Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Yep - multiple people have to differing degrees. There's a spreadsheet version of it and someone has also put it into intervals icu as a training plan.

I just made an account on reddit so I could post this in the NSA group, but unfortunately after typing everything out and trying to post it, reddit appears to have just eaten it:( so, for people here who use intervals.icu, after a few months of NSA, did intervals.icu start assigning a lower load score to your workouts, even when the workouts stayed the same in terms of volume and perhaps even increased in pace?

I know the load number is not transferable between different people, but to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, most of my subT sessions used to get around 75, and now the same workout with slightly faster reps is getting 65.

I'm not sure if this is intervals.icu thinking that the workout must be easier for me now that I've gotten a bit fitter or if there was an algorithm change or something. None of my workouts feel subjectively easier to me at all.

Intervals.icu doesn't think or assign load, it's just based on how you have it set up. It's calculated from basically time at intensity% of Threshold Pace, HR or Power- whatever you chose. Have you been updating your threshold pace/power regularly with change in fitness or are the workouts lower HR now?

Aha, thanks for the help. I haven't updated anything so maybe it's that.

The workouts are the same HR but faster pace.

Before I posted, I did try switching back and forth between having load calculated by HR versus by pace, but both options resulted in lower load for given workouts now than a few weeks ago.

That doesn’t make sense. If you haven’t updated your threshold pace and you increased your subT paces, then the same workout will produce more load. If you use pace for load ofc.

If using Intervals.icu what sort of "form" is considered ideal or is this personal as well?

I generally run a little longer than most on my long run and generally see form at -14 to -16 after that. I have the next day off and run 6 days a week so throughout the rest of the week it is -5 to -9.

Should this be reviewed weekly or daily?

That's certainly how it seems to me that it should work... I'm not really sure what is going on then. I had initially been using HR for load but switched to pace when I started seeing this issue, thinking that would fix it , but it didn't.

Those numbers only make sense if you’ve been really increasing your mileage a lot lately. If you’re holding steady, then form will average around 0, maybe between +5 and -5. Anyway, I think for a race ideal is like +10 to +20, but if you’re racing frequently you probably don’t want to taper that much; +5 you’ll likely race fine.

Do you run time- or distance-based reps? If you've improved pace enough and run distance-based reps, you'll be spending less time running (e.g. 6:20 for a mile instead of 6:40). Probably not drastic enough to account for all of it, but it could be something.

You must have increased your intervals.icu threshold pace. Or if going by HR, increased the threshold HR. But your numbers make me think you are using you are using pace.

Yes SPs training for London is well documented.

But as it stands It's not easy for someone running significantly slower than SP (99% of the people following this) to scale his London block to their own eg they wouldn't be running 5x5km repeats.

Not to mention SP is on record saying he was reaching during this block and it wasn't sustainable long term which goes against the main principle of NSA.

For better or worse the vast majority of hobby joggers in the 5-8 hours a week segment want to run marathons, if SP doesn't address this in the book I think it would be a shame and leave a lot of the target audience with questions.

Grey: Okay
Green: Too keen

Don’t train by distance alway go by time as your body doesn’t care about distance just load over time. Milagros is for track so they can count 400m laps for road who cares.

If you are doing that then all workouts become scalable, take the 5 x 5km that becomes 5 x 15 mins at Marathon Pace, 75mins of broken up marathon pace is not exactly overly challenging when you are running a marathon the following week.

It'll be in there. Would be silly not to. It all scales quite well. So far I know of runners who have run 2:28, 2:35, 2:48, 3:04 and 3:32 (and me 2:24). All were pretty big PBs, the best being the 2:48 as the guy had never even got close to breaking 3 in 10 previous marathons ( I will say though, at least 5 of his previous training blocks were the worst possible anyone could come up with). The main focus was on why it's going to work and getting them to buy in, and to not worry. The other big thing was about pacing. Again these are two big chapters I think people will like.

All had ran at least 3 other marathons before (except me, obviously my first). Those are the people I definitely know about, if there are others, they have done it without me noticing or helping in any way. I'm sure there are, the community is way too big now to keep track on. It was hard enough with only 500 people on Strava, let alone 4k, 2k+ on Reddit and this ever expanding thread.

Some caveats. All apart from Grandma's guy who (bar bad weather conditions suddenly on the day compared to the forecast) I expected would have gone faster than me, were running on scaled plans using time or relative distance, rather than 3x5, for example

The other point, they all have a minimum of 4 months training like this using the basic 5k-HM principles, some much longer. If you picked in the book as a standalone marathon plan, I think you might struggle and it'll probably potentially put you in as much of a hole as any other marathon plan could and it'll be just more of a question of, do you survive it?

Dear Mr. "of Crouch" (if I may. :-) ),

One thing I always wondered about is long run scaling in the marathon block. I know you went for time-on-feet, but you're also a sicko poopy-shuffling to a 2:24 finish. What about us 3:00 - 3:30 guys? I presume you don't recommend going for 210 minute long runs, do you?

How should guys like us approach this topic?

If you're still taking requests, I hope you'll write in more detail about recovery - between reps of a workout, between workouts/day after a workout, and week to week. One of the things about this training approach that requires some time to figure out is how fatigued I'm supposed to feel.

So your previous comments about overall workout RPE (6/10, feeling like you've done a workout but could have done more) were very helpful. If you could say more about what recovery indicators you look for as you get deeper into a workout, or the day after/morning before a workout, etc., that would be much appreciated. Figuring this out gets harder as I get older and recovery times lengthen.

I am only trying to the get the full picture here and have no bad intentions. The followers of sirpoc (but not the man, messiah, himself) really seem to dislike any form of critical discussion which is a shame.

Anyway, I looked at the data from his Strava (which I assume reflect all of his running) and his race times. Excuse me if I am misinterpreting things or not using the correct terminology below.

First of all it is fascinating how controlled his "NSA threshold efforts" are compared to his previous more "harder efforts", even though the former are not that much slower. He nailed the sweetspot I guess.

Secondly it could be said that he only started running when he started his NSA training. This thread started in the beginning of summer 2023 and to my understanding of his Strava he began NSA training around that time. At the end of January 2023 he was still doing harder efforts and his first mention of controlled or sweetspot running on Strava is from June 2023. More importantly is his milage: in the period of Augusti 2021 - June 2023 he never ran over 100 km a month, with many months with almost no running, but from August 2023 and onwards he has always, with the exception of the current month, ran more than 300 km a month with many months over 400 km.

Thirdly, looking at his parkrun times, he progressed quickly in the beginning from 21.34 (August 2021), to 20.16 (September 2021), to 19.29 (October 2021). After that he did not run any parkruns until July 2022, where he ran 18.59. When he was still running harder efforts he ran 17.46 (Februari 2023). August - November 2023, when he had definitely started NSA and began running more milage, he ran quite a few parkruns and quickly took his PB down to 16.12 (November 2023) from 16.55 before that (September 2023). It can be noted that this PB in November 2023 was set at his first parkrun at Southsea; his previous parkruns all being at Portsmouth Lakeside. Around a year later, in the beginning of October 2024, his PB was down to 15.56. This progress has continued on from there until (at least) now.

Hi there. Add me to list. I ran 3:38. I am slow, but I had never broken 3:45. I copy your last 10 weeks, but I was doing NSM for 7 months previous and i don't think your first month is too much different from normal NSM so no problem there.

Feeling was good in race and felt fresh and well prepared, u could say strong. For those interest, I cap long run at 180 minute, despite this much less than goal time. I think beyond this probably u run into risk problems. I think maybe if slower than 4 hours, might be tough to replicate. But I think this provide a wide range for hobby guy. I don't think this is total beginner training , low intermediary to sub elite is range.

Your training keep me in control like no other, I think this is secret. Maybe some guys play around with to much and it end up a mess. Just my thought. Thanking u anyway .

When I do this, I happen to see comment on Strava which mention him say past 180 min, maybe cap that no matter what your goal time. This 45 minute less than my expectation but I still run the best marathon I try. Before I had run 4+ hour long run with some M pace efforting and I was much worse still in my marathon performance on this sort training than sirpoc method.

Also my marathon was in South Asia for my pb and best previous was in nicer condition in Europe. So I think the time I knock off even better than maybe result suggesting. I hope maybe this helps u my friend. Good luck.