Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

This is a fair point. Given I would guess 95%+ at least of the success in this thread, nobody probably has a clue a out their phisiology.

Why? You’re painting a picture, figuratively, and want to understand peripheral things that influence the performance. I don’t test lactate, or VO2 in a vacuum. It’s to help inform why something is the way it is. Even if I’m taking measurements for a basic, boring workout.

Of course, I can look at average pace, hours, miles, TSS, work, etc and get an idea of a ballpark for an athlete performance capabilities, but that’s not good enough for me. Seems like too much guessing.

I design and build big structures for a living. We do lots of lab and field testing to inform our design on paper, and then go build and break things in the field to verify design performance. You can take a similar approach to coaching.

From my experience coming from the cycling world, it's actually pretty challenging to translate cycling fitness effectively and immediately. Yes, you can likely go out and immediately run a 17-18min 5k with minimal training, but you're likely to get hurt quickly and frequently unless you're genetically gifted with good economy and mechanics. The people I know who have transitioned well from cycling to running had to take a fair step back and rebuild their fitness slowly because their aerobic fitness was so far ahead of their joints and ligaments.

Go look at sirpoc training history. He has been training like this for 15 years. Just mostly cycling. He replicated that to running, with the focus on training load, recovery and using the pmc to do all of that. KI doesn't really subscribe to the nsm, for a start he runs far too hard on easy days, he fully admits he's not controlling intensity and second he was just aiming for 3 runs a week around HM pace we have since learned.

Nothing really planned out like this. Jan, read sirpoc book. Come back and you might have learned something. Any good coach could learn something from it. Many have dropped in and put their ego at the door but you cannot.

I would agree with this. It's also a lot harder to re-start than people realise, even in running. I was a 17 min 5k runner in 2014, I came back in 2019 without even being fat and I couldn't even break 25 after a month. I imagine even harder for cyclist who totally detrained. 4 years for a hobby cyclist to then run you may as well just say you are total beginner.

99% of the time, you can make all of the necessary "design decisions" in training someone without knowing anything at all about their individual physiology.

Quite possibly, but that's not the same as not being able to do it at all.

99% of the time, you can design a house without knowing anything about the foundation and land.

Does that sound like a good plan?

Bad analogy. To build any house, you first grade the land and lay a foundation according to code. Said code is based upon previous experience and well-established principles; there's no need to reinvent the wheel each time.

The same is true when it comes to sports: knowledge of the physiology of exercise is the "code", all you need to do is apply it.

Or are you one of those who thinks that every athlete is some special snowflake that can only succeed by training a particular way, and you're just the one to help them figure that out?

Right. My point is that it's possible, but generally not sustainable. I've seen probably 5-6 friends who are Cat 1's go out and smash a super fast 5k or half marathon and then their bodies crumble into dust. The only ones I've seen have sustained success built their running methodically and patiently from the ground up.

You missed the point. I said build a house without knowing anything about the foundation. You wrongfully assume the foundation is up to code. But I digress.

I know everyone is different but can typically fit into a descriptive “bin”. Doesn’t mean we all don’t have quirks.

There’s a reason I can’t use basic code for my much of my designs. I have to do site-specific testing and analysis. So I treat athletes the same way. Doesn’t take much extra effort at all to gather extra data.

Such extra effort is wasted when the characteristics of the substrate upon which you're building are well-established and the best way to deal with them well-known. At that point it just becomes window dressing in the name of training "scientifically" when in fact there is no science to back up the decisions being made.

I wasn't talking about "sustainability". I was talking about the fact that not being able to string together five 3:30-4:00 splits in a row right out of the box is awfully damn slow for someone who was reportedly a decent time trialist.

Too much time in the pub for too long, apparently.

Lancearmstrong3hourmarathon.mp4

Many pages ago, somewhere in the thread, Sirpoc mentioned if he didn't train fo a while cycling, his FTP would drop from 300+ to well under 200, something like 170. I suspect he is a huge responder to training, but off the bat appears pretty untalented. I posted about this before but nobody seems interested. Based on this I'm surprised he even managed a 28 after no training for 4 years.

I bought up before the question of "what is talent?". Is it running a 20 off no training l but then maybe only responding to training minimally, or someone who has a very low starting point, but a really high ceiling?

I myself fall into the latter category, which I find interesting. I didn't run for 7 years, but was a 16 minute runner after 3 years of college and a good training with no injuries. 7 years later I picked up running again, ran a Turkey trot in one of the covid years and ran 29. I've managed to get back to around sub 17, but it took a while to respond to the training. I've seen this in others before. It's touched on in the book, high initial responders, versus low initial responders but they might have different end points.

It's a very interesting subject to me, as it's quite personal. To be anyway this would be a really interesting debate and might answer what talent is or who and why some people respond to training better than others or why some people can just turn up and run 20-21.

Also, I think sirpoc is nothing special cycling. No disrespect. The times he did is about all being smart by being super aero dynamic I am sure. He rode 300w for a 25 mile time trial, nothing remarkable at all or super talented, even at his height. The remarkable comes from some of her CdA numbers he is reported to have had (sorry I know this is running, but I also find this the most remarkable thing about his whole story in either sport, as someone who is interested in such things).

this is just ridiculous, everyone knows always too little time in the pub

IIRC he said his threshold was around 5.3w/g, which is enough to get you on an elite amateur team in the US and do pretty decently for yourself. Generally enough to win some local P/1/2 races and be mid pack in national level P/1 events and maybe get a solid result on a really good day. He probably would have fared pretty well in stage races with a long-ish TT.

Which with average running economy, would mean being able to run about 5.3 metres per second for the same duration. That's around a 47 minute 15 km/1:06 half mary pace.

Once again, the data points to him being really unfit or having horrible running economy when he first started.