Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Yeah, don't worry. We won't take your advice. But thanks for the plea not to, anyway.

On AliExpress or Taobao, basically just look at the listing and see if it has all the technical information, pictures etc you would expect to see for an official product. If it does, almost certainly legit.

Outside of this, you can take a risk. I did this on a extra pair of challengers I ordered via Taobao through CSS for £31. It didn't have as much info, but I just thought why not. They have reached the shipping Wearhouse (where they weigh the shoes and send you a pic, so you know the cost of shipping) and they are within 2 grams for the pair of my pair I have at home. So, almost certainly they are good.

I would highly advise everyone though if they aren't sure, don't know what they are doing, or don't want to take the risk, just wait for coupons each month on AliExpress. It's still way, way cheaper than western brand prices. But if you are willing to dive headfirst into Taobao and the like, you are genuinely looking at 60-70% cheaper at least, compared to the western counterpart. I got another pair of the elite 5s for £57.

Are we training too hard most of the time?

I've been going down the rabbit hole of Jan Olbrecht's tens of thousands of LT tests and it's fascinating - recommend the science of winning book/podcasts he's done etc, so many interesting insights and a lot to get your head around. There is a lot of synergy in certain elements to NSA, eg. Primary focus on aerobic development year round; however he also found lots of runners are better off doing 'only' 60mpw than pushing super high mileage: many athletes he's tested showed worse performance and lower lactate clearance at 160k per week than they did at 100k - more is more until it's not....it is very much athlete/individual dependent, some thrive on high mileage others buckle, NSA is probably in the sweet spot (pun intended) of load for most 'normal' people due to it being limited to 6-9hrs per week.

Of particular relevance to this thread though is that for aerobic capacity development his repeated testing of his athletes suggested that we should be doing the intervals (8-12ks worth) at LT1 rather than SubT/LT2: nothing between LT1 and 3k pace for much of the year, and only then moving to LT2 in the 6 weeks before a race to increase fractional utilization/aerobic power: his findings suggests this will work more reliably for almost all athletes, whereas focusing on LT2 year round works very well for some athletes, but not for others depending on their physiology. The other main thing would be including a few 200s with complete rest at mile pace every other week for anaerobic capacity maintenance and speed - yes I know "vanilla" but this is very low risk especially with sessions at LT1. Anyway I thought it was interesting.

To me it seems newer runners or those coming back from injury should probably start with LT1 intervals to build aerobic capacity before turning to fractional utilization/LT2. I suspect NSA by staying below LT2 does a bit of both but it seems plausible we might be better off building the former (LT1) before the latter.

Similar note, was reading this interview with Hugo Hay who at the time was coached by Tim Moriau before he went to pro soccer as head of performance...he worked with Olbrecht and his training methods reflect that. Google translate required. But his training for most the year was basically two LT1 sessions and Z2 for about 100k per week, with only the very occasional aerobic power/lt2 session. Seems even easier than the vanilla NSA. Surprising for a low 13 min 5k runner. This all makes me wonder, could we get better results by doing the sessions primarily at LT1 and building load at that intensity to enhance aerobic capacity before shifting to sub T/LT2 in the six weeks before goal races to optimize fractional utilization?

It won't let me post the Hugo Hay interview but you can find it if you search: "Hugo Hay, une structure atypique pour voir Tokyo et Paris"

For testing:
Belgian singles proposition 1: NSA method but building load at LT1 until 6 weeks before goal race at which point switch to sub T/LT2. Then back to LT1 after. Basically a periodized version of NSA. Optional 200s at mile pace every 2nd or 3rd week.

Belgian Singles Proposition 2: 2 x LT1 sessions (8-12k volume) per week, 1 Z2 (5 zone model) medium long run (75-90 mins) per week, the rest easy 10-12k. Every other week include 6 x 200m at mile pace (2 mins rest). Six weeks before goal race move sessions to Sub T/NSA.

P.S. I think NSA/vanilla is great and I'm not trying to undermine, just intrigued by science/optimization. Also, caveat/disclaimer, this is my understanding so for of Jan O's work, still trying to process it all and there may be misunderstandings.

I mean it was probably a troll post, but genuinely some people do think if you buy Chinese shoes your legs will fall off after you run, or something similarly drastic.

At least as far as I can tell the Chinese brands on AliExpress are not much cheaper than Western and Japanese brands in the US, presumably sure to tariffs. Shame as I would like to give them a try, just not at a premium.

Really interesting stuff, thanks for posting. When the goal race is a marathon, I wonder if the Belgian Singles plan could be a way of introducing longer runs at say 8-12 weeks out, without generating excessive fatigue? You could do the longer runs by starting in Z1 and ending in Z2 the last 75-90 mins.

I've recently moved from vanilla NSA to pre-marathon NSA, and I've noticed that bumping up the length of the long run has significantly raised my overall fatigue level, even though the long run is 100% Z1 and my weekly mileage hasn't changed, since I've shortened the other easy days. Maybe using the Belgian Singles plan while you're in the process of lengthening the long run would avoid this, and then by the time you transition to the subT/NSA sessions, the length of the long run would not itself be a stressor.

I know Li-Ning has an official US Amazon storefront. The Red Hare 8 Pro (the EVO SL competitor) is $75 there, so you do pay a bit extra for the convenience of buying from Amazon.

It says $100 for me which I guess is actually still pretty good especially since it’s more without coupons on Ali express and it’s supposedly on par with the EVO SL which is like $150 I think

Oh no, looks like that particular discount was a couple of weeks ago. Currently there's a 20% off coupon on the store page, click green check box that's just under the price.

I started with the Flame 4 and it’s excellent. Then came the Xtep 160X 3.5 Pro— it’s a very fast shoe, but the drawback is it doesn’t forgive you if your muscles get tired.
Lately, seeing the quality, I’ve been buying 361 shirts and I love them—the Flame and the Furious; the latter fits a bit tighter. I bought another one from QIAODAN, and the 361s are quite a bit better—not that the other one is bad, but it probably breathes less at 30°C.
Now I’ve tried QIAODAN tights and the quality seems excellent. What I haven’t found yet is a low-drop shoe, something like the Topo Specter 2 or the Rebel v4.

Guys, there is a whole section on Letsrun for shoes. Let’s not turn this into another shoe thread.

I like this approach a lot, but isn't it just Hadd, though? Or going back even further, what is the difference between LT1 and "3/4 effort"?

Are we just re-inventing the tried and true methods with different names?

Nice observation. It's pretty similar to Hadd stage 1, although he advocated for a lot of race specific stuff in stage 2.

Question then, how to find LT1 outside the lab? From what I have read, LT1 has more variance when derived from race performances than LT2.

Basing a lot of this on John Davis' writing here:

runningwritings.com

Individual variation in heart rates at LT1 and LT2 in runners, and the implications for zone training

John Davis

Link:runningwritings.com/2025/02/lt1-lt2-he...

incredible how a thread on basically jogging all the time got this much traction. Newsflash: this won’t make you fast at real distances (800, Mile, 5000).

Will the S/T sessions not “average” around LT1? I know that this is not specifically what Olbrecht is recommending, but not a million miles away.

In vanilla NSA? I don't think so at all. For me LT1 is 16bpm below LT2, closer (even slower than) to marathon pace/effort than the 15k-30k race efforts in vanilla NSA.

I think HR@LT1 can move a lot more with training than HR@LT2 though. I'm a duffer though so maybe the highly trained will have a tighter zone between LT1 and LT2.

Am I abnormal? A physiologist once called me a "super fat burner" (I am used to just being called "super fat") during a gas test, but the parameters of that specific test session weren't sufficient to determine stable HR zones or lactate levels.

Probably depends a bit on the session but LT1 should be closer to 2.0 mmol for most people while S/T will put you in the 2.5-3.5 range. Hobby Ingebrigtsen pretty much started this way, by running most of his workouts around M pace, even the short ones.

Bakken experimented with this to, if I remember correctly, but found it didn't work as well for him.

Kinda interested in trying the Belgian approach as I like the occasional 200s and a moderate long run anyway. Guess I would drop the 12x3:00 and run 6x7:00 at 30K pace and 4x12 at M pace or something along those lines?

Probably. That goes for me too. Bakken has been kind enough to give me some of his time, and we have been discussing a few things. Ultimately, we came to a lot of the same conclusions in different sports, independently of each other. A lot of the conclusions we both drew came from some already established principles. Just—he is focused on the best way elites can train in terms of bang for buck (I mean, he has obviously cracked it)—and mine is based on how time-constrained runners with a life can train, based on my experience from cycling at its core and introducing some of those somewhat alien principles to a lot of runners.

Ultimately, good training usually comes back to the same point, or roughly the same point. You increase load in some meaningful way (however you measure it, even on a basic level—just mileage or time on feet weekly)—and you manage fatigue by making sure you are sufficiently recovered. That's pretty much it. The best training manages to increase the load you produce as much as possible without fatigue winning the battle.

Everything else is just filler, for that person's specific philosophy. That doesn't mean these bits tied to an individual philosophy aren't important—they are—but it does mean pretty much any training at this point has its roots somewhere else.

The biggest issue is if you have a lot of hours to dedicate and go full double mode like Marius suggests, or the single-adaptation approach I propose, there isn't much room for error. As again, the best training is often on a knife edge in terms of that balance between increasing performance as much as you can and managing fatigue. But that's also its success: as when you get it right, you haven't fallen into the trap of a lot of other training where the balance is all wrong and, despite all the work you have done, you are overcooked (which is how I came to post here in the first place).

I still have no idea to this day why I assumed running was inherently different to cycling, and that I had to "train like a textbook runner". Although if I had done that from day one, we probably wouldn't be here. As in a weird way I enjoyed the long process of solving the puzzle of how to get better. People who are newer to this seem to think I came up with some grand plan or something. My only goal was to stop getting my ass kicked at parkrun.