Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

LT jr wrote:

You would think wouldn't you? It is extremely simple but so many absolutely banal questions are raised.
I really worry about the intelligence level of some people who cant understand the basic premise.

The TENTH post on this long, long, long thread is the basics

"I've basically been doing the Norwegian model on singles.
It's not really that hard to "copy" in the sense the hobby jogging Ingebrigtsten puts all his training on Strava.
It's very basic , usually:
Easy
Sub threshold
Easy
Sub threshold
Easy
Sub threshold
Long run
Repeat .
I hired a lactate meter and turns out my paces are very similar to the equivalents he is running. That's a sample of two but for me who doesn't have unlimited money to spend on the test strips, it's good enough.
I had stagnated around 18:5x for quite a while for a 5k (that's all I really run) but have now made quite a big jump recently to 17:27.
Because there is very little vo2 max stuff I pretty much am ready to go for the next session no problem. Also feel way less tired running this way.
In terms of overall training load (coming from a cycling background) it also creates more CTL for about the same amount of time on feet (around 6 hours 45 for me) compared to training more traditionally, which I had tried (I'd read Daniels, faster 5k and a couple of others)."
A couple of posts later
"Yes I used to cycle. I experimented training in a lot of different ways. What I found out (I used to time trial) is that whatever CTL I got to that I could maximally sustain, my power was the same over 10 or 25 miles (key distances for time Trialists). To pluck an arbitratory number at random , say my 20 min power was 340w at a CTL of 60, it didn't really matter HOW I got there. In the sense I could do that power on a range of 7 or 12 hours a week training. The 7 hours may have been sub threshold sweetspot every other day, or the 12 hours may have been lots of slow riding and some vo2 max stuff in a week. I tried 4-5 different ways to get to that CTL number. Each time my power was almost the same.
Applying this to running, I have about 7 hours a week to train. So running as much sub threshold as I can, which gives a very good CTL score compared to say running 6 days, with long run, hills and a workout, means I'm creating more CTL for the same amount of time running the "hobby jogger" Norway model. This I think is the reason my times have improved, despite now not doing any proper REALLY hard stuff. I hope this makes sense? It's effectively a running version of what is very popular in cycling, "sweetspot" training.
In terms of running just at LT pace, of course not. You adjust the pace depending on the length of the reps + rest.
So for example 25x400 would be a faster pace, than the other end of the scale , 5x2k. But ultimately you are reaching the same state of sub threshold, just under. Remember threshold is a state, not a pace. That's why it's important to play around (if you can) with a lactate meter first, to get an idea and try to marry it up to the more traditional data you can get after each run. Ideally you would have a lactate meter all the time, but for hobby joggers like me, after a month or so you can probably get to 98% of where you need to be without it. For a pro, that 2% difference is a concern. But for me, I'm OK with that 😀"

The core, the basics, everything you need is there on page 1!!!

WTF is the matter with people?

woodworker wrote:

Pfffffft wrote:

I dont use Reddit or the wiki nor do I need someone’s stamp of approval.

It’s like you guys have ignored 20+ years of sports science practice and now someone used basic load tracking principles to guide their training and he’s your Messiah.

Kinda like Apple fanboys when Apple does something that has been around forever and they market as some evolutionary feature.

It just makes me chuckle.

It does make me laugh, the start of the thead we had people saying "nobody trains like this". "This won't work for running". "You can't run a good marathon like this".

Clearly it works magnificently. Then people come around and suddenly they have trained like this for 10 years.

I defy anyone to really find many hobbyists training from the ground up, rather than scaled down elite plans that are flawed. If there are many, they certainly weren't sharing information or helping masses like this thread and method has.

It's funny when something new comes along (of course nothing is new really in training) that people come out of the woodwork to show us how smart they are "but I knew all this already" , yet curiously never helped anyone or shared the information.

That's really what makes me chuckle, even from and old skeptic like me.

xel wrote:

JB55 wrote:

Sorry to go off topic. The NS method - is it effective for a marathon?

I'm a 45 yr male, with marathon PB 2:36 last year off very little mileage due to being injury prone. In the past I've trained off Daniels, Hudson, Hanons and recently Karp.

You got a ton of downvotes because every couple of pages someone who hasn't taken days out of their life to read the entire thread pops in to ask about how this applies to the marathon, a topic which has been discussed extensively (especially this year thanks to sirpoc's marathon debut). Don't take it personally.

I ran my marathon PB 2:38 last year on a 16 week block of 38 mpw avg, 46 peak (had been doing even less mileage and fewer workouts previous to that). My advice is that this method can't magically make you handle a larger training load than you're capable of handling. Don't view it as a way to do mileage that you haven't been able to do before.

There's nothing magical about the ~30mins of subt time that the standard workouts contain (ie 10 x 3min, 5 x 6min, 3 x 10min). You can start with less and that's productive. Aiming for 20-25min is totally fine. 7-8 x 3min. 4 x 6min. 2 x 10-12min.

Or you can stick to the 30mins now but you really ought to target the slowest paces on lactrace. So for your 2:36 (and maybe you're fitter or you've lost some fitness since then, I don't know), you'd be looking at 5:50, 5:57, and 6:06 for 3min, 6min, and 10min reps. These paces get you above LT1, not near LT2 like we ideally want. But it's about what your legs can handle and what training load you can recover from, which might mean we're not mechanically capable of hitting the ideal metabolic training (yet!). So we "train to train" to get our legs used to the weekly structure and over time we can handle getting closer to LT2.

I personally found that doing as little warmup and cooldown as possible is helpful. For example, you might do 10 x 3min but the first 2-3 reps are essentially warmup. And you'd do maybe a half mile jog before launching into 10 x 3min. No cooldown.

One other option is to occasionally plan a harder day where you're going to do 30mins of subt and target being closer to LT2 than LT1, but then you take an extra day of easy running before you do another session. I wouldn't make the day after the harder session shorter or take it off. You want to practice running the next day to get used to it.

Also beware of the long run. For some people it's not that fatiguing, but for some of us it can be (even when we're going slow). If your normal easy days are only 30-40 mins, then your "long run" doesn't need to be more than 60mins at first. Sounds ridiculous that a 2:3x marathoner can't jog more than 60mins without consequences, but it's the truth for some of us. Again, the training load we can handle has almost nothing to do with our race performance. So be honest about where you're at with training load and you will be able to increase it over time. If science says the benefits of a long run kick in more at 90mins and longer, then that's just too bad for us right now. We don't get those benefits until our legs can handle the load.

The important thing is to find a starting place that you can handle and have patience building from there. Ultimately though, people doing this method like to do harder and longer workouts for a few weeks preceding the taper for a marathon, so they don't follow this method exactly all the way through. But does the method build a ton of fitness relevant to the marathon? Obviously yes. Sirpoc started as a 20min+ 5k guy and did this method for years, raced mostly 5k's, and did only a handful of workouts that aren't prescribed in this method (but aren't even that different or extreme), and ran a 2:24 marathon. So obviously 99% of that ability to run a marathon was from this method. The few special workouts could not have been more than a cherry on top.

The majority of his pre-marathon training was business as usual. Over a 14 week period, he did 8 sessions that were 12-15k in volume rather than the typical 10k of volume. Those consisted of 4 x 3k or 3 x 5k. He did two even longer sessions: 4 x 5k and 5 x 5k. He had one 24k progressive run with the first 16k at ~93% MP and the last 8k at MP. He did two medium-long runs with a continuous 10k subt embedded in one and 3 x 3k subt w/ 1k float embedded in the other. He raced a HM. And he increased his long run up to a peak of 2h23m by adding a bit on each week. But he also noted that this training wasn't sustainable so it was more of a traditional "briefly overtrain then recover with a taper". But I imagine that applies just to the last few weeks where he raced the HM and then did two weeks in a row consisting of two of those bigger volume sessions. The other ~11 weeks I imagine were pretty sustainable despite some 12-15k sessions and the slowly increasing long runs.

Details here:

Link:docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dKRzYT...