In Australia, until very recently, we’ve seen our marathoners unable to get near the times of De Castella and Moneghetti from the 80s and early 90s, which I’ve always found puzzling. I recently read both Sirpoc’s book and Moneghetti’s 1997 training diaries and interestingly found them to be pointing in the same direction in terms of fundamentals (even if execution of sessions very different).
To elaborate for anyone interested:
Mona did basically the same training week in, week out all year round, year after year. Mostly same places, locations etc, so all completely dialled in over years (the fartlek around the lake in Ballarat being the most famous in Australia).
Easy and long runs were generally very easy, 4.15-4.30 min/km pace for easy runs (for a 2.08 marathon, 13.25 5km guy). Note this is even slower than Sirpoc recommends in the book.
Sessions were restrained. Even the ‘Deek quarters’ session he would do most weeks (10x400m with 200 float) were only done at ~5km pace. The other main session was a 20min fartlek, which were generally ~3min pace avg for the 20min, so just slightly faster than marathon pace. Saturdays would be something like 7km effort on a cross country course at marathon pace or a bit slower, as part of a longer run.
So nothing particularly hard week to week, but it allowed the sustainable accumulation of huge amounts of volume (200km+), with very few injuries and no boom/bust cycles. It also allowed regular racing over a range of distances from 5km to marathon, but again, very sustainable and repeatable. And over literal decades too, a couple of years ago he ran sub 15.52 for 5km as a 60 year old.
Just like NSM, there’s absolutely zero magic here. It’s just training that allows you to keep training and keep building over years.
This is a long way of repeating what others and Sirpoc have said, the real value of NSM is a detailed framework for understanding how to train effectively and sustainably over the long term. But while many on the thread have talked about how NSM is effective because it is not a scaled down elite plan, some (probably mostly older) elites have trained in a broadly similar fashion with great success.