Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Stryd use to say it was 60 mins, it seems they have change it! It still says 60mins in their older articles and blogs. So everyone is a winner today

Critical power isn't owned by Stryd. It's a standardized endurance model that describes the physiological boundary between the heavy and severe domains of exercise. It's the threshold at which the dominant type of fatigue changes. Stryd states on the website that this is the effort a runner can sustain for about 40 minutes. This is the same boundary that Coggan describes and defines as "functional threshold power" in his book.

50M here. I've been following NSA for a good part of this year. In May and June, I averaged ~57 miles/wk. July/August dipped to 52/wk due to summer travel (more zeros on the board + fewer long runs). Sept resumed @ 57 miles/wk, matching June's training almost exactly.

Here's my question: Mid-June, ran a half-marathon - not max effort, tried 7:30 pace, full effort would have been ~7min/mile in retrospect. Felt great. Magically, two weeks later, my easy pace dropped ~15s/mile at the same heart rate and that held for weeks (....then summer travel disrupted things). Helped HR on subT, too. Is it even possible for one such stimulus/workout to have that impact? I trained in September just like June, except for the half-marathon, and didn't see the same improvement come October. Just found that interesting.

thems fighting words lol

Talk about fanning the flames, wait until you read Ron George! He calls functional threshold power "a pseudo-scientific concept at best". Heh.

georgeron.com

Functional Threshold Power : A Scientific Scrutiny

FTP, FTP myth, Andrew Coggan, TARWAPM, Training and Racing with a Power Meter

Link:www.georgeron.com/2020/04/functional-t...

I'm 59 and have been utilizing it for almost a year. I pretty much do the standard routine, but I did mix my third ST session within Saturday's long run as I want to have Sunday as an off day. I am going to revise that now and do ST on MWF, easy TTh, and easy long on Sa as I look to prep for a late February marathon.

Don't give up on it but hope you heal fully and quickly. Do you do any weighted calf strengthening? I've found that any calf issues I have ever had disappeared in modest time with a period of weighted single-leg calf raises.

i feel like this is trying to say "Beetlejuice" without saying Beetlejuice

But i do feel like its about to be SHOWTIME!

to be fair to FTP, it's not just a 20:00 test it's also supposed to be a 5:00 'blowout' effort before the 20:00 test.

It would be like doing a mile race and then doing a 5k, give or take, and then extrapolating from that 5k time to determine an FTP.

Both for the most part sound and are brutal, but only have done a couple FTP tests (the ones on Zwift have the 5:00 in there for the Longer FTP test), for running i mostly did the Friel tests back in the day but for me always found that they slight OVERSHOT my actual LTHR (maybe by 3-5 bpm).

I still think if you have a Garmin PRO HRM and have enough data with a garmin watch, the LTHR they eventually get to with a few months of use is pretty damn accurate for me, and that was from me working backwards and confirming that with a lot of treadmill running (totally controlled variables every time) and Lactate testing

On the sub-topic of mid-50s NSA calf strains, let me add some notes.

I don't think it's the fault of NSA - I had the same fall and spring calf strains on my last pre-NSA marathon build, and I was doing 1 workout a week (plus a long run) for that.

Once I feel a calf tighten up, I now stop and walk home or call for a ride instead of trying to jog through it. That only makes things worse.

But rest only gets you so far. I try to introduce some stimulus and start muscle/neural re-modeling relatively early, although in small doses.

When I can walk without sharp pain, or maybe a minor dull ache at most. I'll try a short, very easy run (think a mile at 10:00/mile, rest, then another mile home), and if I can do that, start building from there. If I can only jog/walk, I'll build on that. If I feel sharp pain, it means another week off. (If it's going to be a week, I'll start indoor biking, but I'm not good at it. I know it helps, but it feels like it's done nothing for me once I start running again.)

In the meantime, I'll start opposite-leg strengthening exercises - body-weight and weighted calf raises, isometric calf holds, straight leg and bent knee. Your body likes symmetry, so if you can't work on your right calf but can strengthen your left calf, your right calf gets somewhat stronger, too.

Then I add range-of-motion exercises, mostly double-legged calf raises with most of the weight on the healthy leg. Over time, I'll shift more weight gradually to the affected leg, then start introducing single-leg exercises.

Has my form or footstrike gotten sloppy? Now is also a good time to do some of the core and auxiliary exercises that I tend to forget when running is going well.

Once I can run with minor pain or no pain, I'll add maybe a half mile each day, but back off or take an extra rest day if needed.

Once I'm up to easy runs of 5-6 miles, I'll start low-volume NSA-style workouts again, but at much slower paces. A good place to start is 2 x 1 mile steady, which for me is like 7:00-7:30 mile - 1 minute/mile slower than HMP. Even with a healthy calf, the first workout feels awful.

This time I'm going to stick to steady effort for a while as I build workout volume, which will eventually mean around MP. If I can do 2 x 1 mile this week, I'll bump up to 2.5 miles of volume for each workout next week, and so on. I like mile repeats during recovery because they're not too far, but not too fast.

After my 4 minor-to-medium setbacks this year, this approach has gotten me back to easy running after 3 days, 0 days, 3 weeks, and 2 days off, respectively; and back to NSA workouts after 4 weeks, 1 week, 5 weeks, and 1 week, respectively.

There's a real benefit to varying the NSA workouts and getting down to HMP/15K/10K paces, but I'm going to be more cautious about approaching them this time around.

Thanks for your reply and to the others who replied to my post.

Yes I am currently working with a physio on my rehab from my current soleus strain, I am 7 weeks post injury and am just starting the plyo stuff this week. After that I guess we will try to figure out what could be any physical weak points that are leading to these repeated calf strains. I have been running seriously for over 30 years and generally I have been a fairly injury prone runner since my mid 20s but the repeated calf strains is definitely something that has increased with age, in fact I never had a calf strain until my mid 30s. So maybe this is something that us older runners need to pay attention to regarding preventative measures and making adjustments to ST training.

Just eyeballing my training in the summer I would say the time spent at ST across 3 sessions was about 21% to 24% of the total running time. I agree with the poster who implied there is a risk of biomechanical stress as there is 1 1/2 hours of "faster" running during the week which would be more volume than just I built up from 1 ST at the weekend, adding another midweek for a few weeks before adding a third ST workout. I guess I should look closed as to how I progressed as there may have been more of a sudden jump from 2 to 3 workouts. Another approach to try could be to keep the frequency of 3 workouts per week and then very gradually increase the time spent at ST.

Regarding the paces, I have not done a road race for a few years due to first the extensive COVID lock downs and then these repeated injuries. So I have been going off heart rate aiming to be at 150 to 154 bpm in the middle of the workout and trying to keep it there (my max measured in a lab a few years ago was around 179 bpm so around 80 to 84% of max I guess). Easy runs were more in the 125bpm to 125 bpm zone though I did notice in the summer heat things could drift up towards 130 bpm towards the end of some runs. I actually really love running at that ST sort of intensity in that I feel that I am moving quite well but not really killing myself at all and not feeling destroyed at the end of the session (contrast that with the VO2 max workouts that probably most of us have tried). And for sure I feel that it does give me huge fitness gains (even when I was younger I generally found that doing a decent volume of "fast steady" running or progression runs brought me on more than the intense V02 max workouts which even then was counterintuitive).

To the others who kindly replied, yes I have Keith Livingstone's Lydiard book and some other Lydiard books. I guess that I have to re read them to refresh my memory on the philosophy but yes I remember reading that faster aerobic running was suggested on one or 2 runs during the week. As I mentioned earlier, the other coach I read about in another thread was Luis del Aguila who seems to be focused more on masters runners and trying to keep them injury free with his approach. I guess that all these approaches along with the NSM are similar in that they are more focused on trying to increase your aerobic/fitness sustainably over time without resorting to a lot of the intense V02 max style of workouts (which was how I was told to train when I was much younger).

Anyway I don't want to make this thread about me and my injuries but maybe there can be some ideas generated as to how older runners and/or injury prone runners could try to approach ST training in terms of avoiding injury setbacks.

Sorry I can' t edit: the above sentence completed should be "I agree with the poster who implied there is a risk of biomechanical stress as there are 1 1/2 hours of "faster" running during the week which would be more volume than just 1 VO2 max workout of 15 mins and another threshold workout of 30 to 40 mins in the week."

As someone who works primarily with "hobby joggers" and older folks looking to take some time off or address a nagging injury, it is usually because their strength training isn't up to snuff to deal with the demands of running, especially in the volume intensive training like NSA (yes I know it was meant to be doable but 50+/wk is still a lot).

Good to hear you're doing plyos, you're on the right track. The key to prevening injury is working under loads that are equal to or more than what you experience running. Hence, plyos and heavy compund lifting. Not much else to it besides that. If you look at the BYU mens strength coaching, there are some good resources there (They do have the top two American marathoners working with that coach as well).

The emphasis is the same, if a bit nuanced for each individual. Meet the demands of running (2-3x BW into the ground with each step), in strength training. 2x a week you should be doing a heavy compond, single leg strength work and plyos, if you are injury prone. Once you get to the point where your strength feels good and you're no longer sustaining injuries, perhaps you can be like our guy Sirpoc and just run and not get hurt for two years whilst dropping copious amounts of time off of PBs.

Those are just my own thoughts as a trainer that specializes in strength training and lower body rehab for runners :)

After each calf tear, you can be left with scar tissue. This leaves a weak spot within the muscle and restricts full mobility. Strength training won’t necessarily remedy this. Find a massage therapist who does deep tissue massage. The therapist can go deep with her fingers and break up any scar tissue. Also do lots of stretching as well as strengthening.

Running 6 days a week and Sundays off then?

Do you have a link for some of the BYU strength training?

Didn't Coggan suggest CP testing as a way of estimating FTP?

Sin#5

And people should understand than mlss does not actually exist in any shape or form. It’s an abstract idea.

That’s why subthreshold isn’t a pace. It’s a state.

Bruh, since when is CP standardized? There's literally 15+ critical power model formulations.