Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

One of the reasons I really enjoyed it, was because it manages to keep some light entertainment whilst being a serious piece of training theory. Too many books are just too dry or take running too seriously. I think it's one of the reasons it's a great buy for someone as a gift, if they are a fellow runner. You can have a bit of fun with it, laugh at the silliness of running and runners, but also strive to be the best you can. I'm surprised a mainstream running site hasn't reviewed it. Although clearly it's selling well, maybe this is too much on the fringes still of what running is willing to accept 'just works'. It's a big shift for a lot of people. I have had huge success training like this but i have friends who simply won't buy into it. Lack of long steady runs, no 5k pace work. This is all despite me getting ridiculously faster than them over the last 15 months.

I once saw Daniels running formula #2 in judo coaching or something. How Amazon work these things out is a mystery to even then. I think sirpoc's book is listed under three categories: running and jogging, fitness and coaching.

It must be doing very well, as it's been hovering around the top 10 in all of those for weeks now with no promotion whatsoever. I guess there a shame but that's true sirpoc style that I feel we have come to expect! I think the release of the book got a post on Reddit "here's a link, if you'd like to buy it go ahead" lol

I've had a look before. I can't even find a bad race. I know he was disappointed by the GSR, but he had hardly ran for 3 months and still ran a really well paced race, probably completely in line with the handful of sessions he had a chance to do in the lead up.

I will admit I have always paced on feel, but I think I'm willing to concede that while you might hit 1 in 20 races where it all comes together, the other 95% of races you are probably runnjng sub optimally. I did a 10k last weekend having had the book for a week or so and it's by far the best paced race I have ever done, in a decade or so of running. Why nobody has really managed to communicate that with me in all that time, who knows? It felt maybe a bit robotic and alien, but the performance was far superior. The mass start running, time trial cyclist mindset. It also felt great to be just picking off people in the last 2k.

Hi guys, if you are using %LTHR on intervals.icu where do you consider subthreshold (between LT1 and LT2) to be? I guess upper limit to be 99% but what about LT1 in terms of %LTHR?

The book covers this really well. There's a nice plot about how Lt1 is highly variable between people. So it's less of a broad range than pitching just below Lt2 and using pace as a proxy. The range of Lt1 is huge and if you have no idea where it is, then you definitely shouldn't be looking to use it for training purposes.

Your HR@LT1 is going to be too individualized to guess it as a % of LTHR, because where it sits is going to be highly dependent on your level of aerobic development. Maybe 90% is a good guess for the average and would have accuracy amongst a group of people, but a bit of a shot in the dark at the individual level.

If you're an average runner and have a good, evenly paced marathon between say 2:30-3:30, take the average heart rate of the middle of that race (throw out the first few miles when it was still warming up, and throw out the last few miles when you were fighting), and that will be a pretty okay ballpark.

Can someone decipher this for me:

My 5k PR is 18:15 - 18:30 (cross country so not sure if the 18:15 was real but I've had several results in the 18:20 - 18:30 ballpark on well measured courses (e.g. Woodbridge, converting up from 3M to 5k), so I think it is close).

In the past, running my coach's VO2 max style intervals during the XC season, I'd run 5 x 1000m and on my best set I'd averaged 3:31 for 5 x 1k with 3:00 rest (starting at 3:40 and cutting them down with the last one at 3:21 but still not maxed out on the last one).

Now, in the offseason, trying this new method, I am running 6 x 1k with 1:00 rest at 4:00, which feels very controlled and relatively much easier, but I took lactate readings after #2 and #6 and read 6.3 and 6.5 respectively. It feels counterintuitive to slow down even more as the workout does not feel very difficult. My HR avg for the workout was 174 and max of 195 (where my max HR is about 200 or so), in comparison during the VO2 max type workout I described in the previous paragraph, HR avg was 173 and max 191. So I'm definitely getting a great workout but I don't feel even remotely cooked.

So is this still too fast even though it is 30s per 1k slower than when I run these in a VO2 max type workout?

The basic formula (5k pace x 1.1) says I should be running approximately 6:25 pace for the 1ks. 4:00 is 6:24 pace. Why would my lactate be in the 6s at this pace? Pretty sure I can still run close to my 5k PR so I don't feel like I've lost fitness.

I have seen so many people talk about poor race performance and “goal pace” in the same sentence. I have a coworker that blows up every single race. It’s like clockwork.

And I would ask, how did you decide what pace to run?

Their response…”it was my goal pace.”

And I would ask, why didn’t you set your goal pace at the world record pace? It’s a goal, right?

And I would then ask, how did you gauge your fitness?

The response….what do you mean gauge fitness? I followed “generic coach plan”.

And I would ask…how did you know that plan was right for you? Did you track your fatigue and plan rest days around life stress?

And their response….it’s the plan I always use. It gets me ready for the race.

Rinse and repeat.

You are pretty sure you haven't lost fitness? Is that a guess? There is also the issue of contamination or bad readings. I know that lactate isn't comparible between people. But lactate of "6" after the second rep and feeling easy still, is probably outside the parameters of even margin or error.

This really is the majority of hobby joggers. Letsrun is probably a bit smarter, by the fact you are looking to optimise or seeking out information. But the general running population doesn't see a problem with what you outlay above.

Probably the 50th post on the subject, but really enjoyed the book it deserves all the praise it gets and hopefully it ends up on places like Goodreads, more mainstream coverage and steers people in the right direction.

Maybe just miscalibrated. I'll have to try again. This is the first time I've used the meter in a workout situation.

I shouldn't be that far out of shape. I ran an 18:30 - 18:45 effort a month ago, and only took about a week off after XC.

In the past (a year ago when my XC PR was 19:44), 6:27 pace was approx 2.5 mmol (this on a potentially miscalibrated treadmill), with HR at 173, I didn't hit the 6s until 5:44 pace with a 1% incline and at the end of a 3:00 step test, and I described this in my log as "hard but not falling off the back". Of course, the treadmill is probably not accurate, but the perceived effort of 6s back then was nothing like how easy it felt today...

I dropped 1:30 from my 5000m PR in the past year mostly by adding volume (50-60mpw vs 35mpw) and staying with standard HS VO2 max style intervals. I've only been running a little over a year and a half. Hoping that a switch to more threshold style intervals in the off season will lead to better results (I tend to come into the season in dramatically better shape but hit peak within a month and then it's a plateau even through the taper).

Thanks for the advice. I'll stay with 6:25 pace for now and figure out what I'm doing wrong with the meter later...

There's a number of methods to determine LT1, none of which are easy or perfect -- partly because LT1 seems to vary and move around a lot more than LT2. Generally, the fitter you are aerobically, the closer LT1 should be to LT2.

Best option is obviously to test bLa. Personally, I also had success with a chest strap (H10) and calculating DFA alpha 1 at 0.75; worked perfectly for me but the science seems to be a bit mixed on that. You could also check your breathing rate or do a number moderate runs at different HRs / paces and check decoupling. If decoupling increases above 2-3%, you're probably above LT1.

For me, LT2 is very close to 90% of MaxHR and LT1 very close to 80%, but others might hit LT1 at as low as 70% -- or above 85%.

Greek Singles Man breaks 40 in the 10k (on strava at least)

I’d hardly say I was moaning about 2:31, other than that it would have been 2:25 if I hadn’t had to stop multiple times for a portapotty. I was very happy with the level of fitness demonstrated by my marathon.
I just wanted to share my experience because most people post about cutting minutes off their 5k and for me and others the improvement will be a lot slower—I’ve only taken 3s off my 5k in 8 months. I’m still hugely in support of this training—in fact I just recommended the book to my big running group chat—it’s just not magic like many seem to act like it is. It’s a way to have consistent but sometimes very slow progress. I was hoping to both show that over the longer term you will eventually progress, and that in the short term, even months, it may not be very much.

Greek Ultra Man just ran a PB of sub 40 in 10k. Only needed to run 100 miles a week to get there. Proof the method works!

Has he suddenly started training like a sane person?

I'm a new runner, only been running since the start of 2025 ... Somehow starting to google running and browsing Reddit quickly guided me to NSA

But after spending a couple of months here when ever I peek outside this thread it really seems like an alternative dimension ..

Everywhere else seems to focus on fast workouts .. Worst offender is r/advancedrunning, where self proclaimed coaches post that the key to a fast marathon is threshold running on tired legs

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But what made me write this post is "Marathon Excellence for Everyone" (2025) by John J. Davis, Ph.D. Amazon has been trying to sell me this book after I bought Sirpoc's book.

The cover is nice and the selling point is also nice: Expert coach and scientist John J Davis gives you up to date science based advice.

But when I browse the preview it seems very VO2max focused and like something that would run you into the ground if you're above the age of 23 ???

Anyone with an opinion on this one?

The book must be sponsored as the same happened to me. I bought it. It's a good book, but I wouldn't recommend it for beginners or even hobby joggers. You have to be very wary of what you can handle. For marathon stuff, it's incredibly Canova inspired. I don't think that is a bad thing for elites, but for hobby joggers this falls into the same trap as pitfz. I like John's writings, but I think he's probably from the school of scaling down what has worked for Canova training elite runners. This is the absolute key thing to avoid for most reading this thread.

I follow him and Grandma's guy on Strava, Jon is also in the NSM group. They both ran that day. John had a very intensive build, as you would expect for someone from his view point. There's no definite correct way to train for anyone! Grandma's guy from here ran the sirpoc build, just 100km a week and his race report was how strong and fresh he felt and finished a decent amount ahead.

Very hard to compare people, but I think that's probably the difference between NSM right up to the marathon and anything else. It probably is the most relevant to most of us and likely to deliver the best results. The question is more "why", at this point.

P.s advanced running is a mess. This stuff is alien to them. Every thread you will be told to run 5k pace work regular.

OH, ok .. Good to know

I like both reading and especially collecting books, so I might just buy it to have it on my shelf as a "reference work" even if I won't ever need need it ... At least John is part of the Strava NSM group, so he is not unaware ...

The proof is in the pudding tho .. If I read your answer right then John finished a good bit behind Grandma's guy (whoever that is in real life) on a much more intense training ..

Not the best advert .. I mean, if you recommend for people to go all out and do hero workouts only to end up behind someone mostly doing runs with a sub LT1 heart rate .. (tho I don't know who grandma's guy is, so this is assuming all things being equal)

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And yeah .. r/advancedrunning ... It's more about being a hero and doing big feats of physical prowess than maximizing running performance necessarily.

It's in the name .. You're not allowed to do simple running .. It has to be advanced!