Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Well, I ran 29:51( 50-60 mpw) with a similar approach to the Dancan method of today. The main difference the pace at the lactate work and the length of efforts.Back then I used to do 10-12 km tempo/ lactate runs @ 3:15 min/ km but I have seen in my coaching there is a need of a little bit faster pace ( to me 3:08- 3:10 / km had been more effective and equivalent to my LT 2 pace back then..). and done in shorter reps of 400m- 3000m .

What the NSA method missing out , up to my experience and opinion, is the important combination of maxVO2 work( 5 k pace) and " optimized" lactate work ( LT2) to produce a very fast sustained improvement.🇸🇪🤠🇸🇪

Cool story bruh

There's also grandma's guy? Looks like sirpoc put him on the plan for the marathon and I think he ran a pretty quick 10k early in the build.

Also looks like he took a weekly earned break and back on it now.

I don't know if anyone saw Nick Besters latest video? But he went to sirpoc local parkrun.

He spoke to the winner and said almost go the course record. The young lad said he knows sirpoc who is the record holder. I looked him up as bester displayed the results, looks like he really does know sirpoc who looks like is coaching him as well and also making big improvements, I think he's probably close to sirpoc level now as well (based on hid workouts, sirpoc identical) and the fact he got near his course record. If you look at Besters video easy to find the guy. Sirpoc regularly comments on his runs, even saying he hopes he beats him soon.

There's also a guy in the Strava group who is a 15 something runner, also runs a cracking mile. Older US based vet. He posts in the Strava group time to time.

You ask a good question, but in a dumb way. NSA has nothing - nothing - to do with Jakob Ingebritsen or his training.

But in fact, sirpoc once commented that he wouldn't bother with long runs at all if he wasn't racing half marathons. And there's your answer: A lot of people are training for races longer than 10K, so, duh, this plan includes long runs.

If we take the marathon special block into account, the idea seems to be to include a long run that involves as much time on feet at easy pace as the target race does at race pace. For a lot of ambitious hobby joggers, that's 80-90 minutes for a half marathon.

Thought I heard in one of the podcasts sirpoc say the long run is kind of a 4th workout even though it's just an extension of an easy run. In interval.icu the long run (which I cap at 80-90 min) gets me a similar load as one of the subt workouts, so it helps with chronic training load. Though you have to compare the overall weeks load to get the big picture. If you're going a lot shorter the next day because you're sore from the long run, it may not be worth it.

I admit, weekends are often busy for me so the long run is often the 1 run during the week that'll get compromised. I often end up doing 2 medium length runs & splitting the weekend mileage. So instead of 10 & 6 miles I'll do 8 & 8 to end the week. Looking at the last couple muggy weeks 10 & 6 miles combo load gave me a total of 110 load, & 8 & 8 is 100, so close enough for me.

Just saw Bester's video. For sure the guy who first finished that parkrun is sirpoc trained. Just looked him up.

It's funny, looks like he is secretly coaching this guy, grandmas guy and others and not taking credit for it. All of who have improved it seems massively. Yet no public showing or taking credit for it. If this was the wizard we would have a thousand posts of self praise.

"The wizard" lies.

Thanks for the info about what Sirpoc said.

The beginning of the thread is all about Jingy and his brother, so I wouldn’t say mentioning him doesn’t make sense because this isn’t an ASS or BSS thread. They’re probably technically different because they come from a different source but both methods have the same prioritizations: running lots of very easy mileage, and running lots of sub threshold. As I understand it, the only different between KI’s training and Sirpoc’s is the absence of an X-Factor workout.

I think that the full Norwegian system is a logical escalation to NSA. When you can’t increase mileage with singles, the only logical next step is to split double easy runs, when you can’t continue to increase sub threshold volume you have to double, when you are running multiple hours of sub threshold the marginal return for a short VO2 Max session is greater than just increasing sub threshold, when aerobic strength becomes less of a limiting factor it becomes worth it to do speed development, when you are pushing the limits of the load you can sustain you need better intensity control.

If both methods have all of the same ideas I don’t see how you can say they have nothing to do with one another.

The wizard never lies.The very best coach on LetsRun.

Another success story posted on Strava - a guy just posted that he brough himself from a 22:10 5k to 19:08 doing this for the last year. From his logs, he's currently running ~40 mi/week in just under 6 hours.

Never followed the NSM. I won’t say I didn’t have a base to begin with but I did lots of double threshold with my first coach in 2023 during the summer. I continued that again in 2024 and basically didn’t same thing continuously enough to race a 1:18 half and then two weeks later a 2:44 full.

Sadly my sleep is atrocious but nutrition is on point because I’m too cheap to spend money on anything but healthy cooking staples.

I think a lifelong base from cycling like this Sirpoc had or running insane mileage will let anybody comeback relatively quick.

The older master US runner using sirpoc's method for well over a year now with almost no modifications (he is in the Strava group) just broke 15 in a 5k. If you are here, congrats!

Someone else already pointed out, but KI easy runs are much harder and his workouts not as hard. I have looked into what sirpoc was doing on the bike and some of his older posts on cycling forums and he was doing this training at least a decade a go. But he will say himself, that just got passed onto him from how he found others doing best bang for their buck training on the bike on hobby hours.

It comes back to really most training is the same, right? If you add up the intensity of just about everyone over a week, it's more or less the same. The difference is how you spread it out.

KI choses to run a lot faster relative to MHR or LHTR on his easy runs, takes workouts easier, focuses on specificity for races, does some X factor and is guided a lot by lactate. Sirpoc is fully invested in the accumulation of load and squeezing the most you can put of workouts and leaving the easy runs to truly be easy and letting the rest come to you. There's already enough of a difference there to say the philosophy is totally different.

Does the difference matter? Maybe, maybe not. But I think what's laid out in this thread genuinely provides the best framework to stick to, with plenty of information to get anyone started. That's all that matters really.

Would be interesting to know if he's actually coaching these people. Maybe he is already in the coaching business.

In today's news of things that never happened in this thread. Yawn. Never any evidence. As far as I'm concerned it's whole thread is a case study of one and even that is doubtful.

In the last year did anyone use this NS approach especially for base/offseason training? if/when do you mix in race pace workouts?

I understand if you have another way of training that works for you, that's great.

Why do you feel the need to think we are all lying?

Why would anyone lie about this method? To sell coaching? What is the end game here?

You sound a like a lot of conspiracy theorists. If there is a conspiracy, what is it that this conspiracy wants everyone to do?

Is Sirpoc trying to make everyone else in the world slower?

It's ridiculous. No one is saying this is the best training for everyone, but when you see a guy in his mid-40s drop from a 22:xx to a 19:xx in the 5k (with his training logged and public) running about 40 mi/wk in under a year, it's pretty crazy to question whether this can work for at least some, and perhaps most, people.

It's not just this guy and sirpoc. Paul Luttrell is another example of someone who switched over a few months ago and is now setting all sorts of PBs.

I fully get not wanting to do this. The slow runs are super slow, and you don't do any "killer" workouts. Others want to mix in some cross training because they love cycling. And I'm sure others simply like the cyclical nature of having defined training blocks, vs. an extremely slow ramp up all the time.

And you can never "prove" that this is the best training. But it's certainly not bad training.

And for me, it's allowed me to put in 3 months of 160+ miles/mo after never exceeding 130 miles in any month previously.

Lol the guy in question literally posted a picture of the electronic timing system from the meet. What more do you want? I doubt he reads the forum, there's about 4k remembers on Strava and 2k on Reddit alone, I'm sure a fraction of them read this thread.

There's absolutely tons of guys out there with quite frankly ludicrous progress.

Anyone know how far the book is along? Pretty exciting to see what sirpoc has come up with.