Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Very interesting post. I am very much in the same boat (aged early 50s) and am
struggling with recurrent calf injuries when trying the NSA. The last 2 ½ years
I have had 3 small tears (confirmed on MRI) in the soleus muscle (always the
right leg and lateral part of the soleus) and each time has meant 2 months off or
more from any running. The calf issues have been very difficult to diagnose (all
the sports doctors and physios I saw missed them and they were only confirmed
on MRI imaging); each time the injuries arose they initially felt like nothing
more than a stiff calf during the Sub T workout and I would even be able to jog
home after the workout without any issue. And the comeback to regular running
has had to be very gradual after that taking at least a month each time. Similar
to you I think that the NSA approach is one of the best in terms of the physiology
gains you can make but the injuries that have kept coming up are leaving me thinking
as to what I can change to make this a viable training approach for me. I am
just not able to get in any sort of competitive running shape like this.

I have thought about footwear being an important issue as the first time I had this
happen I was using the old types of racing flats (the Takumi Sen edition before
they had any carbon rods or boost foam) which may have been too aggressive for
1 ½ hours of threshold running each week. But the third time I had a calf tear,
I was using the Adidas Boston boost V12 which are a “super trainer” as I understand.
So I am not sure what footwear could be the best in terms of injury prevention
although I still think it is important (if that makes sense).

Among the other factors which might be causing injury, I was wondering if I was doing the
easy runs too fast and maybe I should be thinking about aiming for 65% of MHR
to be more safe than 70% MHR and maybe reducing my long run from 1h 30 mins to
1h 15 mins.

Finally, I am wondering about reducing the volume of the Sub T workouts in that maybe 3
workouts of 30 mins total is too much biomechanical load and to reduce the
workouts to 20 or 25 mins of total work.

Of course there might be other details and nuances of the NSA approach that I have missed and these might be important regarding injury avoidance.

The other training approaches for injury prone older runners that I am thinking
about are those proposed by Luis del Aguila who seems to be advocating just one
threshold workout at the weekend of 30 to 50 mins of total work (or 60 mins as
a maximum) followed by an easy paced long run the next day and just easy
running during the week. Also when I was in my mid 40s I went through 2 years
of very few injuries doing just 1 short reps threshold type of workout of 20 x 1
min or 16 x 400m (10k pace/effort or a bit slower) with 30 to 40 sec jog recoveries
which was done mid week and another sort of alternating type of threshold
workout at the weekend such as 5X5 mins at something like ½ marathon pace effort with a 5 mins fast easy run between the reps as the recovery. The rest of the training was a
Sunday longer run and easy running on the other days of the week.

But I would still love to able to try the NSA approach for a year or so if I could manage
this without getting repeatedly injured. Thanks to all for the interesting posts on this now legendary thread.

Sounds frustrating, sorry to hear it. I have a few thoughts, but also feel like talking to a solid physiotherapist is probably a better bet to get things back on track than listening to random loudmouths on the internet. Your issue seem primarily physiological and a physio is probably the best qualified person to help you bridge the gap between what your body is currently able to sustain and the training you want to do, given your injury history.

That aside, what percentage of your weekly training *time* is spent at ST paces? The general goal is around 25%, but you may want to consider dialing this backgiven your propensity to exceed your body's limits. How are you determining your workout paces? You may want to consider slowing down from the recommended paces, assuming you are basing your paces on recent race or time trial results. There's still lots to be gained, even if you're not pushing the limits of ST paces.

Good luck on your training journey.

It's getting quite cold outside where I live and I'm curious to know how much training I "lose" if getting the sub T-workouts done on a treadmill instead of outside? Thinking about keeping my easy runs on road and workouts on treadmill. Is there any negatives to this?

I don’t think so. Jakob practically lives on the treadmill!

Look into (perhaps you've done this already) a typical Lydiard Base Build.

The philosophies are the similar, like you' I got injured (sacral stress fracture) from NSM. I blame myself because I could have ramped up more slowly, but it worked great until my injury.

With the Lydiard or Hadd way there's a build of continuous Sub Threshold runs. Runs that are fair bit slower then the Sub-T pace of NSM because there are no breaks. I think when I start up again I will start up with alternating Steady runs and Easy runs similar to the NSM format.

A great book for this is Healthy Intelligent Training by Keith Livingstone. Letsrun is also a wealth of information if you search Hadd method or John Kellogg.

Once I'm able to do the continuous Steadyish runs I will introduce 1 NSM Sub-T workout then go from there. In my 50's too.

Hadd subT runs should not start continuous. The point is to start at something like 80% max HR and run something like 4 x 10 mins or 3 x 15 mins miles twice a week. Extend this out over a few weeks to hit maybe 2 x 30 mins before, and only when you're comfortable, going for 60/70 mins long interval at 80%. When you're comfortable hitting 60/70 mins (or around 10 miles) at this HR, bump up the HR of your session by 5% and start the process again

Hello, ran NSA sub T January-August. Ran 202 miles in August, then got sick, long covid? Anyway after 20 miles in September and 20 here in October, looking to start NSA again. How long should I wait, December or the new year? November my goal is to hit 80 miles total.. after hitting 180+ May, June, July, and August.

Made some good gains doing NSA, but did get burnt out, poor fueling, heat and humidity, forcing the pace with heat and humidity plus hills. I felt really good on NSA before it got hot out in June. Jan-May was dreamlike with the gains coming quick

This is a reasonable suggestion. An even simpler one: you could also just start with one or two sub-T sessions per week, running them 10% slower than your expected NSM sub-T pace. As you feel muscularly comfortable you can increase pace or duration (not at once).

Something to remember, and a mistake that I see time and time again, is that this approach is about maximizing load. It’s “easier” than doing a VO2 max workout two or three times a week but doing three workouts of 30 mins sub-t and 7.5 hours of running is still a lot on the body. You have to work up to this over time. Newer runners will struggle to run 7.5 hours a week and stay healthy even if it’s all easy running. So if you’re coming back from injury and jumping right into this, you will probably get injured again. If you increase load too quickly, you’ll likely get injured. Patience. Slowly increase load over time.

What is the lowest distance Norwegian singles are effective for for moderatly trained athletes say 4:30 1600m, 9:40 3200m to improve down to 4:20, 9:20, would they work for a 1600m/3200m high school runner running 50 miles a week? Would 400m threshold repeats build enough speed or is more race specific training necessary for the 1600/3200m athlete?

Bump up when you're comfortable, but also when pace holds without cardiac drift, right? Like you don't level up just because you can run for an hour at 80%. And at the risk of pedantry, I think you want to go in 5bpm increment, not 5% increment.

On Livingstone, I think there's a difference between the "steady" runs and the subthreshold runs (3/4 effort). Coincidentally I just got my book out the other day. I left it at the office, but I think he says 75-80% HRR for the subthreshold (80% HRR isn't that much slower than NSA for me, being 7bpm from my LTHR) and steady at the top end of his bread and butter aerobic range (70-75% HRR).

The steady runs are mainly used in the marathon prep base at the end of the book -- 2 steady runs and 1 subthreshold. In the trad Lydiard base earlier in the book, it's just 2x 3/4 effort and the stride fartlek.

If you’re doing this program, I can’t state how awesome this tool is. Your Critical Power is essentially your LT2. Just remember one number and stay below. Others disagree, but I have found mine to be deadly accurate. I rely on it solely now for all threshold efforts. #notanad

Uh, no. Your CP is roughly 35 minute / 10k pace.

Are you getting it confuzi-ed with critical velocity? Ie, Tinman.

Critical power in Stryd is defined as the power that you can hold for 60 minutes. Effectively a proxy for LT.

(I'm not shilling for Stryd, I don't use it and don't think it's beneficial/necessary. It's basically just GAP+wind but has too much variability due to shoe placement etc to offer much more than you can get with the traditional measures.)

You’re confused. Critical power models and critical velocity models are the same. And depending on the combination of time trials and durations, you will get different CP/W’ estimates.

Critical power was never 60 minute power. If you do CP/CV testing with < 20 minute time trials, CP will be higher than MLSS. And the longer the time trials over 20 minutes, the closer to MLSS will be anyways. So forget CP and use a 40+ minite tome trial for MLSS approximation.

"Your Critical Power is an estimate of your maximum metabolic effort for about 40 minutes."

40 minutes then, fine. It's definitely not LT2 though.

Critical speed is the boundary that separates running speeds that can be sustained at a metabolic steady-state from speeds that cannot. Sometimes called critical velocity or “CV,” critical speed is known in the running world in partly due to its popularization by Tom “Tinman” Schwartz and his proteges, including Drew Hunter.

That is traditionally LT2, is it not? From the article below that is supposed to be the gold standard in science to find MLSS / LT2.

runningwritings.com

The science of critical speed, critical velocity (CV), and critical power training for runners

John Davis

Open link

40 minutes is literally what Stryd claims on its own website.

This has been exactly the same as my experience. Just thought the soleus was slightly tight on the session days and then slowly got worse until it full on clamped up one session and then confirmed as a soleus tear and then 6 weeks off, then a base build and start again. Each time I've started NSA I've been in good shape before committing (17.30 to 18 mins 5k) but have broken down within a couple of months or so. I've come to the conclusion that now I'm older I just need a bit more than the 48 hours recovery between sub T sessions. It's frustrating as the results other people have had speak for themselves. NSA FOMO. I may give it one last go but alternate between sub T and LT1 sessions for a couple of months to see if that's more sustainable. If not I'll have to stick with my 2 sessions + long run 10 day mesocycle which has historically kept me injury free with all the easy days between hard stuff but has the downside of me feeling like I'm stoned unturned.