Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

How about the time trails? Is it best to have them as 5k tests, or is it ok to switch ut between 5k and 10k tests?

This is hilarious .

If you can get anywhere close to max performance in a 10k soloing it, you are far more mentally tough than me.

5k TT is perfectly fine, 2 miles is good enough for a fitness check

A question to Sirpoc on the long run.

On the recent podcast it was stated that there is no need to run more than 90 mins for 1/2 marathon training. Sirpoc 1/2 mar time is under 70 mins, so long run Is 20 mins longer than 1/2 mar time.

When marathon training, long run went out to time of expected finish time,

For those where 1/2 mar time is longer than 90 mins, should long run not be extended accordingly?

Did the podcast say anything about whether there was need, or if it's a good idea/worth it, to run over 60 minute in a long run for the 5k? I don't have any interest in racing longer than that and don't want to create unnecessary fatigue

This is making me question if I’ve jumped my mileage up too much. I’ve been doing this training for 6 months. For the first 4 months I was building up in the 60-70mpw range and I only barely PRed. I ran 15:51 on the track, when last year I had run 15:54 on a road course with a few hills, which I would consider a better performance. But my races overall were a lot more consistent than last year, and I do enjoy this training so I stuck with it. I only really took a step up when I increased my mileage into the 80-90 range for 2 months and ran a 1 minute half marathon PB—1:11. It’s still not a huge jump up, although I was more in the 90-100 range when I ran my previous hm PB.

I don’t really know what my question is. I guess I just wonder if my expectations for how much I could improve on lower mileage were too high. I have been improving, it’s just been much slower than others report and seemed to require higher mileage. I was following the “vanilla plan” religiously for 4 months, although I did start adding in easy doubles in the past 2 months when I increased the mileage.

I've been doing NSA for 5 months now with the standard 10x3 minute, 5x6 minutes, and 3x10 minutes. I've recently started experimenting with extending the reps. First week of my ramp up I did 11x3 minutes, week after that I did 12x3 minutes. Feel fine so far but not sure if I'm being too greedy. I'm around 17:40ish 5K fitness right now. For those of you doing more than the standard 90 mins of quality work, how quickly did you ramp up your quality work and how much quality work did you find to be sustainable?

Thanks guys!

Yeah, I'd done 15 weeks of standard NSA before transitioning into a short block where I kept in 1 typical sub-T workout, added in a bigger marathon specific workout (essentially just 2 sub-t workouts in 1) and then turned my easy long run into a steady long run. Everything else was very easy.

There were a few other things that I tried, but that was essentially the core of it, and that's the structure that I'll likely stick with in the next marathon block - I'll just incrementally increase the volume, and hopefully another 6 months of NSA will put me in a better spot going into that block.

Ideally I'd just copy Sirpoc's marathon build, but I suspect I'm a little too fragile (or maybe just too timid), but this slightly more conservative version seemed to work okay.

What was the workout? I don't want to be a Strava stalker. I suspect I'd also be too fragile (and slow) for 4 and 5×5K reps and a 24K progression.

For both you and Paul, I thought this as well, Re: being too fragile.

But the one thing I'm really glad I did was the end "special block". It's not as hard as you think, in fact even though it's very fast work, I prefer it to grinding out M pace runs or Canova style runs at 90-95% for weeks. It certainly gave me the mental resolve I didn't know I had, especially on the 5x17 mins I did , to replicate for time. I think that gave me some mental resolve as well, I've heard sirpoc say that. The last rep was like a mini wall to work through, it prepared me physically and mentally.

Just a thought. But I certainly fell into the category of you guys who thinking I was too fragile, or I would fall apart if I did it!

Under settings you have the possibility to change priority from how Load i calculated: using the three parametres Power, Pace and HR. I don't really remember what the default is, it might be Power to have biggest wheight, but since I believe my watch don't really track power that well I changed it to Pace. Only to realize I'm soon to enter treadmill season and pace goes out the window, thus changing it to HR. Only to leave my HR-band during yesterdays HM-race (HR 10bmp over easy), and then changing it back to Pace since I feel the need to get the validation from Load.

I did a 3 week sequence, where the first week I did: 5 x 3k @ ME (1k float recovery)

2nd week: 4 x 5k @ ME (2' standing recovery)

3rd week: A half marathon @ ME

I made sure to keep my HR below LT2 in each workout.

this reminds me of the Tony Hawk stories

Tagging along here because we know each other and I also ran a HM yesterday.

M31, I found the thread in March whilst I was into the Pfitz 12/55 plan for a May marathon, and decided I'd pick this up once I got done frying myself with what I was currently doing. It was a condensed block because I picked up yet another injury in early December that wrecked my ability to run until late January and I was too stubborn to bail out of my home marathon for a second year in a row. I got through the block somehow unscathed and in fairness I did gain a lot of fitness quickly and logged a respectable 3:19, taking my 5k time down to 19:13 from a 20:11 and doing a 10k TT of 40:25 in the process of that block. I knew though that there had to be a more sustainable way to train in general given how cooked I felt on a plan that was just 5 days a week. So post-marathon, I hopped on this train totally inspired by the good things coming out of this thread.

My week usually looks something like this:

M: 45-60' E
T: 8x4' off 60s (~2k wu/cd)
W: 60' E
T: 4x8' off 60s (~2k wu/cd)
F: 60', E
S: 2x4' off 60s - parkrun @ sub-t - 2x4' off 60s (~2k wu/cd, the bit inbetween parkrun and the 2nd set of reps has around 800m of a jog warmup)
S: 90' E

I like doing parkrun as it's the only time I'm running with other people, and wanted to find a way to still incorporate that into this without just shuffling it. The first couple of weeks I ended up comfortably below 20% of quality work because my shuffle to parkrun is nearly 5k itself, hence the janky extra 4' reps on the run to and from the parkrun. Forgive the compromise there.

Once I got into the swing of it, the training has felt super sustainable despite moving up to 7 days a week. I run to heart rate rather than pace because I don't live in a flat area, but it's pretty easy to figure out the right intensity to run every run at which I guess is 95% of the battle and I don't mind the monotony of it because it reduces the risk of me being a moron and doing something badly wrong and getting hurt again.

I've knocked the 5k PB down over the summer to 18:51 which given the temperatures that was run in is good work since the previous PB was set in perfect conditions, but nothing absolutely groundbreaking just yet. Then I got badly ill at the start of August and lost nearly 3 weeks of normal running before slowly getting back to it and setting myself up for yesterday's HM but a bit cautious as it took until a couple of weeks ago for me to feel like I had recovered what was lost.

Yesterday was a perfect day in the UK to set a quick time, cool, no wind and overcast conditions. I thought I was good to run a 1:29-something as long as nothing went wrong and maybe a 1:28 if stars aligned. 3k in I realised that I already felt strong enough to break from the original plan and push the pace slightly, and after another 3k I felt the same thing again. I just started latching onto the next group, sitting with them for a little bit and then deciding I wanted to be in the group ahead and then just doing it. It didn't feel like it required extra effort, it just happened. By the time I got into the final 5k, I was comfortably running what I thought was my PB 5k pace and just breezing past people who themselves weren't fading or seemingly struggling. I even had one final gear to go up in the last few hundred metres and came across the line in 1:25:13. I still can't quite believe it.

I'm glad I found this thread, massive thanks to everyone who has made a positive contribution in here. I'm one of the lucky sods who has got a ballot entry into London next year, so I'll give the marathon build a go, and hopefully I can report back with a time that begins with a 2.

So many more fake stories with no evidence. Try harder to make stuff up, losers.

I bet you are one of the mentally challenged types that post on reddit sub and can't seem to understand such a simple method, even with a giant wiki.

I see this a lot on reddit too, relatively slow runners doing more than 30 minutes of s/t per session and it's often a head scratcher. My guess is these are inexperienced runners who don't understand that 30 minutes of s/t 3 times per week is a s$# ton of volume or perhaps they assume more is automatically better. There's a point of diminishing or even negative returns with doing too much s/t.

I'm sure 120 minutes of s/t can work out for some, but I plan to cap my sessions at 30 minutes indefinitely and when I want to add stimulus I will increase the length of my easy runs and perhaps double on easy days. I think that will work better for many, especially older runners.

It took about 30 seconds to find who YetAnotherConvert is and his results. He’s quite obviously legit, unless you are suggesting he achieved those result with different training.

Not everyone who is doing this method will be time restricted to circa 6 hours per week.

if you have more time, the thing to do is build up the volume of the easy runs, and maybe make the long run a bit longer.