Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Having persevered running at under (and often well under) 70% of max hr, zone 2 now feels harder. No one has ever claimed that there is a physiological turnpoint between zone 1 and zone 2. But there is a marked difference in RR between say 65% of max hr (zone 1) and 80% of max hr (say top of zone 2).

6/10

I find it logical to diversify the sources you look at for your running information. I would encourage looking at videos produced and placed on Youtube.com.

I have been wondering about the intensity of subT workouts. Lets say that runners A and B are doing 3×10min or 3×3km at 30K. If runner A is faster (lets say a 2:30 marathoner) then runner B (who is, lets say, a 4:00 marathoner), everything else equal, the intensity (lets measure it as level of blood lactate) of the effort done by runner A will be significantly higher then that of runner B during this workout.

Should not runner A, in this case, run their workout a much slower then 30K pace, maybe much slower then marathon pace, while runner B perhaps should run a faster then 30K pace?

I am about a 2:55 marathoner and have beentrying to do thease subT workouts but find that the intensity is most of the time too high for the recommended number of reps. The explanations I can come up with are:
i) Im very good at emptying the tank on race day which skews my training paces too high,
ii) the subT workouts of this method are designed for much slower runners,
iii) I need to man up.

In cases i) and ii), the solution is to run the workouts slower but in case iii) the problem is with my expectation of the feeling of intensity. From all the accounts I have read here, the feeling should be very easy. The thing is, I dont think 1K reps at HM pace is easy and certainly not 3K reps at 30K pace!

sirpoc is 31 min faster than you in the marathon so this isn't it

You are probably right, but sirpoc is also a gifted athlete and has probably a much higher load and intensity tolerance than the average runner like myself.

It is definitely not that it's for faster runners, you are not really "fast". I'm quite a bit faster than you and sirpoc is much faster than me. In fact, the faster you get the closer probably these are to the lower end of the initial guides, more like 25k pace than closer to 30k.

Do you actually know your current fitness? This seems to be the absolute number one issue time after time for this. You are a 2:55 marathoner but not at the moment. There was a guy saying similar on Strava recently. He ran a 3 hour marathon and said these shouldn't feel hard, but he is running like a 19:30 5k and a recent mid 40 10k. But assuming he is still a 3 hour marathoner.

tbh, this is also an issue. It shouldn't feel very easy, I don't know where you got that from. People mentioned that it's easy in comparison to a VO2max workout but it still feel like you're doing work. I think I've seen the 6/10 being thrown around

to quote the man himself:

I have concidered that too, but dont think thats the case. Both the races and training I have done this year indicate a higher level of fitness than last year when I ran a 2:56. This summer I did almost 30 km at 4min/km average (sub 2:49 marathon pace) so I think 2:55 is fairly accurate even if the conditions or prep arent perfect.

Maybe its the total volume of intensity that I just am not adapted to yet. Before, I have been doing 1-2 "workout" per week where the other has been somewhere at LT1 (so not really a workout in the traditional sense but still too fast to count as regular easy running).

Yeah I agree with this. It's a 5-6/10 workout range on the basics RPE scale for me. It's easier compared to VO2 work, but this isn't EIM which is actually easy (and totally different).

I would guess it's pitched wrong. I made this mistake when I first started this method. I used my most recent race time converted but it was about 2 months previous. After some time off and less focused training when I finally jumped into this , my fitness was nowhere near where I thought it was.

Thanks, this is helpful. Running between LT1 and LT2 is a hard enough to feel a bit discomfortable but not hard enough to get the kind of high you get from a "hard" workout. So, in other words, Im too soft and need to accept the discomfort.

don’t worry about running by distance, run by time only until you get closer to hitting the distance within that time frame. So you have 3 x 10 mins between 30km and 2 hour race pace. Of all the reps things is the easiest one to hit and extend if you regularly do a marathon,

This is where the balance is hard and why I'm broadly against changing too much until you really get experienced or need to change something else for a particular reason. The whole thing is a real fine balancing act.

If the paces aren't quite right, play around with them. But the three workouts should become hard enough that you feel like you are getting to almost the intensity of a two workout week, but never quite there. That's really the key to this. 4-6/10 is about perfect. It's the aggregate accumulation of load, but I don't think there should be a whole lot of discomfort and really if you do a couple of weeks and don't feel like you could go on for months and months doing the same, it's too hard, no matter the paces.

But it's also important to remember your easy runs really need to be easy, to make the workouts feel in that 4-6/10 range. I'm not saying this is you, but another big problem is just easy runs way too hard, that even when you pitch these workouts correctly, the accumulated fatigue is just tipping too much and what should be an easier workout, feels hard anyway. Easier is the key word, probably just easier than traditional workouts you might be used to. They certainly aren't "easy".

Obviously as others have pointed out, pitching your current fitness is obviously the number one pitfall when people say it's too hard (or too easy, they are fitter than they realise). Doesn't appear to be the case here, but if you are unsure you need to do some sort of race effort.

Chillruns often runs a mile as a fitness guage. I quite like that. It seems to generally scale quite well still. Even if it's not perfect, it's not really any kind of drastic effort you need to recover from and if you mess it up you probably only wasted 4-7 minutes depending on where you are at. It's definitely one of the things I quite like to get you in the ballpark. That's more aimed as a general thing especially if you don't race often, rather than your post specifically

Why don't you do a quick 5k TT to measure your current fitness and base your workouts on that? Instead of trying to guess it from a performance 1 year ago and metrics from your current training.

Does that mean he bases his training paces of the mile TT? Since my volume is very low compared to standard NSA, I always wondered what the shortest TT is that would still accurately determine training paces. If it is a mile, that sounds awesome.

I’d be very careful with using a mile TT to adjust ST paces unless your performances are (1) already quite even across the distance range (or relatively worse at shorter distances), or (2) you know yourself very well and can use experience to extrapolate the correct paces without relying solely on a calculator. From everything I’ve seen, this method develops #1, and you can rely on #2 as you become more familiar with how your TTs relate to your workout paces.

It’s not that the mile TT itself will hurt you, it’s that for many runners—especially aerobically underdeveloped ones, who often skew younger or have focused a lot on speed/VO2–the paces a calculator spits out when you plug in the mile time will be far too fast (Tinman especially, f around and find out). Speaking from personal experience, I tried this last year because I’m more interested in middle distances, and I had to totally recalibrate after just a couple weeks because the new paces cracked me. I had roughly a 4-point VDOT differential between my mile TT and my prior 5k race, which I chalked up to improved fitness and better conditions when the bulk of the difference was just me being better at muscling through a mile.

Miles are great to race, and they should be fine as a fitness gauge for guys like chillruns, sirpoc, cheetodust, etc., who have a lot of experience and know where their lines are, grasp what various performances mean, and won’t over-rely on any one performance. But for actually finding workout paces, it’s probably much better for most people to stick with 5k (or at least 3k/2mi.)

As someone who always found sustained tempo runs very hard (harder than shorter VO2max intervals), the S/T intervals are much easier and sustainable. I absolutely hated sustained tempo runs.

I think some may have given the indication that they are easier than they actually are, they are still very much a workout. I listen to music, and I can concentrate on the music for the first few reps. The middle reps, I am losing concentration on the music. The final reps I am looking at the clock.

I then look forward to the easy day. I used to struggle running slow enough to stay under 70% of max. Now I have no desire to run anything but under 70%. This confirms that the S/T intervals do cause fatigue.

Don't use vdot calculator use statsgansta. Even if the paces aren't exactly accurate they should be accurate relative to each other, like you can input two distances, take statsgansta's 400m time, and assuming that you don't improve your speed, which is a fair assumption, use that 400m as a constant. For example if your two distances yielded a 400m time of 56, and your previous mile time was 4:45, and you improved to 4:40 you could take the difference between the two mile time's calculated half marathon pace and use that ratio to divide or multiply you paces by.

I would argue, though, that using statsgansta is almost always better for finding pacing for runners that skew strongly fast twitch. For a 2:05, 17:00 type runner, a 5k time trial is pretty much perfectly equidistant to to half marathon pace and a 1200m pace. Nobody would recommend using a 1200m time trial to accurately find 5k pace, so using 5k to find half marathon pace doesn't make much sense, unless you are more slow twitch and your times are consistent across distances, then maybe it's not an issue. The VDOT calculator works by applying regression analysis to the top performances of elite runners, and assuming that hobby joggers' speeds regress by the same amount. This is obviously not the case, as hobby joggers are constantly cited on here as having relatively overdeveloped anaerobic systems and underdeveloped aerobic systems. Equivalence calculators aren't even accurate among elite runners (according to Morgan McDonald, whose group has access to lactate), and elite runners exhibit significantly less individual differences than hobby joggers, where two runners, despite running the exact same 5k time, might be able to run a 400 in times 10 seconds apart from one another. This isn't even uncommon for people running 17 flat.

Yes, I've been doing this method for a few weeks now and I think there's a misconception that the sub T days are "easy". To me they require effort and concentration, just nothing like what you would need in a race. I tend to aim for a 5-6 out of 10 overall, maybe dipping slightly into 7 for brief moments for mental confidence.

I remind myself during the workouts "comfortably hard" and if I find myself looking at my watch because I'm hoping the rep will end soon, then I back off. That's it. I know the workout was done right because I'm 51 and feel recovered enough to do it all again 2 days later. I think you should feel energized after, not beat up.

Sidenote - I find it funny how many people claim you need to run a 5K or TT every 4 to 6 weeks no matter how many times sirpoc himself says you do not! Just throwing that out there for anyone who hasn't read the whole thread and thinks otherwise.