Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

So what would my 5k be based on this indicator workout?

This will be my first attempt with Chinese shoes but I was thinking along these lines - the Hare Pro 8 were described (by sirpoc) as a better version of the Evo SL. This will be amazing to me if true. I use the Evo SL for everything except races, so hopefully it will be a daily shoe for easy, long and sub-t.

My understanding is the Challenger is a good "speed trainer" that can also be used for races. I've seen it described as something along the lines of the older Saucony Endorphin Pro/Speed which I loved.

I think the Elite is more of a pure racing shoe with an aggressive rocker. To be honest I started to second guess why I bought both the Challenger and Elite since there seems to be overlap, but I figured what the heck since it was on sale.

As long as they are not discussing Chinese shoes.😎

Probably around 14:10-20. Try to hit 3k in around 8:35 feeling relaxed (68-69s laps shouldn't be overextending) and then close hard

No replies and only downvotes. What was wrong with my question?

If you don't have any luck finding a Chinese stability shoe, Saucony Tempus is $90 at REI & Amazon currently. It's an excellent stability shoe with some speed elements.

(Ignore the downvotes. People are downvote happy here for some reason.)

I wonder if this is a reflection of the kinds of people who are willing to put their egos aside and just stick to what's written on paper or if there is something to the actual composition of the workouts themselves?

To defend myself, let me say that I don't think my marathon build was traditional at all. It wasn't that far removed from James' Special Block.

I just know (having been injured from doing similar things in the past) that my body wouldn't hold up to the density and volume of James' schedule, so I adjusted it slightly.

I pretty much just combined 2 sub-T workouts into one, kept one standard sub-T workout in and put a little bit more intensity into the long run. My marathon block was basically 5 weeks long and I did Vanilla NSA either side of it.

As far as recommending people should build their mileage before incorporating intensity into their week; I stand by that. Especially if your mileage is at the lower end of the spectrum.

However, not everyone is doing NSA, and not everything is directed at people doing NSA. Where I live, doing a "base phase" just isn't a thing. People bang out 2 x VO2 sessions a week and have never even thought about building their mileage. Needless to say, for the most part they plateau after about 6 months to a year. Now, these people don't necessarily need NSA (and they're not likely to jump on a bandwagon - regardless of how effective it is), their improvement curve will pick up if they just run more and avoid the heavy VO2 Max stuff.
But I'm also aware that banging on about NSA all the time gets very, very tiresome - and there are others facets to running that you should be allowed to talk about.

I will tell you though, that if I put Norwegian Singles in a video title, it'll get about 5 times as many views as one without it. So, really, in this instance, what's the clickbait?

Hey Paul,

I wasn’t trying to be vitriolic, as I said, I enjoy your content and think it provides much better value to people than just about any other running YouTuber at the moment. I may have been speaking in generalities regarding the incentives of content creation and appeasing the algorithm and then used a specific example of “even a very good Youtuber…” etc.

I still largely disagree with some points made in the last video, but nothing you said was outrageous. I agree that there’s no reason to fear doubling from a physiological standpoint but from a practicality standpoint for people with full time jobs and families, the juice is hardly worth the squeeze. Conversely, training at threshold intensity will trigger adaptations from different signalling pathways than easy running, and the increase in risk is small relative to the increase in performance. If you took two runners of equal ability running 60km per week and one followed the template in your video and the other followed NSA, I think it’s likely both runners will be uninjured but the runner on NSA would win over every distance.

I see this method as one step away from having a top coach. Actually, it's worked better than any coach I've ever had, some of those were good and respected. Names you would know. When a coach tells you to do something, you follow it and listen to what is being said. They usually tell you why we are doing something and what the purpose and goal is. So you do it.

I don't know why this method should be much different. The two characters in question, have absolutely no idea what they are doing. So, they should be listening and sticking to it even more than the guys who do know what is going on. Take cheetodust, or chillruns for example, who are incredibly smart guys who could work out how to change stuff, yet still don't. Because they see the incredible value here.

I would agree with a few others that have posted, in the sense that the actual workouts themselves or how they are structured is the least important thing, the most important being you limit your fatigue and are recovered within 48 hours. I've played around myself and certainly I'm like guys who have mentioned that anything under the 2-3 minute range becomes mechanically a problem in terms of stress. That of course, might not be blanket for us all, but it's good enough I think to say as a general rule, this is around where caution needs to be taken.

Paul you don't need to defend yourself, of course. I would say it's more the general point that unfortunately "this" doesn't make good content. 99% of YouTube viewers could do themselves a favour, buy the sirpoc book that's coming out and put all other ideas aside and forget about social media posts and they'll almost certainly improve better than anything they can find content created.

Of course if you want to build a YouTube brand, then nobody will be against that, but the nature of the beast is you would have to have multiple videos, from different perspective, all the time , some of which will be good training, some terrible. That is the trap and I think the problem have a lot with social media and YouTubers, which also deviates away from the wider message that will help hobby joggers. The push to find content, to keep up. I'm not saying that is you, but it's where a lot of channels, even good ones have gone.

I mean, you're not totally off about the kinds of behaviours that the algorithm incentivises. There certainly are YouTubers that annoy the hell out of me in this regard (it's probably why I put off starting the channel for so long), but I'd be a hypocrite to say that I'm totally exempt from some of the same behaviours.

I'm not gonna lie, I would like the channel to grow, and it is frustrating to have certain videos underperform, but for a word in the title or a provocative thumbnail.

In terms of the head to head, I think it's very likely that the NSA runner will be injured. For one, most people don't/aren't capable of doing it correctly. I've tried helping a few people get started on NSA, and all of them have run everything too fast. They've all said how easy it is until they get injured or run down or give up on it. I personally found backing up for 3 workouts a week quite a stretch (and I felt like I was on the verge of injury for a while) and I was already doing 125kms/wk + when I started. My workouts were also modest in volume compared to what others tend to do.

We hear about the success stories on this thread and in the Strava group, but it does take a certain kind of person to be able to implement the system effectively. That's not a knock against the system, that's a knock against human psychology.

But if you can strip everything back and focus on getting one of the fundamentals right first (running easy, so that you can do more of it), for most runners, that's gonna set them up for a greater chance of long-term improvement.

Sirpoc , any Tymewear updates? Should I even be considering buying it?

Just happened to catch this whilst skim reading what I've missed from the last time I came on LRC.

If you like money, then no. It's hilariously overpriced. If you like cycling, then I don't think it does even remotely good a job as someone who understands how to manipulate sessions via power. On the test for example, you need power. I think based on that, from some of the numbers I've seen, it's using a expected power curve in the calculation somewhere , perhaps in the background, to plot your data points rather than just using the breathing data in isolation For example, it said my Lt1 is about 70% of FTP. A friend of mine got 69% and he's done a 24 hour TT at 65% of FTP, so those numbers are quite clearly a bit silly. You can take the raw VE data and plot it all yourself or change the protocol, but it's hassle and very not user friendly.

Having said all that, for running, I've found it useful. It's definitely above power. The numbers seem reasonable and if I target around (whatever balance point is) it comes out around marathon effort. Could I have worked that out other ways? Obviously. But, if you are looking to really dial in your running, it could be useful and does seem consistent, if you set the numbers for 30 seconds average so it's less noisy in the moment.

Hard2find found a nice relationship when overlaying actual HR and lactate data from the same test and I don't think it's biased towards anything but the breathing data. He would like to send his back, and this is a man who has wasted more money on rubbish than anyone I've ever met. So that alone, probably tells you all you need to know.

To comment on the last part, I would say that's a lot of people's experience when it comes to the shorter stuff. I do think age is a factor perhaps here. But ultimately, I'm never going to tell people not to do something. But even strides do carry a small amount of risk and I posted my thoughts on my recent 400 session. I spoke to jiggy this morning and he has done something to his hamstring on today's strides. Does that mean he shouldn't have done them? Of course not. For what he needed, they were probably useful. But it shows you ultimately everything carries risk, even if it personally hasn't affected you yet.

A further side note. Anything I am doing now is probably largely irrelevant to most people, who are much back further down the curve of this method. I'm now looking at what I can do after I probably resched the limit of volume I could handle on the original plan. But remember, this probably good me well over two years before I even worried about what to do next. Still, 90% of what I do and will do is still absolutely the same as what I did 2 years ago.

When book?

Did my first sub T workout on Tuesday. 3x8 mins on the treadmill (it was 30+ degrees celsius outside). Such an enjoyable workout!

I’m recently back after yet another long injury lay off. 3.5 months of no running. For the past few years I’ve been doing more traditional training, hammering myself in workouts and feeling exhausted all the time. Thought I would give this method a crack. I haven’t ran a PB in 6 years so I really have nothing to lose!

Thanks for this. It's really interesting as a post, because I have had a similar experience with the Tymewear. My cycling Lt1 they have around 72% FTP. But running is just below MP by 10-15s/km, roughly where you would expect it to be.

Any reasoning behind 800 repeats? Just curious.

Planning to release it on December 1st, in paperback. Ebook will maybe be a week or so after. 3 phsyical copies exist, which are due to be delivered to myself and two of the guys I couldn't have done this without, editing and making the pretty graphs who like to learn visually. We already know of one mistake, which is mildly quite funny how it got missed.