Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

What paces are you running to knock out 17km in under an hour 3x a week at 65 year old?

He did say "nonstop".

I'm guessing he's stopping at points in his sub-T workouts.

Ha not an hour - that whole workout runs about 1:45 with all the slow easy stuff and pauses between reps. All my reps are between 4:10 and 4:20 per k. When I first started NSA I got the bright idea to try walking all my easy days (only 1 run a day then). And I only did 500m 1k and 2k reps. I ran 3 races during that time period and every one was a bit slower than the last.
It was very clear to me that I was aerobically weak - my mile times are under 6 mins and my 5k times were north of 21 mins.
I've talked to Sirpoc a few times and watch his workouts periodically - so when he started doing double easy days, I decided to try that. And when I saw he started doing 5k reps I decided to dump the shorter reps and first tried 1k/3k/3k in a session to make sure I could handle it and when that felt much better, I moved to 1k/3k/5k in a session. So that's how I now get my 9k of thresh.
My thresh reps only 22 pct of my total mileage and I do a long break between the reps - more like 4 or 5 mins of jogging.
Also when I started running all my easy stuff instead of doing all that walking I immediately felt much stronger overall as well.

Amazing to bump up your mileage to 80 mpw in a short period at your age. Presumably you have a prior history of running high mileage?

Adit I was a bit trolly with my comment but I was legitimately curious how to parse the workout breakdown. I interpret "nonstop" differently, but that's really a semantics (not training) thing so not worth getting into.

I am glad Bananaz clarified. Impressed that they can hit a 17k, 100-minute workout three times a week. I'm ~20 years younger and that'd probably rinse me pretty quickly even at sub-T paces and easy easy paces (granted I am also in peak-career and parenting phase)

I honestly think NSA is the only reason I could do that. I made a lot of changes in the last 4 years - diet, workouts, cross training, weights stretches etc and still always managed to get hurt. NSA forces me to not overdo things which is my main weakness.
This is the highest consistent mileage I have ever done. But I also stopped racing for 40 years and only did easy runs for a few days a week over that time period so I probably don't have as much wear and tear as someone who actually raced for decades. And I haven't missed a day of running (or walking if I was hurt bad enough) in almost 2 years so that every day consistency probably helps a lot too.

That is an interesting issue that is often overlooked. Lots of runners who start late in life do very well because their legs are fresh without the cumulative wear.
Many club runners race far too much and fill their calendar up with races that don't mean anything other than the fun of taking part. Fair enough, but if it is not an A race, maybe worth holding back a little?

A recent podcast with A Couzens discussed sub max tests to measure progress, rather than all out TTs. Any implications for NSM?

Shouldn't every session be a way of managing progress? The beauty of rotating the same 3 or 4 workouts is that you can measure up against your previous self at any time

Big Catfish 1.0 is back in stock, by the way, for the people still waiting on that.

Would a 45 fit someone who wears US12 in western brands? I think I know the answer is no but want to believe

This is the Damian, not Xiaonian, right?

Hard to tell. I'm a 44 EU / 10.5 US and most Chinese shoes other than Li-Ning seem to run slightly long (others singled out Do-Win but for me it's mostly Xtep) but a 45 might be cutting it a little to close for a 12.

I received my Feidian 5 Challenger today after ordering it two weeks ago. It felt cheap when when I unboxed it, almost like a paper shoe. The shoe laces were bad. They are usable, but I have never seen laces like this before.

I decided to use it for my weekly 3 x 10min session today. The shoes did not feel good during warm up. They felt quite hard and I felt that I did not get any energy return that I usually get from carbon plated shoes. But the feeling was totally different as soon as the reps started. They felt amazing during the reps. I don't think I will race in them, but they felt more than good enough for sup T sessions and park runs. It will be interesting to see how long they will last, but I guess I could buy three of them for a price of one Vaporfly.

I think they are an outstanding shoe. I have no qualms about the quality at all. I've ran a few workouts in them and cannot praise them enough. I have a HM race in early Jan and will take them for an all out effort

I agree they do feel a bit cheap. The laces, the tongue, the upper all just feel very basic quality, initially they weren't that comfortable either and I thought the same with the Red Hare Pro's but once you've warn them in, I genuinely think they are both 10/10 shoes in terms of performance, regardless of the price. The Red Hare Pro especially is so stable and comfortable, responsive and fast I think I might prefer it to the Challenger. I think I paid around £58 for them and see they are now up for £43 with the Black Friday vouchers, I really can't imagine a better value show on the market.

Been in sort of the same boat but with childcare, since trying to find a decent 5K that coincides with a gap in my wife's work schedule is apparently next to impossible. I eased into the TT game by doing a two mile the first time, then surprised myself with how well my first couple 5Ks went (mostly since I could choose my course and start time to avoid any crappy weather). My last one turned into a dumpster fire, though, so hopefully those weren't just a fun flash in the pan.

Solo time trials build character. nothing like running 25 laps on a track as fast as you can by yourself.

Just chiming in with some quick thoughts of mine. Not sure if you can quite consider it vanilla NSA as the workouts aren't the exact same, but I recently started doing all of my easy runs at <70% MHR (closer to 66ish%, measured with an arm band) and three sub T efforts a week - 1 in the form of ~3 min intervals, the others as continuous progression runs. I've finally began to make some progress since graduating from college.

I couldn't agree more with the other posters that the easy days are a huge part of what makes everything work. It might seem like a common sense but I'd always been taught to be pushing more in the 75% MHR range and only backing off when I was absolutely forced to by dead legs. The difference in recovery is very noticeable - even on a day to day, week to week level, let alone over the course of an entire training block.

Speaking more on the discussion I raised earlier in the thread, I still think that strides are beneficial and do them, but not as much as I used to. I feel like you do lose speed not doing them, but find that you can get back the lost speed very quickly within 1-2 weeks of introducing them again. I feel like keeping them is very much just to feel better all around, but they're not necessary.

Going to continue like this, and we'll see if I can hit some PBs come track season - aiming for sub 8:45 3k / 9:20 2 mile.