles seem the logical next step?

But if we are thinking doubles from day 1. We may as well forget this whole philosophy and just dive into a more traditional Norweigan approach?

Thanks for taking the time to answer. No offense taken from your point that I don't understand the principles of the method yet. I'm still new to the idea of disciplined load and intensity control, hence my curiosity and confusion. It's probably frustrating to have people still wondering about a clearly established and working method 300 pages on. I'm sorry to add to that noise.

The issue as you've called it out, is people getting greedy and trying to sneak in load in non sirpoc-certified ways. I don't think I communicated myself well earlier, but my goal with easy doubles isn't to somehow improve the already strong aerobic development of this method. My thought was that easy doubles could reduce fatigue at the same load.

To be more specific, and a little personal, it seems like it could be worthwhile to switch out a 50 minute easy run for 2 35 minute runs, and that the increased frequency of those runs and their shorter duration would improve the recovery stimulus while lowering the injury risk and not particularly altering the aerobic load.

I realize that I've kind of rehashed my question from before, but I feel like I communicated myself poorly earlier, and your response was then more about a flawed way of incorporating easy doubles to increase load too early contrary to this method's principle of intensity control.

What I'm trying to figure out is if what I'm hoping to accomplish with easy doubles is a logical extension of said goal of intensity control, or just disguised greed a la hills, speedwork, or faster easy runs.

I don’t personally think that switching a 50 minute easy run out for 2 same day 35 minute easy runs is going to have any effect, positive or negative, until you are absolutely on the margin of what you can sustain.

Once you have turned the other dials available to you (continually increased repetition speeds to reflect continuous increases in fitness; increasing overall volume of singles; increasing length of long run) as reflected in Sirpoc’s progression and, to some extent, his marathon plan, then it might be worth adding in the increased hassle and laundry of doubles.

Essentially, if for some reason it’s easier for you to do two short runs than one longer run, making that change on your easy days shouldn’t be an issue - but don’t feel like you need to do it for any performance reason.

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks again!

I didn't see this post, sorry! This website's UI is confusing at times. I hope my response on how I'm not planning to use easy doubles to increase load clarifies my first post. I also just personally really like easy doubles, so I'm a bit blinded by bias here.

sirpoc's comments on this have been that he doesn't want to exceed 60 minutes on his easy runs, for injury reasons. So to increase stimulus further, doing 40 min + 35 min or something like that instead of doing 75 min.

I'm sure he can comment better than I can on why 60 minutes is the threshold (vs. some other amount of time).

I think the longer rests are now part of the program, since he uses them even for track workouts, and has been doing so at least all this year.

Some beginners might be focusing on limiting the rests to 1 minute and so they build up more fatigue than they can handle, not realizing that the 1 minute rests aren't the top priority. When I was doing every rep at HMP-MP, shorter rests weren't really an issue, but now that I'm trying to up the paces to match the sirpoc-approved ranges, I need that extra 30-60 seconds.

I would guess like all other things in this framework, it's just a cut off point. Ultimately there always has to be one, right? Much like 75/25. Or 30-40 mins sub threshold work. Or 70% MHR or the pace boundaries, the list could go on I'm sure. I've heard sirpoc call them arbitrary quite a few times, but there has to be something in place to control intensity or you just push the boundaries. A line in the sand if you will.

To me this makes total sense, and really is why I think this whole thing is so clever. If you buy into it and don't change anything (or at least very little) , you are pretty much forced to train optimally by following these guidelines. Or least probably better than the training method you are likely coming from. They will also ensure you don't do anything stupid. Most runners, at some point , do something stupid. Myself included.

At first I didn't really get this method if I'm being honest, but actually the more I think about it, the way he's basically locked people into not being actually able to stray from it, is pretty genius. There's no real flaws or loopholes and it's buttoned up pretty tight if you buy in.

Absolute worst case seems to be , for some people this doesn't work, but they don't really get worse or fall off a cliff. Best case for a lot, seems to be steady and in some cases dramatic progress. The progress people being in the vast majority.

I really would like to read his book if it ever comes out and really get into the mindset of all of this, even deeper than what he's already contributed beyond what has already been more than generous to lay out in his own time. It's definitely the most interesting change of thinking especially to amateur training in a while. The interesting back and forth the last few days is proof of that.

The thread definitely goes through it's own cycles and this is definitely one of the better ones the last few days. It's refreshing because LRC can be garbage, even this thread has had it's low points yet it still carries on.

For me one of the best arbitrary limits are the easy days. Similar to those done by japaneese distance runners.Many elite/sub-elite western runners, when went to train in japan, were perplexed,even cannot do that kind of easy pace. We are talking about 8:00/mile or slower easy runs for 2:20 or faster marathoners. Similar thing was with Lasse Viren doing some very easy shake-up runs @80-90 HR.

I follow the Strava group in hopes to read something from Sirpoc, yet all I ever read is idiotic drivel from some Greek guy.

Not to be a stalker but as it’s just another public forum, I hope it’s okay. Sirpoc has been active on Reddit. I can see how one would be exasperated with this thread (I’m one of the culprits taking it off on tangents — sorry). And the Strava group certainly leaves some quality to be desired. Reddit, for all its faults, is at least a place where it’s normal to have a brief discussion and then move on. There’s no endlessness to it as each post/discussion naturally dies within 48 hours.