I’m going to attempt to redirect the conversation into something more productive. I’ve been running 5 x LT1 intervals, 90 min long, 30 min easy for the last 5.5 weeks.
A 7 hour week of vanilla NSM would yield a weekly load of ~370 on intervals.icu and I achieve around the same load on 6.5 hours training this way. It’s not a game changing optimisation, but it’s allowed me to be consistent during a very demanding time in my life and avoiding the paces I hit in the 6 and 3 minute reps has reduced my Achilles soreness.
It’s summer here and there’s been huge variance in temperature and humidity so I’ve run sessions anywhere between 10C to 26C and 50-95% humidity. I also have had to change the location of my sessions pretty frequently so it’s been difficult to draw like for like comparisons to accurately assess my progress. But I have three sessions performed on the same course in ~18-19C and ~85-90% humidity, pace and HR listed as averages below:
November 27: 4 x 8’ @ 4:11/km (146bpm)
December 18: 3 x 10’ @ 4:08/km (143bpm)
January 5: 3 x 10’ @ 3:58/km (144 bpm)
At this point I think the likelihood that my curve has shifted to the right is very high and I believe I will PB once the weather cools down. Obviously the big thing that remains to be seen is whether not touching anything remotely close to 5k pace will matter significantly.
Training this way does feel slightly less sustainable than vanilla NSM. More from a mental standpoint than physical. I am probably going to switch back to vanilla when I have more control over my work timetable in March, but I think I could comfortably switch back and forth when I need to and stay on the same trajectory.