Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

I'm coming off a PItfz plan and pretty beat up tbh. How have people out there in the world treated starting this method? I know the method on its own doesn't have blocks, but did people de-load or just freshen up before going in? Just a curious question for anyone coming from more textbook classic plans which usually have an end of cycle anyway.

One thing related to the latest discussion. On a podcast SirPoc said something about his HR being rock solid for his two hour runs. For hobby joggers such as myself, running for longer than 10 miles may see cardiac drift, and HR drifting above 70% max. I presume this has been mentioned before but what do regular runners do relating to this, getting their long runs in, and managing CTL?

Just slow down. I was in your situation. Just scaled back to around 60-65% of MHR and built up long runs from there. Can now run a bit higher in terms of effort and still see no cardiac drift. Ultimately, if you are seeing cardiac drift by a decent amount you are either running too hard for it to be easy, or it's pretty hot and dehydrated, or under fuelled.

I personally found really just checking my ego in and almost felt like walking at times in comparison, progressed me in long term. Made the sessions easier as well when they came around 3x a week.

If it helps, I took 2 weeks of just really easy running post. Daniel's block where my legs were in a bad spot. Then jumped in this. Around a year a go now, best thing I ever did. PB at every distance but the Marathon, but planning to run my first in 3 years in late November.

A lot of talk about the marathon in this thread at the moment, which makes sense, but I will add my two cents about the other end of the intensity distribution. I ran a disappointing 3:31 marathon in mid-March, then took the next two months pretty easy, training in the spirit of this thread but with 600km total across all of March, April, and May (so including the end of the marathon block and the marathon itself). Started being really consistent in mid-May, so this is the 12th week of me really training like this, weekly mileage slowly ramping up from 53km to 70km, nothing crazy but really consistent (haven't taken a day off in 50 days). I ran a 19:57 parkrun on a pretty good if not amazing course on the 7th of June and then stalled out, messaged sirpoc recently to ask him what he thought since all the parkruns since then were in the 20-low range with no real signs of improvement (or so I thought). He encouraged me to stick with it, and so I did.

Four days ago I jumped into a local mile road relay and ran a 5:28, which is a 19 second PB. Apart from two sessions I did with my old running club for old times' sake (10th June - 13x370m @ 3:39/km avg, 15th July - 11x370m @ 3:36/km avg), and the aforementioned parkruns (5 in total since that 19:57), all my training was slower than 4:10/km for the fastest reps, and as slow as 4:40-4:50/km for the 10 minute reps depending on the conditions, and I raced at 3:24/km while feeling unaccountably amazing throughout. My easy runs are even more comically slow, I never go faster than 6:00/km and often shuffle around at close to 7:00/km. I did do strides here and there, though, cos my turnover sucks, and I also do strength training once or twice a week, and I played football a few times, so it's not 100% strict NSA, but it's still pretty amazing to me that on unspectacular mileage and pretty much no X-factor training whatsoever I could go that fast over that short a distance. I've been running for 8 years, as well, so these aren't really newbie gains.

That's a short mile my man. No way that happened.

Do yourself a favour and get a coach and a proper training plan. People acting like this is gonna work. This is just easy interval method or 80/20 , which are not good training plans.

Hundreds of pages, 15 or 20 accounts, with Strava data backing them up, showing proof this works.

Why are people not believing this?

The bigger question is, why are people still replying to obvious trolls?

Same here. Once I started averaging below 130 for easy runs things started clicking. It’s also cool to see my easy pace improve while keeping HR constant.

Any chance someone could share initials or something that might help find this sub-15 Master. Not a stalker but would love to see what that training looks like. Too many people in the Strava group now to just randomly look.

No. We are not doxxing people here. However, if you read the thread, you should be able to find what you are looking for.

He posted a while back, I can't remember what his username or what page. He uploads on Strava with a random run title generator I think. It makes me laugh sometimes. He basically just is following sirpoc basic version for a long time now . He also ran an incredible mile at one point.

How difficult is it to learn how to use the lactate meter? I’m coaching someone and currently doing double threshold (typically 4x2k with 75 seconds rest in the morning at marathon pace and 16x400 with 40 seconds rest in the afternoon at 10k race pace). I’m assuming this is keeping his lactate in the correct zones, but thinking a lactate meter would confirm. I’m just concerned whether it’s not intuitive to use or not.

I tried to read through a lot of this thread for an answer, but didn’t find it..

Solid and over the years regular advice here. However, my experiment of one has been 60-65% is power walking. Doing runs at that level left me incredibly tight and slow. I’m not sure it’s best for the 50 plus set. Yes, I can “run” for 90 minutes. But is 14:00 pace doing anything? that’s not much faster than my 1980’s 5k total time!

My even bigger question and I'm surprised nobody else really has raised it....He may be injured, but sirpoc has done 8, yes 8 workouts this week and there's still Sunday.

These are actual sub threshold, and at times, even beyond threshold workouts looking at HR data. I'm amazed he can go so hard on the elliptical, shockedactually. Plus what looks like some pretty decent workouts on the bike.

Last time I got injured, I actually considered myself a dedicated cross trainer until I seen this sh*t. Almost no easy work at all. In fact it's more like 80/20 in reverse.

If nothing else, this guy can train. If we learn nothing else from this thread it's that mentality and getting the job done is a huge piece of his success, you really do have to be willing to put the work in.

On a separate note and this probably sounds like a silly question, but has anyone run an ultra off this training? I actually feel it might fit quite well and provide a good base, provided you know how to fuel the race.

I’m going do an ultra in February next year. Am building for a marathon start of November then will start training for ultra after that. Is only 50kms. Goal is to just get as fit as I can. Am going do the marathon adapted sub t plan for the marathon and for ultra will just do longer runs on weekend to replace third sub t run. And maybe do longer steady state work in one of the long runs.

I am in my 60s. I re started running 4 years ago. Obviously my PBs are long gone! But it would be nice to compete nationally in ages groups.

I picked up sirpoc method 14 months ago now. I am now currently ranked 2 in my country for the 5k in my age group.

I started off this method making sure I ran the 3 workouts as described and a lot of my easy running 10-14 months ago was around 12-13:30/ mile pace. It was almost as you described, power walking. But my HR kept low and I could manage the workouts weekly. It was a slow process but in time but easy pace naturally got back to where it had been before, around 9:30-10/mile. The point being that I thought I was running easy at those paces, but I was close to running steady/hard each day looking back. But now I can run those paces at under 70% MHR. It's quite a daunting process but I have seen others on Strava who have been supportive and you will come out of the other side. Hope this helps.

I think you have to have a very strong mentality for this training. Often I don't want to do it, but once you buy in you realise what needs to be done to get the job done. That being said, what he is doing right now whilst he can't run is quite simply beyond what I think most of us could put ourselves through. In many ways, the guy's ability to absolutely do whatever needs to be done, even though he often doesn't want to (I found the recent podcast he was on a a guest interesting from this perspective) is his X factor, outside of thinking about X factor in terms of workouts.