Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

So far, on here, Strava, and Reddit, people are posting up gains. The gains are being achieved, even by FT types, who Magness and other high profile influencers, say threshold doesn’t work.

Maybe I am misunderstanding, but the negative comments appear to be coming from those who haven’t trained this way for a period. If someone has trained for 6 months at vanilla NSM and regressed, we want to hear about it.

Not everyone will improve, or has. But the strike-rate and limited injuries reported compared to other training methods, means for me I can't see past this as #1 for hobby joggers. It's the absolute best logical starting point for just about anyone, who isn't elite, but still nothing will guarantee success. The problem with Magness was he wasn't listening to the balance is already set, you add too much and you start to lose most of the benefits. That didn't seem to register with him and I have no idea why. By the way I have a ton of respect for Magness, but I don't really think he understood it as well as he could have done.

To be fair, you could probably easily exchange the third S/T session for something like 8-10x45s hills every other week or whatever, if you absolutely wanted to. You'd probably lose a bit of training load but if you feel like you must run faster than LT occassionally, a few short hills should give you a decent stimulus without increasing fatigue if followed by two easy days.

Wouldn't do it myself but if someone actually struggles with turnover, I guess it might be worth a shot.

So many people throw the "genetics" or "naturally talented" excuses out there but it's simply consistency.

Sirpoc is not "naturally talented" he has just been able to run basically every day for 4 years because he has mastered sweet spot running.

Throw away the excuses and run

I agree with this fully. I'm from cycling as well, turned running. Nothing sirpoc did was remarkable in terms of athletic talent, but looking at the speeds he raced at in time trials versus the power, he absolutely must have mastered aerodynamics to almost unprecedented levels, considering we are going back a decade and more. That's just being smart.

In terms of running, nothing really suggests elite talent off the bat, other than being able to respond to training well and understanding consistency is what will get him to an inch of his max ability.

The talent and skill here is being smart enough to make the most of what you have. It's almost the opposite of an elite being talented, that they would get to the elite range in spite of their training.

Sirpoc in two sports, has far exceeded his talent or at least in running got very close to max by focusing on topping up everything that is important or best gains, and forgetting about the rest for now. Cycling was a bit easier, you can cheat more in time trials with the science of aerodynamics (as a cyclist would be very curious as to what the lowest CdA he has measured. It must be INSANELY low to have ridden 18:20 cor 10 miles from around 325w).

Regardless Magness he did get it but just don’t believe that load base training works because you need to do these faster paces for middle distance. Too at the top track pro’s, they are doing almost year round threshold right up competition and move to the vo2max but importantly they are keeping load roughly the same as in races it’s jog and kick.

For us non pro it’s about time trailing. You can tell he wants to keep working on all aspects of the curve when he talk about high schoolers can only max out at 50 miles per week, yeah because you are introducing not enough recovery for them as they go through puberty - it would be better for them to do continuous thresholds like master/veterans athletes to right their latacate curve right

A question. If in theory you can alternate between a sub-T session and an easy run and that's enough for adaptation, then why would you not, schedule allowing (assuming you can run 7 days a week and it doesn't matter if workouts fall on different days rather than fixed), simply do this rather than do 3 sub-T sessions a week?

3 workouts a week - 156 workouts a year / 13 a month

Workout every other day - 182.5 workouts a year / 15 a month

Seems like quite a lot to potentially be leaving on the table?

Looking at my data, I see slightly more load from a 90-100 easy long than from a 60 minute workout. Probably wouldn’t change much except decrease time on feet.

This has been talked about before, in theory. Or variations of it. But if you want to include a long run which probably offers some value (even at easy pace) beyond the 5k, you wouldn't want to be doing a workout on the next day. Some people have reported that, who have tried it (buried somewhere in the thread) that by the Monday which would be then the next workout, LFS (shame it didn't make it to the book!) was declining.

Hard2find and sirpoc actually came up with a number of potential combinations, of which I don't believe anyone actually tried long term. Including the slightly slower than M pace every (LT1) day broken up into small chunks, with the assumption as spoken about earlier, there's nothing much really special about sun threshold itself, just the accumulation of load itself.

The point where you start needing the specificity is where your speed in a race is limited by your raw speed and not by your aerobic ability. 99.999% of hobby joggers will never get to this point.

I do this for a stretch every once in a while, since my work/fam schedule often leads to missing or adjusting here and there. I typically do ST every MWF with a 90min/10mi long run Saturday and either off or shorter easy Sunday. But I’ve had plenty of weeks where I have to adjust, run my last ST Saturday, go long on Sunday, and then roll right into ST on Monday. That in itself isn’t typically an issue, but by the end of the following week I’m feeling it in my legs a bit. I think my longest stretch alternating days was something like ST on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and my long run after that was a real plod. Load-wise, as mentioned above, I usually get slightly more for a long run than an ST workout, so it also wouldn’t really make sense for me to just give up the long run for the sake of alternating ST indefinitely even if it didn’t get heavy.

I don't believe that's true in reality, I think that's more of an issue with how some are calculating load including intervals.icu. This was discussed several pages back and the consensus (including from sirpoc) was that the load calculation of interval.icu isn't reflective of perceived effort or wear and tear on the body.

If you're running long runs below 70% MHR they should feel WAY easier than a sub-T day overall.

Coros gets a lot of things wrong, but their calculation of training load seems way more on the mark than intervals.icu. Looking at my data this week, my last Sunday long run had a "Training Load" of 58 whereas my sub-T day on Tuesday was 192. I think this is far more realistic than intervals.icu which has the long run and sub-t days as nearly identical.

Thanks. I think I saw discussion of hitting a certain zone every day but I definitely agree some form of alternating with very easy runs is essential to adaptation. I guess though if you are looking more at the 5k end rather than say HM, then a 10-12 mile 'long run' once a week (or slightly less frequently) could be absorbed into a structure that has you doing a workout the following day, perhaps adjusting the effort a little so as not to overcook.

I’ve found a helpful (mostly accurate, a bit oversimplified) illustration is to think of your race potential like a 10-gallon bucket that starts at 90% full (9 gallons of water). Say that equals a 17:00 5K.

Adding specificity, if all goes well, gets you closer to maxing your potential at any given time—filling the bucket. Pretend you can perfectly max your potential and fill the whole thing up to 10 gallons = 16:30 5K. Adding aerobic capacity makes your bucket bigger. The “magic” is that even as you make your bucket bigger, it stays 90% full. So now your 12-gallon bucket has 10.8 gallons in it, which is more than the completely filled 10-gallon bucket. Call that a 16:10. The thing to be careful of—which this method balances well—is that you have to slowly increase that bucket size over time, with proper recovery, instead of just pulling it apart.

Now, it’s oversimplified because a lot of traditional training will try to both increase your bucket size and fill it, but that takes a more careful balance. Totally worth it (and doable) for elites with massive buckets trying to squeeze the absolute last they can out of their body, who are also able to rest and focus their entire lives on controlling every other variable in their day, but much easier to screw up for the vast majority of us with smaller buckets and a lot of outside life going on. For us, it’s much simpler and more efficient to just . . . increase aerobic capacity/bucket size.

To drive the point home, what happens if you keep trying to add more to the bucket without making it bigger? It overflows and you drown. Or something like that.

Interesting. I feel like the day after a long run of 90-105 minutes my legs actually feel a bit more tired than after a well-paced 60 minute subT session.

Coros gives me about 180 load for a 100 long run and 150 for a 4x10 -- both basically 2x of intervals.icu but in the end it's the same?

Sirpoc on the Jimmy Runs / FOD Runner podcast made a comment about how he would do a 60/44 split for running / cycling if someone wanted to try that. I ran NSA the first part of 2025, saw great results but then did a Pfitz 18/55 which got me injured halfway through the block. I have more than 7-8 hours to train in the week, can fit 10-12 and have been running a modified NSA for the last few weeks that looks like this. Like Sirpoc I come from a cycling background, just a lot lower level.

Monday: Vanilla NSA. 3x10mins. 90s walk / jog. ~60-70 mins.

Tuesday: 30 min run easy. 60 mins indoor bike easy, bike HR is ~60-65% MHR. Run is 60-70% MHR. Also find treadmill good for easy running as I find it easier to keep HR in check.

Wednesday: Vanilla NSA. 6x5mins. 60s walk / jog. ~60-70 mins.

Thursday: 30 min run easy. 60 mins indoor bike easy

Friday: Vanilla NSA. 10x3mins. 60s walk / jog. ~60-70 mins

Saturday: 2 hour indoor bike easy.

Sunday: 90 min run easy.

This ends up being about 6.5 hours of running give or take, and about 4 hours of bike training. It feels quite sustainable, and I would like to prince the running total hours up to 7 hours over the next few weeks.

Is this how people have structured bringing more volume in if you wanted to cap total run hours at ~7 hours? Thx!

Are you using a HR strap or arm band? Because if not, that's really going to screw up the calculations. Otherwise I'm not sure why yours are calculating that way whereas my sub-T days TLs are usually 3 to 3.5x my long runs (which seem about right to me based on RPE). For reference, my long runs are typically at 60-65% MHR.

Regardless, I personally don't pay much attention to these numbers. I think how you feel day after day is going to matter most.

For reference, my long runs basically feel like slightly longer easy runs and usually the day after (Monday) I feel ready to run a sub-t if I had to, even though I wait an extra day.

Strap. Never bothered to manually set LTHR and pace in Coros though as I'm only really looking at Intervals anyway. Also using a Stryd, maybe that leads to different calculations, idk.

Great to see the discussion. That's what this should be about, and hopefully those who have read the book will see it's a framework to work within, and no definites. The framework probably breaks down (or the balance) if you stray quite a way from it, but there's definitely wiggle room. But probably not, for arguments sake, for piling on intensity.

Anyway, a bit of a further update. Thank you for the pre orders on the ebook, seems like there's a fair amount.

Now, having said that I've listened to a lot of people and taken on board about making a true reflowable edition, which, seems to almost be there. The book has proved way more popular than I can even have imagined, so to spend a bit on getting it done properly I think is fair in return (this isn't really something me or the guys can do ourselves, it turns out it's quite hard).

Now, the problem being I'm struggling to get Amazon to agree to let me change it from a fixed format, to a proper reflowable epub. I'm hoping , they will let the pre-orders carry over but it's very tricky to get any sense out of them, even though it will mean a better product for the customer.

So, keep an eye out. The good news is, I think it will be better, but, it might require re-ordering again. The good news, there won't be a pre-order and it should just drop (nobody who pre-ordered has been charged yet anyway as far as I know). I'll continue to go back and forth with Amazon, in the hope they just do the simple thing and let me change the format, but, if not, it's a slight pain but will probably be a better experience than a print replica. The majority seem to have wanted a paperback anyway, which has proved straightforward.

You'll never please everyone, but the general consensus was this is what people would prefer.