Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

P Luttrell wrote:

bad coaching wrote:

So what is the issue? Coaching? Literature? Why are the only elites we can reference training like this already drawing pensions? The bad coaching of the 90s we haven't shaken? Do we need these coaches to retire themselves? By the 2000s Bakken was a lone wolf and I suspect people thought he was weird and from outer space.

The fact some people still believe this kind of training for hobby joggers is suboptimal despite all the evidence, tells me there's still tons of influence out there from loud voices who don't even get this training. They are so wrapped up in icing a cake that hasn't even been baked yet. Why is running still in a relative dark age when it comes to understanding these things compared to other sports? I find it all very odd.

I think this is largely it.

Most coaches at the grassroots level (at least here in Australia) are either old guys who stopped learning in the 90s, or online coaches who learned everything they know from old guys who stopped learning in the 90s.

To add to this, the large majority of runners aren't curious about how best to train. They're much happier outsourcing that task to someone who generally fits one of the descriptions above.

strava snoop to the rescue! wrote:

TrailsAreBetter wrote:

Obviously poster above is a troll but it did get me to look at sirpoc's recent workouts. It caught my eye that there seemed to be a significant progression in pace throughout the workout in the most recent 6x1600 workout (Dec 4th), from 5:30/mi first rep down to around 5 flat. Has a pace increase throughout the workout been discussed on here already? (Apologies if so.)

It seems contrary to the basic method, so I'm curious if he is starting to bake in specificity/5k speed work, and if so is that because he feels he has finally plateaued?

He's just really fit. He's made a huge jump. Sirpoc knows his fitness and the paces to run. You can't really look at his recent race times for his workouts. He's said before, he's upping the paces BEFORE he actually achieves the new time in a race. That I guess comes with the experience of his time doing this and one step ahead of the curve. He's always significantly slower the first rep or two, I guess because his warm up is basically a jog. But in the book he mentions this is a benefit , not a hinderence and it basically means you will never overcook early.

This was the case before London and the 10k he ran. Everyone thought he had lost his mind and was going super hard. But then he raced not long after and ran a huge PB in 30:41. He's effectively assuming his new fitness, before he has a race to "prove" it. I would imagine other people do this, provided they are experienced and it's a huge benefit of the system, you always know where you are even before it happens.

I looked for example at his workout Saturday. It's well below his LTHR but also much faster than the recent 15:04 5k to win the British masters based on 10 min reps. Anyway TL;DR - he will currently expect to be quite a bit beyond that fitness and performance incoming. The pattern in this has happened a lot. It's kind of cool for someone to have such a handle on what they are doing.

Mona Magic wrote:

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.

Treacle_Runner wrote:

Mona Magic wrote:

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.

In these parts (UK) we had Steve Jones. There is not a lot of interviews with him but I have heard him comment that his training was fundamentally the same from when he started to getting the world record for the marathon. Obviously the finer details changed along the way, but the type of sessions were repeated, week after week after week…

Make no mistake, he was NOT doing anything like this method. He had a reputation for training and racing hard.